My grandmother Julia was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1891. She married Martin Whelan at 18, and they had five children. Martin served in the Royal Munster Fusiliers during the First World War, and was injured in the Dardanelles campaign. He died of complications in 1918.
It was a time of great civil unrest in Limerick. In 1919 the Irish War of Independence broke out between the Irish Republican Army and the British forces. The following year the county was placed under martial law.
After Martin’s death, Julia swiftly moved to Bristol to live with her brother Michael O’Neill. Perhaps she had become a target in her home town because Martin had been in the British forces. In fact, the Army sponsored her relocation to England. In 1924, Julia remarried to James Joll and they had five more children, including my mother Annie.
To prove my claim to Irish citizenship I assembled all census records and birth, marriage and death certificates illustrating the link between me, my parents, Julia and her two husbands. The earliest information was in the 1901 Limerick census. I found Julia O’Neill aged nine and living with her father Cornelius who was listed as being blind and a widower.
Also present were her brother Michael, aged 17, and elder sister Bridget, 21, who was married to Michael Behan and had a baby, Lizzie. They were all living in a one-room tenement in Limerick city.
I couldn’t use census returns prior to 1901 because they were destroyed in the fire and explosion at Dublin’s Public Records Office in 1922. In the 1911 census, Michael, Julia and Bridget were all married and living their own lives.
The only thing I lacked was a birth certificate for Julia. Even two professional genealogists couldn’t locate it. Julia had always celebrated her birthday on 22 January, but she was never sure it was her exact birthdate.
My application was rejected because I couldn’t provide a birth certificate, which would have been absolute proof that Julia had been born in Ireland. However, the staff at the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service were very helpful and kept my application open. I’ve always enjoyed puzzles, and was determined to solve this one.
There were several breakthrough moments in my quest. Firstly, I used a process of elimination to identify Julia’s birth. Using Irish Genealogy, I searched for records of a family of three children named Bridget, Michael and Julia with the same parent/parents and birth years that matched the 1901 census.
There were 24 possible families in Limerick, but only one Julia–Michael–Bridget combination with a mother of the same name. This was Bridget Slattery, who gave birth in the workhouse and had no former unmarried name.
Now I had three siblings named Julia, Michael and Bridget born to Bridget Slattery between 1879 and 1891, and three siblings of the same name and correct ages living with Cornelius O’Neill, widower, in 1901. I set out to prove that there was no evidence of the three Slatterys after 1901, and no evidence of the three O’Neills before then.
I searched for all Julia, Michael and Bridget Slatterys in Limerick records and was able to rule them out because there were no marriage, death or census records. There were no birth records for the O’Neills before 1901.
I couldn’t find a marriage for Cornelius O’Neill and Bridget Slattery, but sadly a police record for August 1892 showed Cornelius O’Neill charged for severely beating his son Michael. This suggests that the family changed name from Slattery to O’Neill between Julia’s birth in January 1891 and August 1892.
It looked certain that Bridget and the children had moved in with Cornelius and adopted his surname, which many families did at the time. I felt vindicated.
I ordered a birth certificate for Julia Slattery which showed 22 January 1891 as her birthdate and resubmitted all of the evidence to the Naturalisation and Immigration Service. On 31 July 2018, my case was accepted and I was pleased to become an Irish citizen.
Following this success, I visited St Munchin’s Catholic church in Limerick and – eureka – found a baptism record for Julia Slattery dated 23 January 1891. This was made the day after she was born, and her mother was named as Bridget Slattery.
Julia passed away in 1958, leaving the legacy of a strong family. We are very proud of her, and I am delighted to be both British and Irish.
