Patrick Murphy: born 1850 or 1858?

What he said himself

Every record made in America that states Patrick’s age points to a birth about 1858. He swore to it in Dakota Territory in 1884, declaring that he was born in Ireland “on or about” 1858 [declaration of intent, 1884]. The Dakota census of 1885 has him at 26 [Dakota census index, 1885]. The 1900 census, taken at his own house in Butte, gives “Apr. 1858” and 42 [US census, 1900]. At his hearing in January 1908 “he gave his age as 50 years” [Butte Daily Post, 7 Jan 1908]. The commitment papers that March say 52 [Daily Inter Mountain, 23 Mar 1908; asylum admission record, 1908]. The asylum’s death certificate of 1912 says 56, which is its own 52 with four years added [death certificate, 1912], and the death notice of the same week says 53 [Butte Miner, 24 Apr 1912].

There is a baptism to match. A Patrick, son of Joseph Murphy and Margaret Crounhane, was baptised at Gort on 4 April 1858 [Eyeries baptism register, 4 Apr 1858], and the Annals of Beara list the same child, the seventh of eleven [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)].

That is the whole case for 1858. Nothing else in the archive connects him to the Gort family. No record gives him a Gort relative, a Gort address or a father named Joseph.

Who his people were

Set the ages aside and ask who his people were. The answers come from sources that do not depend on one another, and they lead to one house.

His father. The civil return of his marriage in February 1881 names the groom’s father as James Murphy, farmer [civil marriage return, 1881]. The father at Ballycrovane was James, called Seamus Mór [Eyeries baptism register, 7 Apr 1850; Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)]. The father at Gort was Joseph, and the Annals call him Joe throughout [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)].

His sister. His daughter Terese wrote in 1971:

The parish register, as indexed, has the marriage. On 23 February 1884 Patrick Sullivan of Slieve married Catherine Murphy of Fawnkil, daughter of James Murphy of Fawnkil [marriage of Catherine Murphy, 1884]. Fawnkil (Faunkill) is the townland next to Ballycrovane. The Annals have the couple too, with a Paddy the tailor who had come home from Butte, and say that his wife Kate was “daughter of Seamus Mor Murphy and Peig Uonhi, Ballycrovane” [Annals of Beara, p. 270 (Paddy Tailor)]. The Gort family had eleven children and none was a Catherine [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)].

His niece. Kate’s daughter Honora was baptised at Slieve in April 1888 [baptism of Honora Sullivan, 1888]. In 1910 Nora Sullivan was living in Ellen Murphy’s household in Butte, entered as “Niece” [US census, 1910].

His birthplace. Terese again, in 1967: “Dad was born in Balykrewan (spelling not correct)” [Terese Murphy, 9 Apr 1967]. The family chart drawn that year has the same word under his name [family chart, 1967]. Gort is another townland of the parish.

His mother’s name. The Ballycrovane baptism of 1850 names the mother Margaret Uonhi, and the baptism of her youngest child, Michael, in 1864 names her Margaret Harrington [Eyeries baptism register, 7 Apr 1850; baptism of Michael Murphy, 1864]. Uonhi is the branch name the Annals use for the same woman, Peig Uonhi (Harrington) [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)]. In September 2026 the Eyeries parish office reported that the parish’s own entry for the 1881 marriage names the two fathers only, and gives Patrick’s as “James Harrington” [Eyeries parish office, 4 Sept 2026]. A Harrington in his parentage is what the Ballycrovane baptism predicts and what neither other reading does. How the name came to be written there cannot be judged until the entry is seen. It has been asked for, so for now this is a report.

His age at marriage. His granddaughter Joan wrote in 1995 that Ellen’s parents had arranged her marriage to “a much older man”, whom she first saw at the altar [Joan Murphy, 20 Feb 1995]. Ellen was born between 1859 and 1863 [family chart, 1967; US census, 1900]. A groom of 30 fits that story. A groom of 22 does not.

The Riobard Ó Dwyer connection

Riobard Ó Dwyer compiled the Annals of Beara, the family-by-family reconstruction of the peninsula that every reading of this question leans on. He touches Patrick in five places, and the five do not agree.

