St. Colman's Cloyne Cathedral, Co. Cork, Ireland

Some confusion may arise from the fact that there are two St. Colman's Cathedrals in Cork, one Catholic and the other Protestant.

It certainly confused me when I first came across the reference to the memorial erected in St. Colmans Cathedral by Michael Nason Chapman - I couldn't understand why an apparently Protestant family would have a memorial in a Catholic Cathedral.

All the on-line references to St. Colman's pointed to the large Catholic cathedral at Cobh (pronounced Cove)
An email enquiry to their web site directed me to St. Colman's at Cloyne.

Extract from an email contact with Father Ger. Casey of St. Colmans Catholic Cathedral :
"The Cathedral at Cloyne is usually referred to as Cloyne Cathedral, but stands on the site of the monastic foundation of St. Colman and is locally referred to as St. Colman's Cathedral. It is in the care of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland."

At Cloyne, St Colman MacLenene (died 604 AD) founded his principal monastery. Only the Round Tower and a firehouse remain of the ancient monastery which was plundered 5 times by the Norse between 822 and 916 AD. The tower is 100' high, each storey containing a window pointing in a different direction. A small building nearby is believed to be the ancient oratory of St. Colman, who founded the diocese of Cloyne in the 7th c.

Cloyne Cathedral, a much altered 13th c. building, was the seat of George Berkeley, the celebrated philosopher.

Round Towers were built at monasteries as places of refuge and bell towers. Most were five stories high, with a conical top. This stone top on Cloyne's tower was destroyed on January 10th, 1749 when it was struck by lightning during a violent thunderstorm.
Bishop Berkeley in a letter to a friend dated February 2nd 1749 wrote; "Our Round Tower stands where it did but the little stone arched vault on top cracked. The bell was also thrown down and broke its way through three boarded storeys." The roof was never replaced and the height of the tower was lowered six feet and battlements placed at the top.

It is said that during an invasion by the Danes or Norsemen, the treasures from the cathedral were taken up into the tower and the ladder withdrawn inside the lower entrance (seen here at the lower right of the tower).
Boiling oil would then be poured on the invaders to encourage them on their way. The tower was however vulnerable to fire perhaps by a flaming arrow through a lower window and those monks who were not smoked out could be starved by long siege.

Extract from:
The Gravestone Inscriptions of the Cathedral Cemetery of Cloyne, Co. Cork recorded by Richard Henchion - Cloyne Literary and Historical Society 1999 (copy held at Society of Australian Genealogists - Sydney library ref s7.4/11/1 - book)

"There are approximately 650 burial grounds in Cork ranging from small in private estates to large public cemeteries e.g. St. Josephs and St. Finnbarrs in Cork City. Cloyne Cathedral is approximately three times larger than average. Quarries were opened at Castlelyons, Midleton and Cloyne. Cloyne is rich in monumental stone which remains legible longer than shale headstones at South West Cork or hard flinty limestone in North West Cork."

The memorial for William Chapman reads:
stone 191
erected by M N Chapman as a token of respect to the memory of his father William Chapman who died July 12, 1852 aged 77 years.
They do not love that do not show their love
stone 192 (same grave)
Sacred to the memory of Mary Chapman who died March 29, 1830 aged 47 years.
God parts us here to meet above to sing his praise with joy and love
Philip T. Chapman died 8 September 1844 aged 20

Also listed in the gravestone inscriptions were the only Nason and Reaney names in the book - no Meaney names mentioned.

stone 32
erected by Mary Nason, Rock Street, Cloyne, in loving memory of her husband Michael died April 5 1916 aged 84 also her daughter Bridget died April 4, 1925 aged 47 and her sons Stephen and Michael.
The above Mary died March 1, 1932 aged 83 RIP Barry, Cloyne

stone 195
Sacred to the memory of Henery (spelling) Nason who departed this life in the 53rd year of his age April 25, 1810
Jane Nason died June 12, 1852 Christ is all and in all.

stone 430
In loving memory of John Reaney/Scariff/ died 1937
his wife Hannah died 1944/
Their family/Patrick died 5 dec. 1981/ Peter 10 St. Coleman's Terrace/ died 20 Dec 1982/ also Kate and Michael Reaney

The family prayer book

When I began my research into my great grandfather, Thomas John Chapman, I had no idea of the size of the family I had taken on.

I discovered that Thomas John Chapman worked in partnership with his brother Michael Nason Chapman, in their painting and decorating business, that their father's name was William, mother Mary and they were from Cloyne in Co. Cork, Ireland.
An enquiry on-line led me to Anne Kent, who is descended from the Nason line and kindly shared her research with me.

