The gaps, stated plainly

What closed since 6 September

When this page was first written, on 6 September 2026, it carried nine open questions. In the fortnight since, the gravestones, the 1802 lists of Protestant parishioners, the state's civil registers, one census form and the index of the Rathmolyon Church of Ireland register have settled five things, two of them questions from that first list.

• Grace's parentage and birth date. Grace Weily, born 14 September 1843, married John Brady at Longwood in 1876 and James Byrne in 1881, and died at Clonard on 3 February 1886, aged 43. She was christened at Rathmolyon parish church on 16 October 1843 as William Weily's daughter, and her 1876 marriage entry calls her “farmer's daughter, Cullentra”, her father “William Wiley, farmer, deceased”. Sister, half-sister or cousin was the question in September. She was William Weily's daughter, which makes her William II's aunt or his sister. Certain for the parentage; the exact birth date is Very likely until the register page itself, and not only its index, has been read.
• The widow of 1854. “Margaret Flynn alias Weilly”, who married John Flynn of Ballin at Longwood on 22 May 1854, was William Weily's widow, not a woman born Weilly. The 1901 census has “Robert Wiley, step son, 45” in John Flynn's house at Ballin, and when Margaret died at Cullentry on 13 June 1877, aged 60, the informant was her son Robert Wiley, present at the death. Certain
• When the chapel William died. The William Weily who married at the chapel was buried at Rathmolyon on 19 January 1850, aged 54, as “William (Sen.) Weily of Cullinter”. The window “between 1842 and 1854” closes to a day. Very likely, until the register page is read.
• The family's religion. The Weilys of Heghlane were a Church of Ireland family: every one of them in the Protestant lists of 1802 and in the census of 1901. Our branch is the Catholic one, made when William Weily married Bridget Belagh about 1838 and Margaret Flynn about 1841 at the Rathmolyon chapel, whose register before 1878 is lost, and his widow raised their children Catholic. Certain for the house.
• The earliest generation. The line does not begin with Robert Weily of the estate map. It begins with John Weily “late of Cullenter”, who died on 3 April 1749 aged 69, and his wife Mary Brown; their son John, who raised the stone over them, died in 1756. Four Weily children were christened at Rathmolyon between 1744 and 1754. Certain for the stone, the burials and the christenings. That our own William Weily descends from that household is a separate question, settled by age and by who later held the farm rather than by any record naming a father: Likely.

1. Did William II cross with his parents, or without them?

This is the question that sharpened. William II arrived in America in 1857. His parents were a William Wiley and a Margaret Flynn of Cullentry: that is what he told the priest at Alton in 1878, and it is the one line on which the whole Irish story hangs. What is open is whether he came as an infant with those parents or as a boy of seven without them.

Likely William II's father was William I, a son of that William Weily by an earlier marriage, who married a second Margaret Flynn and crossed with the infant in 1857. Possible William II is himself the son christened at Rathmolyon on 2 January 1850, and crossed aged seven without his parents. The two readings, and the four records that would decide between them, are set out on The Family.

Those four records are: the Rathmolyon register pages themselves, National Archives of Ireland microfilm MFCI 51, for the mother's name as written on the five baptisms of 1842 to 1850 and on the burial of 19 January 1850; the generation of the Kenny testers below Catherine Byrne Kenny, which fixes how much shared DNA each reading predicts; the Valuation Office revision book for Cullentry lot 3, which shows who followed “William Wiley” there in 1857-58; and any American record of a William Wiley and a Margaret Flynn Wiley alive after 1857, or of a William Wiley born in Ireland about 1850 in a Flynn household in 1860 or 1870.

2. William I, if he existed

Under the standing reading, William II's father was a William Wiley born about 1830 to 1836, William Weily's son by a first marriage that left no record. He appears in exactly one document anywhere: the line in the Alton marriage register of 1878 that names him as his son's father. In Ireland there is nothing that names him. The parish church at Rathmolyon christened no William, son of a William, between 1752 and December 1849, though the same father had his children of 1842 to 1849 christened there. The Longwood book has no Weily child between 1833 and 1838, and there is no marriage of a Weily man in the Longwood book between 1833 and 1878. Rathmolyon's Catholic chapel book does not survive before 1878. The parish's Church of Ireland registers do (baptisms from 1733, marriages and burials from 1734), on microfilm at the National Archives of Ireland and in the RootsIreland index, and they hold our family. So if William I was born and married at Cullentry, both happened in the lost chapel book.

