Francis Larkin

Francis Larkin of Tamnabane married my aunt Elizabeth Garvey at Killeavey Church on 16 July 1924, when she was just sixteen and he was twenty-four. Who was he?

Stephen Larkin of Tamnabane was born in 1869. Stephen’s mother Sarah, born 1838 married a farmer in 1876 (at the age of 38) and they had eight children of whom seven survived to adulthood. By 1911 Sarah’s husband was dead too and two of her adult children were still resident with her in Ballintemple. Sarah was seventy-three, her son John Larkin was forty-five, a farmer and still single and her daughter Ellen was single and twenty-eight.

The earlier 1901 Census had shown at the same address (Tamnabane, Killeavey in Orior Upper, Newry, Co Armagh) residing with Sarah, her son Stephen with his wife Ellen and their children Patrick (10), Daniel (8), Mary Anne (5), Sarah (4) and Francis (1). This child, born as the new century was about to begin, would be twenty-four when he married in 1924.

The home, however, belonged to Ellen’s father, one Patrick Henry (80), a widower and a farmer. Stephen (32) - the only able-bodied male there, is described as “assisting on the farm”, probably lest he get ideas above his station. No doubt, the only assistance he got was from his wife Ellen (30).

At his baptism (sixteen months before the Census) Francis’ sponsors were his relatives Peter Larkin and Elizabeth Henry. His parish entry (as earlier noted, consecutive pages await entries for marriage and death) states that on 16 July 1924 he married one Elizabeth Garaty (sic). This tells us

  1. 1) that we have the right Elizabeth of 1907 birth. Also...
  2. 2) that Elizabeth probably knew she was not the natural daughter of Thomas and Eliza Rice and that she had been adopted. (This however is still not certain! Just because a couple were marrying would not persuade the Church to treat them as adults, or to confide their personal details to them!). However if she knew, we cannot tell how long she had been aware of this fact: whether she found out for herself, or was told by her “parents”: how she was affected by this revelation: whether it made it easier for her to leave the Rices and emigrate to England: whether she was all the more determined to assert her independence when they expressed their disapproval at her pregnancy at the age of sixteen and her plans for an early wedding. And...
  3. 3) Elizabeth did not know exactly her proper name. Her mother had been Garvey, not Garaty. It is impossible to know whether this was true ignorance or an example of poor literacy (on the part of the priest or official Church scribe) in the days before universal and free mass education. (Significantly though, her proper name at marriage and that of her husband were properly recorded in the Cathedral records, a church just some three miles away.) The surname Garaty may have been conveyed to her deliberately in this garbled form to obscure any determined attempt to discover her true parentage. Her natural father was four years dead at the time of her marriage. Her natural mother was busy preparing for the forthcoming marriage of her first daughter Maisie to Joseph Vickers, an event that would take place just two months later in Newry Cathedral. (Maisie’s story follows next).
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