North Mayo in the 1840s: Land, Marriage and Leaving

Ballycastle sits on the north Mayo coast, between Downpatrick Head and the bogland that runs west towards Belmullet. In the 1840s it was a small market village surrounded by townlands of tenant farmers, cottiers and labourers, most of them Irish speakers, almost all of them living on the potato.

Land decided everything. A farm went to one son, usually the eldest, and a daughter's future depended on a match made between families, with land and a dowry weighed against each other. A second son with no land coming to him had few choices: labour for others, enlist, or go. That is the situation Patrick O'Donnell starts from, and it was the situation of thousands of young men in the county.

The entries below describe that world as the record shows it: what a townland was, what the inside of a north Mayo cabin looked like, how dependent the county was on one crop, how far the Irish language and literacy reached, and how matches were made. Later entries follow Mayo into the Land War of 1879, which began in the county and gave the English language the word boycott.

If you are tracing a family from the area, the genealogy guide lists the records that survive for north Mayo and how to use them.

Meet the O'Donnells of Ballycastle