Where our family came from, what the records say, and how sure we are of each step.
Sometime between the 1770s and the 1790s a Dublin surveyor walked the fields of an estate in County Meath, about thirty miles west of Dublin, and wrote the tenants' names onto a map. In the townland of Cullentry he wrote, in a careful copperplate hand: Robert Weily and Widow Walker's Holding in Big Cullintree, called Heghlane, and under it the size of the farm, 183 acres and 2 roods. That is the earliest written trace of our family that we have found.
The Weilys were still on the same land seventy years later. In 1825 the tithe collector listed William Weily Senior, William Weily Junior and Michael Weily at Heghlane. In 1835 William took a new lease of the farm from the landlord at £178 a year. In 1854 three Wileys, William, Margaret and Ellen, held three lots side by side at Cullentry.
In 1857 a younger William Wiley crossed to America with his wife Margaret Flynn and their infant son, also William. The boy grew up to be a roll-mill hand in Springfield, Illinois, then a puddler in East St Louis, and died in St Louis in 1913. He is Dad's great-grandfather. His father, the William who crossed, is the man this family spent six years looking for.
This site lays out what we found: the farm, the documents, the people who stayed behind in Ireland, the history they lived through, and an honest account of what we still cannot prove.
“Robt Weily & Widw Walker’s Holding in Big Cullintree called Heghlane.” The surveyor’s label on the Rathmolyon estate map, drawn between about 1771 and 1798. The red numbers are a later rent note, pennies per acre.Image: National Library of Ireland, Longfield Map Collection, MS 21 F. 15 (014). Catalogue record
In one screen
WhoA Catholic family of tenant farmers whose name was written Weily, Wiely, Weilly, Wyley and finally Wiley. Strong farmers, not labourers: the farm was one of the largest in its townland.
WhereCullentry townland, on the farm called Heghlane, civil parish of Rathmolyon, barony of Moyfenrath Lower, County Meath. Their chapel was at Longwood, the next village along the road.
WhenOn the land from at least the 1770s (Robert Weily) to 1861 (John Weilly's new lease), with a Michael Wiley still baptising children at Longwood in the 1870s.
LandlordsFirst the Rawdons, Earls of Moira, a Protestant family from County Down. Then, from the 1790s, the Fowlers: an Archbishop of Dublin, then a Bishop of Ossory, then a country gentleman of Rahinston.
The crossing1857, according to the census William II gave in 1900. William Wiley, Margaret Flynn and their baby. No ship's list has been found.
AmericaSpringfield, Illinois by 1878. East St Louis by 1888. St Louis by 1899. Dad's grandfather Robert John Wiley Sr was born in East St Louis in 1888.
How sure are we?
Every claim on this site carries one of four grades. They are used the same way on every page.
CertainA record says it in so many words, and we have read the record ourselves, letter by letter.
Very likelyTwo or more independent records fit together and nothing contradicts them, but no single record says it outright.
LikelyThe simplest reading of the evidence. A different reading is possible and we say what it is.
PossibleA reasonable idea that we have not yet been able to test.
Applied to the big questions:
Very likelyThe Weilys of Cullentry are our family. A state record, a parish register, the landlord's own papers and the DNA of living cousins all point at one farm, and there was no other Weily family in the district for them to belong to.
LikelyWilliam Weilly, who baptised a daughter Mary with his wife Margaret Flynn at Longwood in 1842, was the father of the William who crossed in 1857. No surviving record names the son in Ireland; the parish book that would have held his baptism is lost.
LikelyRobert Weily, on the map of the 1770s to 1790s, is the first of our line. Same farm, same rare spelling, one family on the whole estate; but the link from Robert to the next William is inferred, not written down.
PossibleThe family first came to Meath from Ulster as tenants of the Rawdons, Earls of Moira, in the 1700s. Untested.
Three kinds of writing on this site
We have tried never to blur what the records say with what we think, or with what we picture. The page layout tells them apart.
Plain text is documented. It comes from a record we have read, or from the research files, and it carries a source.
Blue panels are historical background: what life was like for people in that place and time, drawn from historians and county histories. They are about the times, not specifically about our family.
Sand-coloured panels, in italics, are labelled “We imagine”. They are our own picture of what a moment might have been like. Nothing in them is evidence.