1. Murphy (Ballycrovane). Seamus Mór and Peig Uonhi had six children. The second is “Paddy (Apr. 1850)”, who “went to Rosmacowen and married Margaret Murphy Cuardonoghue” [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane); Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane), second copy].
2. Paddy Mór Murphy (Bank). Paddy Mór, “a brother of Seamus Mor”, married Margaret Murphy of Cooradonoghue. Their dated children run from April 1855 to March 1870, with a son Dan listed before them [Annals of Beara, Paddy Mór Murphy (Bank)].
3. Paddy (Tailor) O’Sullivan and Kate Murphy (Ardgroom Village). Kate, “aunt of Dan Murphy”, was a daughter of Seamus Mór and Peig Uonhi [Annals of Beara, p. 270 (Paddy Tailor)].
4. Patrick Murphy and Ellen Lyne (Ardgroom Village). Patrick “came over ‘cliamhain isteach’”: he married into his wife’s house. “He was son of James Murphy and Mary O’Leary, Eyeries Village.” Their son James was born on 26 July 1883 [Annals of Beara, p. 271]. The archive’s other copy of the entry runs on: James “went to Butte, Montana, married and had a son a priest” [Annals of Beara, second copy of the entry].
5. Murphy (Upper Gorth). Joe Murphy and Margaret (Croumhane) O’Sullivan had eleven children. The seventh is “Patrick (Apr. 1858)”, and nothing more is said of him [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)].

Entries 1 and 2 give the same wife to an uncle and to his nephew of the same name. A boy baptised in April 1850 was not the father of children born in the 1850s, so the marriage is the uncle’s. The plain reading is that Ó Dwyer attached Paddy Mór’s marriage to the younger Paddy, and so lost sight of where the younger one went. The pages do not rule out two such marriages a generation apart, but nothing supports it. This is an inference from the two entries.

Entry 4 has the father’s name as the marriage return has it: James. Its mother, Mary O’Leary, has no register entry behind her so far, while a Harrington is named in 1850, in 1864 and, by report, in 1881. The same entry is mistaken about a son a priest: no other source in the archive shows one among James’s children. On 3 October 2026 Luke Murphy judged that “riobard was wrong there”, and the archive keeps Mary O’Leary as a flagged record, not as Patrick’s mother [decision log, 3 Oct 2026*].

Entry 5 shows that Ó Dwyer knew the Gort family well. He followed six of its next generation to Butte. He did not connect its Patrick with the Patrick of entry 4.

There is a personal tie as well. Ó Dwyer’s uncle, Robert O’Dwyer of Caolrua, was one of the five men drowned off Pointe Ranna in November 1918, in the same boat as John and Patie Murphy of Ballycrovane [Ó Dwyer, “The Dream”; Annals of Beara, p. 412 (Caolrua)]. He calls Robert “my uncle”, and notes on the same page that Riobard is the Irish for Robert, a name that runs in his family [Ó Dwyer, “The Dream”]. In the Annals’ entry for his own family he calls the brothers “Dan Murphy’s two brothers”, and he identifies Kate the same way, as “aunt of Dan Murphy” [Annals of Beara, p. 412 (Caolrua); Annals of Beara, p. 270 (Paddy Tailor)]. Dan Murphy, born in 1896, kept the Ballycrovane home farm [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)]. So what Ó Dwyer wrote about Seamus Mór’s family, Kate included, he had from neighbours of his own time. What he wrote about a house in Ardgroom Village that was “later a cabin and now knocked down”, whose family had gone to America before 1900, came from further off, and that is the entry with the mistakes. This is a judgement about where his information came from. He does not say it himself.

The drowned cousins

On the night of 11–12 November 1918 the follower boat of the Ballycrovane seine crew was wrecked on a submerged reef off Pointe Ranna, Kilcatherine. Five men drowned: Seán (a’ Choill) O’Sullivan and Robert O’Dwyer of Caolrua, Jer (Murt) McCarthy of Faunkil, and the brothers John and Patie Murphy of Ballycrovane, born in 1891 and 1895 [Annals of Beara, p. 412 (Caolrua); centenary article, 2018; Gort Broc account]. John and Patie were sons of Jim Murphy and Julia O’Sullivan (Seer), and Jim was a son of Seamus Mór [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)].

The news reached Butte a month later, garbled. The two dailies of 10 December named Robert Dwyer and Richard Dwyer as the drowned cousins of “James Murphy of the Hennessy store” [Anaconda Standard, 10 Dec 1918; Butte Miner, 10 Dec 1918]. Four days later the Butte Independent, the city’s Irish weekly, printed a letter from the schoolteacher at Ballycrovane and added:

Robert Dwyer, it said, had an uncle Richard in North Wyoming street. The dailies had turned Robert’s uncle into a second victim. No Richard drowned [Annals of Beara, p. 412 (Caolrua)].

