Reference: https://landedestates.ie/estate/510

Note:

The Nolans were Elizabethan settlers in the Ballinrobe area of county Mayo. They lost most of their estate in county Mayo to the Cuffs during the Commonwealth and were transplanted to Ballinderry in the parish of Cummer, barony of Clare, county Galway. A notebook in the National Library contains a copy of a patent dated 20 Aug 1677 which refers to the Nolan interest in lands in the baronies of Kilmaine, Clanmorris and Gallen, county Mayo and in the baronies of Clare, Dunmore and Ballymoe, county Galway. At the time of Griffith’s Valuation their estate at Ballinderry was mainly in the parish of Cummer but also included townlands in the parishes of Annaghdown and Belclare and the Nolans still had two townlands in the parish of Kilcommon and two townlands in the parish of Kilmainebeg, barony of Kilmaine, county Mayo. A volume in the Kirwan of Dalgin collection traces the early generations as Patrick Nolan who married Anne Browne in 1667, John, who married Ellis Brabazon in 1709 and Patrick, who married a Martin of Tulira. Through a late 18th century marriage with Margaret, daughter and heiress of James French of Portacarron, parish and barony of Moycullen, county Galway, an estate in that district came into the possession of John Nolan, son of Patrick. In 1809 their son John Nolan married Mary Browne, daughter of John Browne of Castlemoyle.

Mary Anne Nolan, widow of John Nolan of Ballinderry and herself <u>a Nolan of Lugboy, county Mayo</u>, held townlands and islands in the parishes of Moyrus, Kilcummin and Killannin in the barony of Moycullen at the time of Griffith’s Valuation.

She and her husband had six sons of whom John Philip Nolan was a Member of Parliament for county Galway for much of the later part of the 19th century. Burke’s ”Landed Gentry of Ireland” records that J.P. Nolan’s younger brother, Walter Raymond Nolan was heir to his maternal grandfather. Sebastian Nolan, a very wealthy bachelor, lived at Castlemoyle and later at Seamount, Salthill. Philip John Nolan was the only one of the brothers to marry. In the 1870s the estate amounted to 6,866 acres with an additional 800 acres in county Mayo. Walter M. Nolan of the Army and Navy Club, London owned 1852 acres in county Galway in the 1870s. The records of the land agents Denis J. Kirwan and Sons contain late 19th century records relating to the estate of Colonel W.R. Nolan in the parishes of Kilquain and Killimorbologue, barony of Longford, Annaghdown and Belclare, barony of Clare, Monieva, barony of Tiaquin and Dunmore, barony of Ballymoe.

Comment:

The first line of this write-up clearly states that the ancestors of Nolans of Ballinrobe and later Ballinderry settled in Connacht in Elizabethan times. The most likely place from which they came would be Leinster and most likely descendants of Eochaidh Fionn Fuathairt the acknowledged ancestor of the Carlow Nolans.

In the above note also clearly states that a Ballinderry Nolan married a Lugboy Nolan from County Mayo. This means that John Philip Nolan, mentioned in the above note, seemingly descended from both the Ballinrobe Nolan line and the Lugboy Nolans line.

Circumstantial evidence pointing to a different ancestry for the Lugboy Nolans is an follows.

1. A Nolan goldsmith was made a freeman of Galway city in the year 1500;

2. One of the earliest monuments in this cemetery (late 1500s) was erected to the memory of a goldsmith, and;
3. In the same cemetery an early monument was also erected to the memory of the Nolans of Lugboy.

Given the low number of Nolan descendants who have had a Big Y-DNA test done for their Nolan line, it is impossible to show how closely or distantly these two Nolan lines are related or to show their line of descent being from a O Nuallain or O hUllachain ancestor, or even some distant ancestor.

Roger Nowlan,
webmaster and NolanFamilies research coordinator.