Can we give "Father Hingerty" a Name?

"Father Hingerty" is the man in whom SNP R-FTB79857 formed.

He is the Most Recent Male Ancestor to seven Hingerty males from Australia, USA, Stafford and Ireland who have taken the BigY YDNA test at FTDNA. (Two more tests are pending)

The estimate for his birth year moves around as more Hingerty males test and thus more SNP data is available for analysis.

The estimate when the above chart was produced was 1746. 

The latest estimate has moved further back in time and currently has a Mean of 1712. 

Let us therefore suppose he was born sometime in the early to mid 1700s.

Do we know of any Hingerty males alive in Ireland around this timeframe?

The records are few and far between and often do not contain important information such as location....however, we do have a few candidates:

1. James Hingarty is listed in Betham's Genealogical Abstracts for 1749. 

"James Hingarty, son Ryan, son Joseph, daugh Elinor, Kings County."

 We therefore assume that James is married with three children. If he married at 25 years old (an average for the era) and then had three children in say 5 years, we would subtract 30 from 1749 and come up with a rough estimate of his birth year as 1719.

2. Edmund Hingerty is listed in a religious census of 1766 as residing at Abbington and being the head of a family household of 6 people. If suppose that some of those household members are his wife and a few children, we could take 30 years from 1766 and have an estimated birth year of 1736.

3. Patrick Hingerty of Cullen is listed in the religious census of 1766. A Patrick Hingerty is listed as a defendant in a court case in 1770- unfortunately no location is given. If we assume the Patrick listed in the religious census is an adult responsible for his household, at a minimum we can take 25 years from 1766 leaving us with an estimated birth year of 1741.

4. John Hingerty of Cullen is also listed in the religious census. If he was a head of a household and we take 25 years from 1766, we once again have an estimated birth date of 1741. Could John and Patrick have been brothers with birthdates within a few years of each other???

5. William Hingerty/Ingerty (the same man is listed in two records with two different spellings for his name) married Eleanor Rafter and they baptised their daughter Margaret at Slieverue Parish in 1778. If Margaret is their first child, and they married in their mid 20s we could subtract 25 from 1778 leaving us with a birth year estimate for William of 1753.

6. Patrick Hingerty married Mary Walsh in Thomastown Kilkenny in 1795. If he married at 25 years old we have an estimated birth year of 1770.

Could any of these Hingerty men be "Father Hingerty"?

I suppose the answer is yes and no as our figures are very rubbery and we do not know if there were other Hingerty males around at the time who could be potential candidates...... and maybe we will never know....but it has been an interesting exercise reviewing the data with a possible target birth date in mind.

When more Hingerty males test and we have a more accurate birth estimate for Father Hingerty we can review the list of potential candidates again. 

Even if we are never able with confidence to give Father Hingerty a name, knowing his birth year and the timeframe between him and the testers on each of the four existing lines, should allow us to work out the relationship between the four existing Hingerty lines and thus work out how we are all related. At a minimum, we need another tester from the Ireland line and one from the Stafford line to achieve this.

Something to look forward to!

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