McCorkells Worldwide

Inishowen, Co. Donegal · c. 1750 onward

My own line, from William McCorkell of Curraghnagarry (c. 1750–1827), who signed the vestry book in 1792. Several of his great-granddaughters went to North America. Margaret, born in 1834, went first to Boston, where she worked at the Chickering piano factory and met James Smith, a carpenter there. They followed the gold rushes west and married at Volcano, a mining town in Amador County, California, on 14 March 1862. Their daughter Martha was born at Marysville in December 1863, and by 1865, when Isabella was born, they were in British Columbia at the height of the Cariboo gold rush.

Her sisters followed by the long sea route to Quebec. Mary, too, went by way of Boston, where she married William Stewart on 5 February 1867; by 25 May 1869 she was at Victoria, where, as Mary Stewart, she married William John Maslin. Martha, aged 21, sailed from Londonderry on the Moravian in June 1869. Nancy, who used the name Annie in Canada, came last: she sailed on the Prussian in 1875, giving Victoria as her destination, and married William Field there. Martha married William Harrison at Victoria in 1873; when she died in 1893 the Daily Colonist recalled that she had come out from Moville more than twenty years before with her sisters, Mrs Maslin, Mrs James Smith and Mrs Field. In 1886 their nephew James and niece Catherine, children of my great-great-grandfather Robert, sailed on the Polynesian, both bound for Victoria. James stayed, and his family there spelt the name McCorkall; Catherine went on to Boston.

John and Mary Ann McCorkill of Ballyrattan sailed on the Mary Ann for Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1853. I now think they were a son of the family and his widowed mother, and both came home again: they died at Ballyrattan.

BostonCaliforniaBritish ColumbiaNew Brunswick

Inishowen, Co. Donegal · 1740 onward

Robert at Ballymacarthur and Joseph at Goorey head the Moville families in the 1740 census. In the next century the area held more McCorkells than anywhere else in Ireland: over a hundred births were registered in the Moville district between 1834 and 1898.

Joseph and Ann McCorkell, cousins who had married, left Lower Moville for Glasgow about 1847. Their daughter Sally, baptised on 18 April 1834, is the first McCorkell in the Moville Presbyterian register. In Scotland the children gradually took the name McCorkindale. Their son William, a Clyde hammerman, married Barbara McLaughlan and disappeared from the records in 1869. Joseph's parents were George McCorkell and Sarah Park; Ann's were John McCorkell and Ann Aitcheson. Two Paisley McCorkindales later married into the Martin family of Greencastle. From Greencastle too, James William McCorkell, born in 1859, went to Ohio and then Los Angeles, where he died in 1917.

William McCorkell and Sarah Walker sent another daughter to Scotland. Margaret, born in Donegal about 1820, married Robert Clark and died at Paisley in 1895; she and her brother John also used the name McCorkendale. Her son John Clark, an able seaman, landed at Hervey Bay, Queensland, from the David McIvor in 1863, and his marriage records name his mother as Margaret McCorkell. At home, Archibald McCorkell, a gardener whose father was William, married Sarah Ann Burns in 1858 and was still at Ballymacarthur in 1901; a William McCorkell is in the tithe book for the townland in 1825. Cousin marriages were common: John McCorkell married Jane McCorkell, daughter of William, both of the same townland, at Moville Lower on 15 September 1855.

Glasgow & PaisleyOhioCalifornia

Inishowen, Co. Donegal · Roman Catholic · 1800s

One of the few Catholic McCorkell families. Charles McCorkell, son of George, married Mary Lynch at Malin in 1873 and died in 1885. Their son John, born in 1881, went to New York in the early 1900s and married there. A George McCorkell of the same district, son of George and Margaret McLoughlin, went to New York in 1871 and married Mary Herman. Anne McCorkell of Stroove married Patrick O'Donnell in 1830.

George McCorkell farmed lot 22 at Carrowtrasna in Griffith's Valuation, and John and James McCorkell are in the tithe book for the townland in 1825. Next to George's farm the valuation map marks the place-name Falladreen. That is surely the "Callowdrain" or "Fallurcham" given as the home of Joseph and Ann McCorkell when their daughter Sally was baptised in 1834, which places the Glasgow McCorkindales (above) at Carrowtrasna too.

New York & Brooklyn

The Bogside and the Diamond, Derry city · c. 1721 onward

The family of William McCorkell, "in the Bog side", who died in 1795 in his 74th year and was probably the innkeeper of the Bogside named in the Londonderry Journal in 1772–75. His son William (1772–1836) owned the Londonderry Journal from 1796 and lost a famous libel action brought by the Rev. Cornelius O'Mullan at Galway Assizes in 1816, with £2,500 damages. William's son Arthur was baptised at First Derry Presbyterian Church in 1815, which shows the family were Presbyterian even though they married and were buried at the cathedral.