That sentence was printed in Butte while James lived there and could have corrected it. If Patrick was Seamus Mór’s son it is exact: Jim was Patrick’s brother, and John and Patie were James’s first cousins. If Patrick was the Gort child, the Ballycrovane brothers were no known relation of his. “Cousin” is a loose word in a newspaper, so the sentence places James among the Ballycrovane Murphys without fixing the degree.

The same night touches the family a second time. Seán a’ Choill’s sister Nora was the second wife of Jack (Dorohy) O’Sullivan, whose first wife was Mary, the eldest child of Seamus Mór [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)].

Other threads

The godparents. The sponsors at James’s baptism in July 1883 were Michael Murphy and Catherine Murphy [baptism of James, 1883]. Both families had a Michael: one baptised at Ballycrovane in May 1864, one at Gort in December 1859 [baptism of Michael Murphy, 1864; Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)]. Only Ballycrovane had a Catherine, and Kate did not marry until the following February.

Slieve. James was born “in the townland of Sleave” [baptism of James, 1883]. Patrick Sullivan was “of Slieve” when he married Kate in 1884, and their daughter was born there in 1888 [marriage of Catherine Murphy, 1884; baptism of Honora Sullivan, 1888].

His sister Margaret. Margaret Murphy lived with the family in Butte and is called his sister in 1908 and 1912 [Butte Miner, 8 Jan 1908; Butte Miner, 24 Apr 1912]. She was 40 in 1910, so born about 1870 [US census, 1910]. She cannot be a Gort child: that family already had a Margaret, born in 1855, who “lived in the home farm”, and its youngest was born in 1867 [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)]. She is not among the six Ballycrovane children in the Annals either [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)]. A seventh child about 1867–70 is possible for a mother whose first was born in 1846, but no baptism has been found. She is the loose end of the 1850 reading.

The two families were connected. Seamus Mór’s son John married a daughter of Danieleen O’Sullivan (Croumhane) of Gorth [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)]. That is the O’Sullivan branch of the Gort Patrick’s mother, in the Gort family’s own townland [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Upper Gorth)]. This does not help choose between the two Patricks. It shows how near the two houses were.

The Ballycrovane family’s account. Oliver Murphy’s account of the Ballycrovane Murphys, sent in May 2026, lists Patrick (“Paddy”) among the children of Seamus Mór and sends him to Butte [Oliver Murphy, May 2026]. It may draw on the Annals and on this archive’s own letters, so it is counted as weak support.

How a man born in 1850 came to say 1858

No source explains it. What follows is inference.

The 1858 dates are one man’s statement repeated. They begin with the declaration of November 1884 and stay within a few years of it for the rest of his life. He had little schooling: the asylum’s notes say he “went to school a year or two & learned to read & write a little” [asylum admission record, 1908].

The declaration that carries the first “1858” is wrong about another date. It says he landed at New York in March 1882 [declaration of intent, 1884]. But his son James was born in Ireland at the end of July or the start of August 1883 [baptism of James, 1883; civil birth entry of James, 1883], Terese wrote that “his father had left for America some months before he was born” [Terese Murphy, 20 Sept 1971], and the 1900 census gives 1883 as the year Patrick came [US census, 1900]. He most likely sailed early in 1883, and swore to the wrong year less than two years later.

The household’s other dates are loose in the same way. The 1910 census gives 1872 as the year both Ellen and James came to America [US census, 1910]. Ellen’s own birth runs from 1859 to 1863 across her records [family chart, 1967; US census, 1900].

April is right either way. Whoever answered the census taker in 1900 gave “Apr.”, which is the month of both baptisms [US census, 1900]. If he was the 1850 child, the month was kept and the year was eight years late.

The other way to reconcile the records is a second Patrick: the 1850 child died, and Seamus Mór and Peig gave the name to a son born about 1858. The Annals leave room for him, since John, Jim and Kate carry no dates [Annals of Beara, Murphy (Ballycrovane)]. But no second baptism and no child’s burial has been found, and the Annals list one Patrick. That reading is carried at 5.

Why 85, and not more or less

Not more, because all his own statements say 1858 and nothing explains the difference; because the 1881 parish entry has been reported and not seen; because Ó Dwyer contradicts the reading twice; and because his sister Margaret is missing from the Ballycrovane list.

Not less, because the Gort reading needs six separate facts explained away: a father named James, a sister married to Tailor Sullivan, a Sullivan niece in the house, a sister Margaret born about 1870, a birthplace remembered as Ballycrovane, and Ballycrovane cousins named in the Butte press. None of the six has an explanation under that reading, and the Harrington reported in the parish entry would be a seventh. The 1850 reading needs one thing explained, his stated age, and the same document that first states it is wrong about the year he landed.