Ellen Murphy
Ellen Murphy was born about 1843 in County Kilkenny, Ireland, the daughter of Patrick Murphy, a labourer. She spent her life in and around Callan, a small market town in the south of the county, about ten miles south west of the city of Kilkenny.
On 17 January 1864, at twenty, she married John Bryan in the Roman Catholic chapel of Callan. Both were labourers living in the town. He was twenty two, and his father, also John Bryan, was a labourer too. The parish priest, Robert O'Keefe, married them. Neither of them could write, and each put a cross where the name went. The witnesses were John Murphy, who also signed with a mark, and Bridget Lavelle. The return does not say whether John Murphy was her brother or another relative.
The wedding came seventeen days after the law changed. From 1 January 1864 every Catholic marriage in Ireland had to be reported to a civil registrar, and theirs is entry number one in the Callan district's marriages for that year. The same return gave the name and rank of each father, which is how her father's name is known.
The family name was written Bryan and Brien by the same registrars, sometimes for the same household a few years apart. Ellen and John lived at Fair Green in Callan. On 17 June 1877 she gave birth to a son, John, there, and her husband registered the birth on 29 June as John Brien. The registrar entered her as Ellen Brien, formerly Murphy. On 1 August 1881 a second son, Patrick, was born at Fair Green. This time the registrar wrote the parents as John Bryan and Ellen Bryan, formerly Murphy, and her husband again signed with his mark. A daughter, Bridget, was born about 1878. Other children may have been born in the thirteen years between the wedding and John's birth, but none is named.
On census night, 31 March 1901, Ellen was living with her husband on Clonmel Road in Callan, at house 6. She gave her age as 52 and said she could not read. John was a farm servant. Their daughter Bridget, 23, and son Patrick, 19, a farm servant, were at home, and both children could read and write. All four were Roman Catholics, born in County Kilkenny.
Ellen died at Green Street, Callan, on 21 July 1910, aged 66, the wife of a labourer. The cause was given as senile debility and heart failure, certified by a doctor. Her husband John was with her when she died and registered the death on 24 August, signing with his mark. The following April he was a widower, living on Clonmel Road with their son Patrick.
Her son John became a labourer in Callan, worked as a servant in New York, and married a Swiss woman, Emily, at Pleasantville, New York, in 1906. He brought her back to Callan, where their daughter Margaret was born at Green Street in September 1911, a year after Ellen's death. In 1924 the three of them went to America.
That the John Bryan and Ellen Murphy married in 1864 are the parents of John and Patrick is very probable, though no single record says so in words. The couple's names, their town and their trade match, John signed with a mark in 1864 as he did in 1877, 1881, 1901, 1910 and 1911, and her age at the wedding agrees with her age at death. No other John Brien or Bryan married an Ellen Murphy in Callan or the neighbouring districts between 1864 and 1877.
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Cite: Heirology, "Ellen Murphy (1843-1910)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/ellen-murphy-1843-1910-c45c9b.