Archibald McCorkell (c. 1774–1829), a son of the founder and a ship's captain, settled in America and died in New York; he married Elizabeth Moore. Arthur's sons Arthur, aged 23, on the Amyone in 1875, and Louis, on the Cotopaxi in 1882, went to Australia and married there. George Magee McCorkell, a son of the younger Archibald McCorkell, reached Victoria and died at St Kilda in 1881. Arthur's daughter Annette married James Corscaden (1848–1907). Archibald McCorkell, born in 1803 and a town councillor for the East Ward, died on 12 March 1854; his widow Mary died in 1884.

New YorkNew South WalesQueenslandVictoria

The Laggan, Co. Donegal · 1660s onward

The oldest continuous cluster. Archibald McCorkle paid hearth money at Elaghbeg in 1665, and the Burt kirk session book of 1676–1715 is full of the name, including Alexander McCorcle, married on 16 May 1696. At Dundrain, James McCorkell and Mary Ann Adams raised Thomas (b. 1835), James (b. 1839), Margaret and Matilda, two of whom married McElvennys. The Rev. Joseph MacCorkell (1857–1944) was a grandson of John McCorkell of Skeog. An American researcher has noted that the kirk session's index "reads like a telephone directory" of eighteenth-century Augusta and Rockbridge counties, Virginia.

At Carrownamaddy, where "Arsbel" (probably Archibald) McCorkle was a Protestant householder in 1740, William McCorkill, born about 1810, farmed at the time of Griffith's Valuation. He married Mary Robertson; their daughter Mary married S. Robinson in 1858, and Dorcas, born about 1844, married Samuel Doak of Londonderry at Burt Presbyterian Church. Dorcas raised ten children in Burt and then in the city.

Pennsylvania & Virginia (probable)

Co. Londonderry and Co. Donegal · 1770s onward

John McCorkell, born about 1803, told his family in Australia that he was born in Templemore, and he had the word set into the leaded glass of his front door. On 14 February 1839 he married Elizabeth, daughter of the late Charles Holmes of the townland of Scotland, at Donoughmore Presbyterian Church near Castlefinn; the register calls him John McCorkell of Monellan, in the parish of Monreagh. With his wife and their daughter Margaret, aged six months, he sailed from Greenock on the Robert Benn in 1842 and landed at Melbourne. A Jane McCorkell, born about 1817 in Donegal, was on the same voyage. His first son was named Andrew, and an Andrew McCorkell is listed at Mullennan, Templemore, in the 1831 census. Nearby, a McCorkill farmed at Cloughfin in 1778 and William McCorkhill sold his farm there in 1783, and Samuel McCorkell was churchwarden of Taughboyne in 1812.

From Lifford, James McCorkell (b. about 1761) and Martha Clarke had a son James, born in 1788. He married Lillian Matthews and moved from Strabane to New York, where he died in Suffolk County in 1857. A James McCorkell held land in the Town Parks of Strabane in the tithe of 1826, and the Abercorn estate letters tell the story of a McCorkle there who bought Mrs Pugh's farm in the Town Parks for £950. She had him jailed for the unpaid balance, he was made bankrupt, the sheriff sold his goods for £60, and by January 1817 "he is gone to America". The agent called her case "certainly a hard one".

Another family stayed. Samuel McCorkell of Lifford (1845–1913), a farmer and son of Robert, married Martha, known as Matilda, Holmes in 1878; she was baptised at Donoughmore Presbyterian Church in 1851, a daughter of James Holmes and Jane Griffith. Further up the Finn, a Catholic McCorkell family of Castlefinn, in Donaghmore parish, moved over the border to Clady, Co. Tyrone: Charles McCorkell, born in 1841, married Margaret Connolly, and their son Francis was born in 1873. Later generations went to Toronto and Sudbury, Ontario.

VictoriaNew YorkOntario

North-West Liberties of Londonderry · 1796 onward

Andrew McCorkell, born in 1796, was a son of James McCorkell and Martha Clarke from the outskirts of Strabane, and the family had moved to Ballynagard by 1826. He married Lydia McIlheney, and their son Samuel was baptised at Muff Presbyterian Church, the nearest to Ballynagard, on 15 November 1830. In Griffith's Valuation Andrew farmed 48 acres at no. 4 Ballynagard and sublet a second house. On 6 June 1857 the Argentinus left Londonderry for Quebec carrying Andrew, 61, Lydia, 56, and their children Martha, Lydia, Anne and William, all of Ballynagard. Their grandchildren were born at Quebec and in Ontario and moved west to Oregon, Idaho and Washington. Their son Samuel went the other way, to Melbourne, in 1854.

Quebec & OntarioOregon & IdahoVictoria

Inishowen, Co. Donegal · 1796 onward

Joseph McCorkell married Rebecca Cook at Fahan Lower on 8 February 1825; their sons Samuel (1832), John (1836) and William (1838) were born at Buncrana, and William died at Macedon, Victoria, in 1899. An Australian tree gives Joseph's birthplace as Lanarkshire in 1808; that needs checking against the Irish records. Samuel Daniel McCorkell (1833–1895), buried at Gisborne, Victoria, is variously given as a son of Joseph and Rebecca or of a Joseph and Sarah Nolan. The Gisborne families are described in a Victorian book, Haystacks and Hellfire.