In America it is no better. He has no census entry, no death record, no burial, no naturalisation that we can find. The 1860 and 1870 censuses were searched three times in September 2026 for a William, a Margaret and a child William born in Ireland, and the family is not there under any spelling tried. The family tree's placeholder dates for him, a birth in the mid-1830s and a death around 1890, were entered years ago and carry no source. What there is: in 1854 a “William Wiley” held Cullentry lot 3, the house, with a field at Ballin, 41 acres beside Margaret Wiley's 40, and under the standing reading that is William I on his dead father's half of one holding. Likely

There is a named alternative. William Weily, born 17 March 1829 at Cullentry, son of John Weily and Maria Heaps of the Protestant house, has no later record in Meath of any kind, and neither do four other Protestant Williams born between 1819 and 1837. Any of them could be the William of lot 3, and the man of 1829 is the right age to be the William of Springfield. Against him: the American family was Catholic from its first record, and John and Joseph Wiley, his father and brother, held their own lots at Cullentry, where he would be expected. Possible

3. William II's birth year

William Wiley II was born at Cullentry, County Meath, between 1849 and 1857. The records he left disagree about the year, and The Records page says how. He gave his age as 25 at his civil marriage in January 1878, 28 in the census of June 1880, 45 (born 'Jany 1855') in 1900, and his death certificate of 1913 works out to 29 January 1857. The earliest two point to 1851-53, the latest two to 1855-57. Under the standing reading he was the infant of 1857; under the other he was the boy born on 12 December 1849. A birth about 1852 fits the two earliest records exactly and neither of the later ones, and no William Weily was christened in either Meath church between December 1849 and 1866, so a child of 1852 could hide only in the lost chapel book. We carry 1849 to 1857 as the envelope.

4. Margaret Flynn's family

William II's mother has no record of her own on the American side; his daughter did not know her maiden name in 1913. Under the standing reading she was a second Margaret Flynn, of the Ballin or Clonmowley Flynns whose farms lie along the road from Cullentry to Longwood chapel, married about 1854 to 1856 in a Catholic ceremony that no surviving register holds. Under the other reading she was the Margaret Flynn of about 1817 to 1877 herself, whose own parents are not known either: her 1877 death entry gives her age and her husband's trade, not her father. Either way she was a Flynn of the road to Longwood, and the Flynn witnesses at every Weily wedding and christening (Elizabeth Flynn in 1842, Mary A. Flynn in 1876, Jane Flynn in 1881) point the same way.

For years the family tree carried a Margaret Flynn baptised at Kilfinane, County Limerick, in 1835. That came from a database hint matched on name and year alone, and it is retired: the Limerick registers were read and hold no Wiley. It would revive only if an American record named her parents as Thomas Flynn and a Clanchy or Clohessy.

5. The ship, and the year

No passenger list has been found. The year 1857 rests on one line of the 1900 census, “43 years in the United States”, given from memory more than forty years later; nothing contradicts it, and nothing else states it. Likely What was searched: the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild's twenty-eight volumes; the Ulster and Liverpool passenger lists held by the Centre for Migration Studies, which end in 1853; the Springfield city directory of 1857-58, which has no William Wiley but does have a “Flynn Wm., lab, n s Reynolds”; and the free Springfield directories, of which none exists online between 1859 and 1880. A manifest with a William Wiley aboard in 1857, an infant with his parents or a boy of seven with kin, would decide question 1 as well as this one.

Why 1857? The big farm's leases fell in 1856, but that was the Protestant house's story, and the house kept its land: John Weilly took a new lease in 1861 and his family was at Cullintra House until 1976. Our branch had no lease. Its father, William Weily, died in January 1850; his widow Margaret married John Flynn of Ballin in May 1854; the eighty acres the branch farmed were held at will, divided between the widow and a grown son. A family in that position in the 1850s left, and in 1857 one of them did.

6. Where Michael's family went

Michael Wiley, born 10 March 1845, married Anne Daly at Longwood in 1870, had eight children between 1871 and 1886, lost two of them at Enfield in December 1887, and then left Ireland with the rest; where they went is not yet known. The children were John (1871), Mary (1872), Eliza (1874), Hugh, born 20 April 1876 at Moyvalley (the chapel entry was read as 9 April, which cannot be right, and is being re-checked), Anne (1878), the twins Rose and Julia (born December 1880) and Michael (1886); Eliza and the infant Michael are the two who died at Enfield. None of the rest is in the Irish census of 1901 or 1911 under thirteen spellings, and no Meath death is recorded for any of them between 1888 and 1925. Chris recalls Australia. Every free Australian index reached in September 2026 (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, the Ryerson index, Find a Grave, the Victorian arrivals) is negative, so America and New Zealand stay open. Hugh matters most: any son of his sons carries the Cullentry Wiley Y chromosome, and a test against Chris's would prove the male line with no paper at all. The one fact wanted from Chris is which Ancestry collection his Australia recollection came from. Likely that Michael was William Weily's son and that the family emigrated.

7. William Weily's father, and Robert of the map

Our William Weily, born about 1796, was a boy of about six in the Protestant lists of August 1802, in the household either of John Wiley, whose children included a William, or of George Wiley, whose children were Grace, Anne, George, William and Michael. Either puts him in the house of John Weily junior (1722-56), who raised the stone: a grandson through George, a great-grandson through John, who was born about ten years after John junior died. John is the likelier father. Likely Robert Weily of the estate map, christened in 1746 and buried in 1802, is Very likely the map's tenant of Heghlane and Likely the father of William Junior of the tithe book, the 1835 lessee whose house stayed on the land. To our William he is an uncle or a cousin, not a direct ancestor. The index has no marriage of any Weily before 1813 and no baptism between 1755 and 1793, so the generation between John junior and the men of 1802 is fixed by age, not by a record.

