Finding the farm

Cassie O’Connor (1883-1951) was brought up with her maternal grandparents – Francis McCrossan (1826-1907) and Anne McCrossan (ne Mullan) (1826-1895).

c1860, when Griffith’s Valuation was carried out in our area, Francis (my g-g-grandfather) was already a householder in Glassmullagh.  

Using the Ask about Ireland website http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/#

I entered as much as I knew about Francis and found his details in a scan of the original document:

Here’s the (readable) detail:

The website then links you to the original map. I was looking for 2A / 2B, Francis' farm.

The map is great – you can zoom in to find what you’re after and there’s a slider where you can merge the map with its Google Earth image…

I struck gold!

Next step was to go out there to have a look…

Still standing…but it has gone downhill a bit since Google took their snap. Maybe with a lick of paint...?

Cassie O'Connor's farm, Glassmullagh

I struggle to find living relatives in Ireland who can help me with any family history detective work. I was aware that my father had been left a farm by his mother – Cassie O’Connor - and that he had sold it not very long after her death but all I knew was it was in Glassmullagh, a townland a few miles outside Newtownstewart.

Glassmullagh is on this map of townlands, right at the bottom, sandwiched between Dunteige and Lisnacreight.

Cassie died on 14 December 1951 in Strabane and the farm was first advertised in the Ulster Herald on Sat Jan 5^th 1952

It looks like Frank didn’t sell it first time round because it was advertised again in the Derry Journal two years later, on Fri 26^th Feb 1954

I eventually found the farm by going back a lot further in the family tree and with the help of Griffith's Valuation and the internet. In my next post I’ll run through how I did that, if I write it down I hopefully will remember it myself next time I need to do this!