Well...one thing you can say...we were close.

Recently we narrowed our search to two parishes from the almost 200 parishes found within County Tipperary.  We believed that the James Ryan family came from Hollyford, which is a village inside Toem parish; yet at the same time, we also thought that Kilnarath Parish seemed plausible because of the intersection of family surnames.  Honestly, we were hoping to link to Hollyford as this is where most of the Ryans from Allamakee County, Iowa claimed as their home.

After sending our request to the Tipperary Family History Research, which by the way is the only source for obtaining Catholic archdiocese records, it turned out that Kilnarath Parish was our Ryan family's origin. 

The research center used the input form to pull together baptism and marriage records.  The records we received answered some questions but raised others:

1.  Census and Allamakee Cemetery records show James Ryan's birth as 1808.  His baptismal record shows 1814 as his year of birth.

2.   Anne Campbell Ryan's real name was Nancy.

3.   The records also gives us the names of James Ryan's parents.   

4.   The Ryan family "address" within Kilnarath was a place name called Gortnaskehy.  In Gaelic this means "field of hawthornes".

5.  There were other family members who came with the Ryans to Iowa.  Some of these families included the Campbells, MaGuires and Quillins.

6.   The baptismal sponsors between 1837 and 1861 lived in Kilnarath, but in different town lands.

Darby Ryan of Gortnaskehy  (1641)

The Down Civil Survey of Tipperary, recorded in 1641, listed Darby Ryan as a "papist".  The term "papist", a popular nickname for Catholics, was used to describe any Irishman who followed the teaching of the Catholic Church. 

Additional Ryans can be seen in the 1766 Papist Lists for Kilnarath Parish.  Following "naming conventions" we should be looking for the names of Daniel or James.

The exact location of Gortnaskehy township boundaries has confused genealogists.  Some placed it between Birdhill and Newport (along the Newport-Nenagh road), while others placed it a few miles further east.  For example the location of "Bushfield", a minor earldom in Tipperary, reflected this same confusion:

Bushfield is at Gortnaskehy, Kilmastulla par, on the main Limerick-Nenagh-Dublin road, just NW of Shallee and Greenhall, SW (NOT NW) of Nenagh, N Co.Tipperary. Multiple historians refers to Bushfield as in Kilmastulla par.   Another historian confirms "Bushfield is on the main Limerick/Dublin road. It is between Nenagh and Birdhill, right by Gortnaskehy."