Friday 30 October 2009

Ballybrennan inscriptions - "The Long Flat Stone"


.... so named as it was a long bit of stone lying flat on the ground. It takes up three photos on the webalbum.
They crammed a good few Fitzhenrys into this plot.

Here's the inscription and this one gave me a few problems - it looks very easy to read from the photos. Nice carving, words didn't break across the lines and relationships nicely explained - a researcher's dream.
BUT me and the Bree Parish website had a few differences especially over the use of the number 4
AND my last few burials were out of time sequence.
That's when it struck me - since the Bree parish transcriptions had been made, the lichen had done it's job and filled in most of the fainter diagonals on the number fours in the carvings. So where I had the last five deaths initially as in 1812, 1815, 1811,1815 and 1865, looking at the ages of death of these people (and readjusting the age of one from 18 to 48) gave the much more satisfactory transcription below. I stand by calling the third person MILER instead of MILES though - that's definitely there on the stone and you can see for yourself in the first of the "Long Flat Stone" pictures.

I don't know what the relationship between the first two people (Mary and Nicholas) are to each other or to the family described on the rest of the stone.

Here lies the Body of MARY FITZHENRY
who died May the 7 1778 aged 17 yrs
Here also lieth the remains of
NICHOLAS FITZHENRY of Rathiurun
who died August the 10th 1793 aged 71 years
here also lieth the remains of MILER
FITZHENRY of Rathiurun who died Feby
1 1816 aged 73 years also his wife MARY
FITZHENRY who died July the 9th 1829
aged 75 years Also his daughter
CATHERINE FITZHENRY alias DOWNES
who died Sept the 18th 1812 aged 28 years
Also his son MICHAEL FITZHENRY who died
June the 9th 1815 aged 33 years
Also his daughter ANNE FITZHENRY
who died July the 19th 1841 aged 48 years
Also his daughter ELLEN FITZHENRY
who died June the 22nd 1845 aged 52 years
Also his son NICHOLAS FITZHENRY
who died April the 9th 1865 aged 73 years


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