What is in a Name?

What would be the fun of tracing family trees if you could not find a famous ancestor or two? Of course if you go back far enough, everybody is related to everybody. I found a surprising demonstration of that in inspecting records telling about the derivation of our own family names.

Not much potential for that with with McBryan.



Rural Irish did not start using permanent surnames for a long time. Brian (Of the Tributes) Boru, the progenitor of the O'Brien Sept in Munster started asking for this around 1000 AD for taxation purposes. Before that surnames were descriptive of one person. Brian son (Mc or Mac) of Shamus would be be a father to Patrick McBryan. Eventually government started insisting on permanent last names. At which point Patrick's daughter would be Bridget McBryan, not Bridget McPatrick.Peadar Livingstone describes this happening rather late in the day for an isolated rural community up in the hills overlooking the River Shannon and some long lakes stretched along the valley floor.
In Ross Beattie's website:

Peadar Livingstone (The Fermanagh Story, 1969) wrote :
"[Page 421] — "BREEN (Mac Briain) : also McBryan, McBrien, McBreen. This family descends from Brian, grandson of Manus from whom the MacManuses descend. They are thus related to the MacManus family and the Maguires. Their original center was at Baile Mhic Sherraigh or Mullamackervey townland in Aghalurcher. The first McBryan chieftain seems to have been An Giolla Dubh (the Black Servant), who, having led his tribe for eight and a half years, was proclaimed the "Mac Briain" in 1488. He ruled till 1506."

The family of the Brian we were named for:
“a branch of the Maguires, descend from Magnus, son of Donn Maguire, Chief of Fermanagh, who died in 1302. This family lived on the shores of Lough Erne, COunty Fermanagh, and Belle Isle in that lake was formerly called Ballymacmanus in their honour. In Fermanagh they were second in power only to the Maguires themselves, and from their base on the island ....controlled the shipping and fishing of the lake."

Therefore McBryan's in the area our family came from were a junior tribe where older and more established groups controlled the flat arable land along the lakes and rivers and another controlled water commerce. I haven't been able to find Mullamackervey townland in Aghalurcher, but anyways McBryan's soon migrated down toward Inismacsaint and the control of territory by native Irish became moot after the Plantations.



The Plantation of Ulster was a planned process of colonisation which took place in the northern Irish province of Ulster during the early 17th century in the reign of James I of England. English and Scottish Protestants were settled on land that had been confiscated from Catholic Irish landowners in the counties of Donegal, Coleraine1, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh and Cavan, following the Flight of the Earls in 1607. The Plantation of Ulster was the biggest and most successful of the Plantations of Ireland. Ulster was planted in this way to prevent further rebellion, having proved itself over the preceding century to be the most resistant of Ireland's provinces to English invasion.

Always a contentious bunch, the fiercely independent Northern Irish Chieftains had resisted for hundreds of years every attempt at English domination of the area through the reigns of many English Monarchs until the English crown decided upon it's own “Final Solution”.

The Plantations had a profound impact on Ireland in several ways. The first was the destruction of the native ruling classes and their replacement with the so-called Protestant Ascendancy, of British (mostly English) Protestant landowners. Their position was buttressed by the Penal Laws, which denied political and land-owning rights to Catholics and to some extent to Presbyterians. The dominance of this class in Irish life persisted until the late 19th century and cemented the British control over the country.

The Plantations also had a major cultural impact. Gaelic Irish culture was sidelined and English replaced Irish as the language of power and business. Although, by 1700, Irish remained the majority language in Ireland, for the Parliament, the courts and trade, English was completely dominant. In the next two centuries it was to advance westwards across the country until Irish suddenly collapsed after the Great Famine of the 1840s.

Finally, the plantations also radically altered Ireland’s ecology and physical appearance. In 1600, most of Ireland was heavily wooded and covered with bogs. Most of the population lived in small townlands, many migrating seasonally to fresh pastures for their cattle. By 1700, Ireland’s native woodland had been decimated, having been intensively exploited by the new settlers for commercial ventures such as shipbuilding. Several native species such as the wolf had been hunted to extinction and much of the bog land was drained for agriculture. Most of the population now lived in permanent towns or villages, although the Irish peasantry continued their traditional practises in isolated areas. Moreover, almost all of Ireland was now integrated into a market economy — although many of the poorer classes would not have had access to money, still paying their rents in kind or in service.

Plantations of Ireland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



McBryan's continued to increase.
“After the Plantation the family seems to have multiplied greatly. Some of them became Protestants. ...... In 1788 - five years before Catholics got the vote -we find many McBryans on the Fermanagh register, ....... In 1796, when Catholics were included, we find 30 on the register - many of them at Ardees in Inishmacsaint Parish, which by then was the new centre of the family. Today there are 212 Breen-McBryan voters in Fermanagh and it is the county's seventeenth family."
From Ross Beatties website

Northern Ireland was the first overseas invaded nation state in what later became the British Empire. By 1834, English absentee landlords had amassed so much territory that there were only three landowners left in the Parish of Innesmacsaint, all the original inhabitants having been reduced to being tenant farmers at cripplingly high rents on their own ancestral lands.

