These two McBrien – Allingham families have led to some confusion in evaluation of family relationships. I have written about odd coincidences in genealogy before but this one is much more confusing.

I first encountered the family of John McBrien and Elizabeth Allingham when I expanded my study of the genealogy of the Allingham family of the Glencar area of Killasnet parish in County Leitrim Ireland. The first record we have of my great great grandmother Ruth Allingham is her 1854 marriage in the small Church of Ireland near Glencar Lake . In 1856 Elizabeth Allingham (who is probably her sister) married John McBrien in the same church.

John McBrien and Elizabeth Allingham had quite a few children in Ireland and then moved to Ontario, Canada. I started tracing some of those children forward a bit in hopes of running into another genealogist who might know a bit more about the Allinghams and McBriens than I did.

I noticed that some traced these families back to John McBrien and Elizabeth Allingham of Donegal. This was unexpected. Was it the same family? Perhaps they lived in Leitrim for a while, moved to Donegal and then on to Canada. Perhaps there were 2 families with the same names of the parents.

So I began to look at records. Generally I found the records at IrishGenealogy.ie to usually be copies of the full record and so very helpful in this case.

Looking at the children registered in Ballyshannon (Donegal) and Manorhamilton (Leitrim) I noticed that the occupation of father is different. The John McBrien of Donegal is a shoemaker. The John McBrien of Leitrim is a farmer.

Then I looked at the marriage records. Since the Leitrim couple we married in 1856, IrishGenealogy.ie did not have the full record online (just an abbreviated index similar to the family search record). However since I had Ruth’s full record I knew that Elizabeth’s father Thomas Allingham was a farmer, I found the 1873 marriage of John McBrien and Eliza Allingham at Kilbarron church in the district of Ballyshannon. It stated John was a shoemaker as expected. Eliza’s father was also a Thomas like the Leitrim marriage but his occupation was “fisherman”.

So they are clearly different families although there is a coincidence of names.