Owen Harley

There is no official record to confirm that Owen Harley was the father of Catherine Kelly 1897 but I feel that the circumstantial evidence is convincing.

Catherine Kelly 1897 was born illegitimately to Catherine Kelly 1870 with no father named on the record.  All we had to go on was a story relayed by my own mother, Jane (Jean) Anderson, in which the very young Jean was taken for a walk in Linlithgow High Street and two older women remarked on Jean's red hair. "Just like her grandfather", they laughed.  Where do we look for a record linking Catherine Kelly 1870 with a red-haired man?  The answer lies in the 1901 census for 99 High Street, Linlithgow.

We find both Catherine Kellys there, aged 29 and 4.  They are staying with the elder Catherine's sister Lizzie (Elizabeth) and her baby daughter and her husband John Gallagher, who is a shale miner and Gaelic speaker from Ireland.  There is one other person in this 1 roomed household, Owen Harley, another Gaelic speaker from Ireland.

I have no knowledge of the sleeping arrangements in this small house but I think we can assume that there would not be room for multiple beds so it is an easy step to surmise that Catherine and Owen are an unmarried couple and there would be every likelihood that young Catherine would be their child.  That assumption would be supported if we could tell that Owen had red hair.

This is where Anna Harley from Australia comes in.  She saw this website with my conjecture and contacted me to tell me that her grandfather Brian Harley and Owen Harley were brothers and that the Harleys in the Braade area were known to be red-haired.

"Hello Allan,I've found a possible family link.  The Owen Harley of Braade is my great uncle, born 22/8/1877 to Neal Harley and Catherine (Kitty Sharkey).  Braade is a townland in The Rosses, which was one of the poorest areas in Donegal so all the able men did seasonal work in Scotland.  Harley is a Donegal name, not common in Ireland, but common in The Rosses. And yes many of the family were sandy haired (red blonde) and it was a Gaelic speaking area.

My grandfather, Brian, was Owen's older brother.

If you Google Carrickfinn airport you'll see the area Owen came from - the family land was just above the airport."

 

She then sent further information, some of which is shown below.

"I've traced my grandfather's line back to the 1800s.  Patrick Harley is recorded in the 1828 Tithes Applotment Book, in Braade. His son Neil (my great grandfather) is recorded in the 1857 Griffith's Valuation. Local tradition says that Brian and Owen would have been hired out in the Lagan, the fertile east part of Donegal, as seasonal child labour on the farms (the hiring fairs operated till the 1930s and children as young as 8 were hired out for 6 months, May to November - my own father was hired out as a lad but ran away). When older, the men and boys went to Scotland, mostly doing farm work and sleeping in bothies.

Braade is at the start of the beautiful Carrickfin peninsula but it's sandy soil - terrible for farming - and the whole of the Rosses was heavily glaciated so any arable land is surrounded by rocks and small lakes. The locals could only survive through seasonal migration.

Owen had 6 siblings - Brian, Charles, Grainne, Rose and Mickey.  They were the children that survived. The Harleys were noted for being tall, strong and sandy haired.  My Dad was known as Big Joe and his father as Barney Mhor (Gaelic for big). The men in my family that I knew were all gentle by nature, easy going and sociable.

Oh and Owen's name in Gaelic is Eoghan O'hEarghaile.  And yes it is meant to be a small h - required by Gaelic to separate  two vowels."


So we have not only Owen's ancestry, as far as the limited Irish records will allow, but also some social history as well.

Owen, having the same ancestry as Anna's grandfather Brian (or Bryan or Barney) was the son of Neil (or Neal) Harley who was the son of Patrick Harley.  Anna has given sources for her findings and has also used the parental naming conventions to deduce parentage just as I do in the Scottish records.  She has worked wonders given the incomplete state of the Irish records.

As for the Harleys being easy going, I came across a story in the Linlithgowshire Gazette which puts another face on that.  It is definitely our Owen as it is February 1901, the same year as the census and he is in the house of John Gallagher, as in that census.

While I was checking the newspaper archives for any Owen Harley in Braade I came across a harrowing story about a mine floating in from the sea in 1943 and the local young men roping it in and tampering with it with the seemingly inevitable consequence that it blew up.  Many were killed instantly and the eventual toll was nineteen dead.  It must have been devastating for the community with three brothers from one family (Gallaghers, so maybe just a chance that the Gallacher that Owen was staying with was from the area) and two Harley brothers, one named Owen.  It turned out that the Owen Harley was a teenager and Anna tells me that he was just a distant relative.  However, when I saw the surnames Harley, Gallagher and Sharkey (Owen's mother's maiden name) I initially thought that it could have involved our Owen and close relatives and friends.  It didn't, but I'm sure that everyone knew everyone else in the close-knit community and so the disaster was on a massive scale locally.