In 1834 Lieutenant P. Taylor wrote regarding the Parish in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs,
"The central division is composed of a wild, romantic, mountainous, heathy district composing the townlands of Lenaghan, Blackslee, Shean, Bolusky [?Bolusty Beg], Tiernagher and Drumbag [?Drumbad], forming an irregularly connected range with the Boho mountains."
Nearby Derrygonnelly in 1834 boasted, according to Taylor’s report, "about 20 families, 6 of whom are shopkeepers and 12 spirit dealers". Church Hill, ( Inishmacsaint ) another village mentioned in the report, was smaller.
In the report attention is drawn to the fact that the Parish was basically owned by three people, the Marquis of Ely, and two other absentee owners, General Archdale (per Charles I) and Colonel Montgomery (per James I). Another landowner just east of Inishmacsaint (in the parish of Devinish, now called the Parish of Devinish and Boho) was John Dawson Brien, the sheriff of Fermanagh.“

From Ross Beatties website



Inhabitants of the area were noted for being exceptionally long lived and healthy but not much else of a positive nature. The surveyors report in that website describes in rather graphic detail the prevailing atmosphere of depression that people lived in.

Statistical Report by Lieutenant P. Taylor. November 1834

General Appearance and Scenery.
Nothing can surpass in grandeur, sublimity and beauty the richly diversified scenery of this extensive parish, either in contemplating the majestic range of mountains elevating their lofty, sombre summits to the sky, the mural escarpments and castellated forms of the more humble but equally interesting chain of limestone heights in everlasting verdure, the awfully impending, perpendicular precipices and cliffs, exhibiting in their form and structure the organisation of the universe, the enchanting form and variety of the alpine lakes upon the summit of the mountains, the beautiful tranquillity of the undulating vale, the silvery, oceanic expanse of Lough Erne and Melvin, their islands, peninsulas and promontories, altogether combine in imparting vitality and animation to scenery of the very highest range and order.”

Habits of the People
Would that it were possible, in sincerity and truth, to characterise the community as a people of sober, cleanly, frugal and industrious habits. An apathy and indifference to the accumulation of wealth seem to pervade almost the whole population, apparently happy and contented in their condition and nearly upon equality with each other. They evince no ambition or desire of independence. A distant view of the farmhouses, gardens, orchards and planted hedgerows, which so much adorn and beautify the country, present great improvement and superiority to many other parishes, and induce a supposition of much neatness and care; but on a close examination of the premises the same indifference to cleanliness and comfort alike, without and within the dwellings, universally prevails, from the humble cottier in his cabin to the yeoman farmer of 100 acres with valuable flocks upon his glens. .......Potatoes and milk constitute the diet of the peasantry. Several years ago oatmeal and animal food formed no small portion of their daily meals, but both have long since, and still continue, luxuries very far beyond their present humble resources.

Emigration
Nothing but the means of transport prevents a simultaneous emigration of the labouring class to Australia or the Canadas. Let the emigration advocates come forward, and the superabundant population, if an evil, will soon disappear.

General Remarks
There is not a parish in the kingdom more capable of improvement than Inishmacsaint. Its valuable carboniferous quarries of limestone, abounding in every direction, afford the immediate means of enriching and fructifying the soil. Its undulating surface presents the utmost facility for drainage. The graduated ascent from the summit of the mountain render the reclaiming of bog and waste land a simple operation. Lough Erne washing its northern and Lough Melvin its south western boundaries furnish a cheap and ready transport for its produce. In short, the only desideratum wanting to render it a prosperous and wealthy parish is a persevering spirit of industry and steady habits of accumulation on the part of its
intelligent and hardy tenantry.

[Signed] P. Taylor. Lieutenant Royal Engineers, 13th November 1834.”

Hmmmm.... And the incentive would be............?

As far as famous relatives go, I guess the McBryan's will just have to make do with this "Black Servant". My first thought when I heard the title was that he must be either a hit man or a magus. A knight's leap to the side and a couple of steps forward however does bring us to Hugh Maguire, cousin and Lord of Fermanagh, 1589 who fought the British encroachment on Ireland to the bitter end near Cork during the Nine Years War. Check out:

Needless to say, McBryan's among others wanted out long before the potato famine forced thousands of starving Irish peasantry unto barely floating "coffin ships" to escape to the new world.The ancestors of our line, Henry and Mary (Allingham) McBryan were lucky they had enough resources to get out before the rush started, even though it meant taking four children, the oldest barely teenagers and Mary probably in an advanced state of pregnancy or with an infant at the breast on the ordeal of a long transatlantic crossing.