8. Before Cullentry

John Weily was born about 1680, and we do not know where. The Rathmolyon estate came to the Rawdons at the end of the 1600s and was theirs until 1795, and their own country was Antrim and Down, so the simplest reading is that the family came south from there before 1700. Likely Two named candidates, both Possible: the Quaker Wylys of Aghalee, County Antrim, on the manor that Sir George Rawdon managed, whose sons went to Westmeath about 1700 and to Kildare in 1704-05; and the Weillys of Comber, County Down, the only other family of that spelling in Ireland before 1750, who buried children there between 1695 and 1698. Bishop Bramhall's Yorkshire tenants have yielded nothing, and the Wyles of Knockmark of 1549-51 nothing since. The tests: the bounding clause of the 1745 deed of Bigg Cullentragh (Registry of Deeds, Book 122, page 424), which may name the Weily holding and its neighbours; the Comber register and the 1666 hearth money roll; the will indexes for 1749. Chris's own Y-DNA belongs to a branch that is rare in Ireland and commoner on the Continent and in Britain, which is consistent with a family that did not begin as native Irish, and no more than that.

9. The 1853 sponsor

On 18 September 1853 a “Grace Weilly” stood sponsor with James Flynn at John Doran's christening at Longwood. By the parish-church date our Grace was ten. Her 1876 marriage entry gives her age as 36, which points to a birth about 1840 and would make the sponsor thirteen; her 1886 death entry, aged 43, agrees with the register. Either the marriage entry's 36 is loose, or the sponsor was another Grace. Likely she is ours.

10. Hugh's birth date

Hugh, born 20 April 1876 at Moyvalley (the chapel entry was read as 9 April, which cannot be right, and is being re-checked). Eleven days separate the two readings, and one is wrong. It matters because Hugh is the Y-DNA target, and any American record for him will carry one date or the other. A second read of the Longwood page against the civil entry is the test.

11. A Wiley we cannot place

A George H. Wiley, who died in 1895, lies in Sts Peter and Paul Cemetery in St Louis, the family's own burial ground, four years before Alice. No birth date, no family link. He may be a child of William II and Alice who does not appear in the family's list of six, or a brother of William II who came over with the family. The cemetery's own register would say.

The tests that would close it

In order of how much each would settle for the effort.

1. The Rathmolyon register pages, National Archives of Ireland microfilm MFCI 51. The mother's name as written on the five baptisms of 1842 to 1850 and on the burial of 19 January 1850, and any note beside them. Decides whether the children christened as “William and Eleanor's” are Margaret Flynn's, as we read them, and fixes the father's death.
2. The Kenny testers' generation below Catherine Byrne Kenny. If they are her grandchildren, about 40 centimorgans shared with Chris's father is expected if William II and Grace were brother and sister, and about 13 if he was her nephew; the observed amounts are 39 and 55. Until the generation is known the numbers cannot be read against the right expectation.
3. The Valuation Office revision books for Cullentry lots 3, 4 and 18 and Ballin lots 8 and 10. Held in Dublin. Who follows “William Wiley” on lot 3 in 1857-58: a Flynn or Margaret means the stepson left; a Weily of John's or Joseph's family means a cousin left.
4. The 1878 Madison County marriage record. Chris has the image; the groom's age, 25, is to be filed with the research records.
5. The Springfield city directories of 1866 to 1877, on Ancestry. Every spelling of Wiley, and the Flynns on Reynolds Street.
6. A William Wiley born in Ireland about 1850 in a Flynn, Allen or Weily household in 1860 or 1870. Sangamon County first, then any Illinois household, then Beaver and Allegheny counties in Pennsylvania. An enumerator who found a boy in his uncle's house may have written him William Flynn.
7. A Y-DNA test by any of three routes. A Weily man of the Enfield or Rathcore families; Jervis Weily's line, Tasmania to New Zealand; or Michael and Anne Daly's line through Hugh, in America. There was only one Wiley house on the estate, so any of them tests the whole chain in one result.
8. The National Library order. The 1835 lease (MS 43,577/1), now known to be William Junior's, for the house's lives; the estate rent books for 1849 to 1857, for the year any Wiely leaves and whether Margaret's lot passes to John Flynn; Brownrigg's 1798 survey; the 1771 lease with its map.
9. Registry of Deeds, Book 122, page 424. The 1745 deed of Bigg Cullentragh and its bounding clause.
10. National Archives of Ireland, CSO/RP/SC/1821/1155. The file on the murder of William Wyley in December 1821 and the petition of his brother Michael, the cooper sent to America about 1828: where he was sent.
11. The Comber parish register and the 1666 hearth money roll. For the Weillys of County Down.
12. Two American census pages. The “William Weily” of Hopewell, Seneca County, Ohio, in 1860, so far an index entry only; and the household of Michael Weiley, 50, in York County, Pennsylvania, in 1860, a candidate for the cooper of 1828 if the page gives Ireland and his trade.