Person in this family
Thomas Garvey
about 1860 – 12 October 1914
Thomas Garvey was a Ventry grocer and shopkeeper whose household put eleven people into four rooms above the family shop.
Partly proved
Thomas Garvey was a grocer and shopkeeper at Ventry, where eleven people lived in four rooms above or with the family shop.
Born at Ventry, County Kerry, Ireland Died at Ventry, County Kerry, Ireland
Recorded as: Gentry,Dingle
Birth: From our family tree - no record found yet
How is this person related?
Andrew John Leahey’s no relationship found in this archive
Gina D. Cacace’s no relationship found in this archive
Abigail Ann Leahey’s no relationship found in this archive
Marie C. Fitzgerald’s no relationship found in this archive
Kevin Leahey’s no relationship found in this archive
Worked out from the recorded parents and marriages. No sex is recorded for anyone in this archive, so the wording stays neutral.
Life
Thomas Garvey was born about 1860 or 1861 and made his living as a grocer at Ventry, County Kerry. On 24 January 1891 he married Bridget Fitzgerald; the marriage record identifies him by his Ventry residence and grocery trade.
The 1911 census shows how closely business and domestic life were joined. Eleven people occupied four rooms associated with the grocery and home. That compact household makes the census more than a list of names: it describes the physical conditions in which the family lived and worked, with the shop below or alongside the rooms that held the extended household.
Thomas died at Ventry on 12 October 1914, aged 53. The civil entry calls him a married shopkeeper and gives the cause as certified cancer of the bowels. His son Patrick Garvey of Ventry was present at the death. Bridget therefore survived him, although her later death has not been securely identified.
How we know this: The 1891 marriage, 1911 census household and 1914 civil death record document Thomas’s Ventry residence, grocery and shopkeeping work, household conditions, marriage and death. [1]
Family
Parents
Spouse
See this family in the family treeWork and occupation
- Grocer
Where they lived
- 1911: Ventry, County Kerry, Ireland
Use the place list first. The map below is optional.
Places listed on this page
- Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland
- Ventry, County Kerry, Ireland
- County Kerry, Ireland
- Ireland
- County Kerry, Ireland
The map could not load. The complete place list is above it.
The pins show approximate places. The line only joins them in time order; it does not prove the route travelled. 3 of the places listed above are recorded only as a county or country, so they are not pinned. Cemetery and burial places have red pins.
Timeline
Married Bridget Fitzgerald
The marriage record identifies Thomas as a grocer of Ventry. [1]
Proved by a record
The grocery household at Ventry
The census records eleven people living in four rooms associated with the family grocery and home. [1]
Proved by a record
Died at Ventry
Thomas died aged 53 from certified cancer of the bowels; his son Patrick was present. [1]
Proved by a record
What the records say
1 record transcribed.
Record exhibit
Irish civil marriage register — Thomas Garvey and Bridget Fitzgerald, 24 January 1891, Dingle
Civil registration means an official government record of a birth, marriage, or death.
Proved by a record
Verbatim transcription currently held in this archive — reproduced in full.
Marriage, 24 January 1891: Thomas Garvey, grocer, Ventry, married Bridget Fitzgerald. 1911 census: the Ventry shop-and-home household contained eleven people in four rooms. Death, 12 October 1914: Twelfth October 1914 | Ventry | Thomas Garvey | M | married | 53 years | Shopkeeper | Cancer of the Bowels Certified | Patrick Garvey Son Ventry Present at death.
Historical context
These background articles explain the places, work, and events in this entry.
What Sponsors and Witnesses Can Tell Us
Catholic registers often preserve the people standing just outside a family photograph. A baptism normally names the child, parents, date and sponsors or godparents; a marriage normally names the couple and wit…
Reading Irish Civil Registration
The year 1864 is the dividing line in this family’s Irish paper trail. Civil registration began in 1845 for non-Catholic and civil marriages, but from 1 January 1864 the law required registration of all births,…
The Irish Road to Ipswich, Queensland
Most branches on this site point toward New York or New Jersey. The Hickey–McGreevy–McGuire cluster points in the opposite direction, to Ipswich, Queensland. The Australian evidence is uneven: cemetery records …
What we still don't know
- Transcribe every person and relationship on the 1911 household schedule
- Find Bridget Garvey’s later death record
- Identify Thomas’s parents and exact birth record
- ["GENTRY, DINGLE" IS VENTRY] His birthplace came from the family tree as "Gentry,Dingle", which is not a place. It sat in this archive as an unmapped location with no coordinates, so he had no pin. Everything else about him is Ventry: he married in 1891 as a grocer of Ventry, the 1911 census finds him keeping the shop at Ventry with eleven people in four rooms, and he died at Ventry in October 1914. A capital V misread as a G is the whole of it. Mapped to Ventry — but note the birth remains unsourced: this corrects a garbled place string, it does not document where he was born.
- [FROM THE REGISTER] He was a grocer of Ventry and the son of Patrick Garvey, farmer, and married Bridget Fitzgerald at Dingle chapel on 24 January 1891. He signed his own name. His father had not been recorded in this archive before.
- Obtain and transcribe every line of the 1911 household schedule, including all eleven residents and their relationships.
- [COULD WRITE] Thomas Garvey was recorded without a mark on his marriage register of 1891, on a page where others made crosses. That is worth recording because it did not follow family or sex in these households — of the twelve people in this archive whose registers have been read, some couples both signed, some both marked, and in three of them one partner signed while the other made a mark. It tracks schooling and trade rather than anything else. What the image cannot show is the writing itself: every civil register page here is the registrar's certified copy of his own book, so the hand on it is his (finding 128).