I was soon to find out that although Thomas and Michael both gave their mothers name as Mary, they were actually stepbrothers, as their father William had married first to Michael's mother, Mary Nason and then to Thomas' mother, Mary Reaney.
The name Reaney may also have been spelt Rainey, Eainey or Gainey.
The two marriages gave William a family of 18 children.

I was told the family names were handwritten in a "Book of Sermans" by Robert Sanderson printed 1674, and brought to Australian by Edward Chapman.
Some of the names have been confirmed by research, but information is lacking on other of the names. The present location of the prayer book is unknown.
My informant thought that the book had finally been given to Sydney City Council in recognition of the fact the Michael Nason Chapman had been one time Mayor of Sydney and MLA for the Glebe.
I first searched the Sydney City Council archives online and found nothing, then contacted their archivist who knew nothing about it.

Then thinking that because of the MLA connection it may have been given to the NSW parliamentary archives, I contacted them.
The parliamentary archivist was very interested and did a thorough search of their records taking a few days to call me back.
Unfortunately he could find no record of the prayer book having been given to them.

There are several other libraries I have yet to contact:
The Royal Historical Society in Sydney
The Society of Australian Genealogists
The Sydney City Library (who I think are separate from the Council archives, I'm not sure if they have their own historical section)
NSW State Library / Mitchell library
None of their on-line catalogues show anything, but I realise that a lot of the holdings are not listed on-line.

I've since been in contact with Penelope Norton who tells me she saw Michael Nason Chapman's bible some years ago at the Mitchell Library and it did not contain any family names, so at this stage I don't know if there were actually two bibles/prayer books.

If any family members have further information on the prayer book, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

How my interest in family history began

My interest in genealogy began in the 1970's when my maternal cousin, Douglas Spalding, had our Spalding line traced by a research company.

He kindly gave a copy to my mother - I was rapt, I'd always loved reading history and this brought my past alive.

Luckily I sat both parents down there and then and got a list of all the relatives they could remember. Both parents have since passed away and I so miss being to be able pester then with my questions, they would patiently listen to my discoveries but didn't really understand why I wanted to "bother with that old stuff"

Being busy back then raising a young family, I put the hard work of research aside until the Australian Bicentennial was due in 1988 and I thought it would be nice to celebrate it by completing the tree.

I soon realised that family trees are never completed!

I've left information all over the net on forums and sites like World Connect at Rootsweb and have created a couple of web pages on free sites such as Erica and Tom's Place on Yahoo/Geocities but don't like the splashy advertising that make the site 'free'.

I also duplicated the information on another free site at Rootsweb called Our Aus-Genie Pages
Rootsweb have since been taken over by Ancestry.com - a genealogy business that gives very little for free.
Back in 2007 they were embroiled in controversy by creating a search engine called OneTree from information from genealogy sites that other people like me have created or given to them. They then put the results of the search behind what became referred to as their 'paywall' - so you could search their index, find something promising, pay them for access and all you would get was something that the rest of us were offering for free. According to them you are paying for the speed of their search, and compare it to whether you want to hire a researcher or do the work yourself.
All of this makes me wonder how long Rootsweb will remain free under their control.

You've probably thinking by now that I am a cheapskate who doesn't like pay sites.
I am prepared to pay for original information such as copies of official certificates, I realise that these cost money to index and make available.
What I do not like paying for is when someone like me, prepared to share my information, freely uploads that information to a site which then charges people to do a search which leads back to me.

The key word here is SHARE (because that's what families are all about)

So I am back again to the question of how long information will stay around and what's easy to update.
How can I present research that will stay freely available to everyone and hopefully allow comments and interaction with other distant family members.

I don't want to pay for a web site provider or make use of the site provided by my ISP because these sites will disappear when I do (hopefully that won't happen til I 'finish' the tree!) or when I change servers.

Web pages take time to write and time to alter and add new information, I originally taught myself enough html to create my first pages but don't want to have to re-learn everything again to cope with CSS.

I've kept a blog for several years now about my textile and craft work and really enjoy following the blogs of my contacts, seeing and talking to them about their work.

That was what gave me the idea of a genealogy blog - not an original idea I've since found, looking around the net lots of people have had the same thought, but most seem to have digressed into their personal life - I will not do this, I want to keep it strictly to research.

Blogspot says they do not cancel blogs, they will remain forever - however long that is in WWW terms is anyone's guess, but here I am - and we'll see how it goes.

If you come across this in a search please add a comment, I'd like to hear from you, (especially if you think you are related)