Victoria

Upper Liberties of Londonderry · 1849 onward

Robert Browne McCorkell (1856–1935), a carter born in Co. Donegal, married Ellen Reid on 6 January 1881; the register names his father as George McCorkell, labourer. The family is in the 1901 census at Ballougry. A marriage in 1849 of a George McCorkell, labourer, to a Miss Browne in the same district fits well as his parents', and may explain the middle name. Descendants went to New Zealand in the twentieth century.

New Zealand

Clondermot parish, Co. Londonderry · c. 1800 onward

A farming family of the townland of Primity, by the village of New Buildings on the east bank of the Foyle, who farmed in the locality for generations. The names John and David alternate in the family, which can be traced back to a William of about 1800. Their farm is marked on the map of Ulster McCorkells in Louis McCorkle's From Viking Glory. John Mac Corkill, who paid on one hearth at Lislagh in Clondermot in 1663, lived in the same district and may be their ancestor.

Clondermot and Faughanvale parishes, Co. Londonderry · 1831 onward

A labouring family on the east side of the Foyle, a few miles from Primity. Hugh McCorkell headed a Presbyterian household of three males and three females at Gortica in the 1831 census, and was still there, with little or no land, in Griffith's Valuation. He was very probably the father of William McCorkell (c. 1821–1896), a labourer at neighbouring Tirbracken in 1858, who died at Gortnessy on 28 October 1896 in the home of his granddaughter. William's son Hugh (1844–1895), a shoemaker of Whitehill in Faughanvale, married Elizabeth Scobey in 1868. All these townlands lie within a mile or two of each other. McCorkells were living in Lower Cumber in the 1740s and may be the same stock.

Lough Swilly, Co. Donegal · 1790s

Isaac McCorkell, M.D., born in 1795, served as a militia surgeon and went out to Jamaica, where he became a justice of the peace and married Ann Smith in 1824.

Jamaica

From Co. Donegal by way of Glasgow · 1804 onward

John McCorkle was born in Co. Donegal on 4 July 1804. With his wife Mary Wilkie (or Wilkinson) he was living at 143 Gallowgate, Glasgow, in 1851, before they emigrated to Girard township, Clearfield County. A Presbyterian church was built there in 1873 "through the perseverance of Mr. John McCorkle". Their children were William T., Margaret, Robert, Rebecca and Fannie; a brother went to Canada.

GlasgowPennsylvania

From Londonderry and Donegal · 1822 onward

Philadelphia drew McCorkells from Derry all through the nineteenth century. Thomas McCorkel, a seventeen-year-old clerk, sailed from Londonderry on the Ann in 1822; a clerk was unusual among emigrants who were mostly farmers and labourers, which suggests an educated city family. His descendants later settled at Chesterton, Indiana. A Samuel McCorkell declared his intention to become a citizen at the Philadelphia Quarter Sessions on 11 July 1831.

James McCorkell, born about 1832, is passenger no. 161 on the Delta, which left Londonderry for Philadelphia in August 1849. He became a teamster, lived across the river in Camden, New Jersey, and in 1859 married Martha Carson, born in Co. Tyrone in 1838, who had come out in 1854 on the Mary Pleasants with her sister Margaret. They raised eleven children in the Spring Garden district and worshipped at Olivet Presbyterian Church; the eldest son was Andrew Wallace McCorkell, born in 1861. A James McCorkell, son of George, of Grianan, was baptised at Crossroads Presbyterian Church, near Newtowncunningham, on 5 July 1832 and does not appear again in Irish records. He may be the emigrant, but none of the American James's sons was called George, and the link is unproven.

PennsylvaniaNew JerseyIndiana

Co. Donegal (by tradition) to Upper Canada · 1828 onward

Two brothers, James (born about 1794) and Robert McCorkell, settled side by side in Goulbourn Township near Ottawa about 1830. James came first; his son William James was born in Ireland on 1 October 1828. Robert married Elizabeth Downey, and their children Rebecca (1825), Elizabeth (1827) and Andrew (1828) were born in Ireland; family papers say they crossed from Belfast to Quebec on the brig Donegal. In the 1842 census James was a carpenter and Robert a shoemaker, the only two Irish-born McCorkells near Ottawa. Robert died on 14 July 1889, aged 99, and Elizabeth four days later, aged 90; the Ottawa papers said both were natives of Donegal. Andrew married Jane McKenna and Rebecca married Daniel Nichol, and the families spread into the Gatineau. Thomas McCorkell (1835–1907), probably James's son, spent his life near Ottawa.

The Irish home is not proven. Family tradition named Co. Antrim, where there are no McCorkell records, and a twentieth-century descendant's claim of McCorquodale descent has been ruled out by DNA. A Y-DNA test puts this family on the same paternal line as the Ballyrattan McCorkells, with a common ancestor in the early 1700s. McCorkell and Downey names occur together in Burt and Templemore, which are the likeliest homes.

Elsewhere in Ontario, Andrew McCorkell, born in 1834, a son of Andrew McCorkell and Nancy McGeggan of Londonderry, was a boat builder at Kingston in 1872–73.

OntarioQuebecAlberta & British Columbia