Our beginning was in Cavan, looking for a thread to connect us to the Bishop's parents. At this time, we did not know where in Cavan the Bishop's parents were born & lived.

Our first stop--a wild guess--was in Ballyjamesduff. This small village supposedly was the home of some emigrating Cosgroves in the late 19th century. All the phonebook Cosgroves here are related to the same family. A local gave us directions to the "homeplace", a white farmhouse on the corner of nowhere. Mrs. Patrick Cosgrove, a longtime widow, was very sweet, invited us in, and proved she knew little of her husband's family. Her own many children are scattered, a girl in America and a son in London. As he may know something, and is a solicitor, we will contact him.

We went to Cavan City second, to talk to Fr. Gerard Alwill, principal at the boys' school at St. Patrick's College. Webmaster. We had already e-mailed Fr. Gerry, who had promised to "have a word with the historians at the college". The historian, the Bishop of Cavan, seemed not to believe that WE had a bishop, however remotely, from Cavan that he didn't know about. We got the grand tour of St. Patrick's, a once prosperous school, that is now fallen on hard times and is heading to a close. Fr. Alwill gave us the name of a priest historian to contact (who turned out to be in a conference in London). Another dead-end.

Our B & B was run by a friendly woman with wild red hair whose husband worked with the genealogy people at Cana House in Cavan on genealogy projects: Ben Gaffney. He had mapped the old cemetery near Ballyjamesduff. I can't remember if the stones from that cemetery were transcribed (I think not, or we would have followed up.) All over Ireland people are beginning to do this, but it is a tremendous job and there is little funding for it. Also, removing the lichen and moss subjects the grave markers to further weather damage, but if you don't, they are almost impossible to read. Ben explained to us the scarcity of records in Ireland for the time before the famine. The churches themselves have only patchy marriage and death records and most people were too poor for headstones. He recommended that we go to Cana House; they have in their database all the records that are left in the county.

Cana House told us that their records consist of only some parishes in Cavan; the rest are lost. Cana produced baptismal records for only two James Cosgroves in the period 1795 - 1820, both born 1814: one James Cosgrife of Henry Cosgrife and Anne Smith (sponsors: James Cosgrife & Mary Kelcher) and James Cosgriff of Henry Cosgriff and Mary Smith (sponsors Henry Cosgriff & Mary Smith). In those days, everyone we spoke to assured us, the spelling varied according to whichever priest or estate official wrote the names down. Another search yielded a John Cosgriff b. 1813 of Terence Cosgriff and Mary Doyle (sponsors: James Reilly and Catherine Coyle); John Cosgrove b. 1819 at Castlerahan Parish of Terence Cosgrove and Nora Reilly (sponsors: John Brody and Catherine Cumskey) Address: Carnin; and John Cosgrive b. 1815 of unknown Cosgrive and Bridget Maguire (sponsors: Edward Brady and Mary O'Bryan). Unless otherwise mentioned all the above were from Cavan Parish with an unknown address.

No record of our ancestor John, born in 1808.

Without a marriage record from the US, or exact place or birth in Ireland, we are at a dead end on Cosgroves.

2006 note: Because of some e-mails we have received, we now believe John Cosgrove and at least 2 brothers came to the U.S. from Ballyjamesduff.

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