John Brien
John Brien, written just as often John Bryan, was born about 1841 in County Kilkenny, Ireland, the son of John Bryan, a labourer. He spent his life as a labourer and farm servant in 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 two, he married Ellen Murphy, twenty, the daughter of Patrick Murphy, a labourer, in the Roman Catholic chapel of Callan. Both were labourers living in the town. The parish priest, Robert O'Keefe, married them, and the witnesses were John Murphy and Bridget Lavelle. John could not write and made his mark, as did his bride. Catholic marriages had been reported to the civil registrar only since 1 January that year, and theirs is entry number one in the Callan district's marriages for 1864.
By the 1870s the couple were living at Fair Green in Callan. On 17 June 1877 Ellen gave birth to a son, John, there. Twelve days later, on 29 June, John went before the registrar, Patrick Keatinge, and registered the birth as the child's father. He could not write, so he made his mark, and the registrar wrote around it: John Brien, his mark, father, Fair Green, Callan. A daughter, Bridget, was born about 1878. On 1 August 1881 a second son, Patrick, was born at Fair Green, and John registered him three days later in the same way, this time entered as John Bryan.
On census night, 31 March 1901, John Brien, 56, a farm servant, was living on Clonmel Road in Callan, at house 6, with his wife Ellen, their daughter Bridget, 23, and their son Patrick, 19, also a farm servant. He told the enumerator he could read, and he signed the form with his cross. His son John was not at home; he went to New York about 1904.
Ellen died at Green Street, Callan, on 21 July 1910, aged 66. John was with her and registered her death on 24 August, signing with his mark. On census night in April 1911 John Bryan, 71, general labourer, widower, was still at house 6 Clonmel Road, with Patrick, 30, single, a general labourer. That spring his son John came home from New York with his Swiss wife Emily, and their daughter Margaret was born at Green Street that September.
He was still living in Callan in August 1924, at a place written Green View. When his son sailed for America that month with his wife Emily and their daughter Margaret, all three named him on the ship's list as their nearest relative left behind: John's father, Emily's father-in-law and Margaret's grandfather, John O'Brien of Green View, Callan. He would then have been in his eighties.
That the John Bryan married in 1864 is the father of the 1877 and 1881 births is very probable, though no single record says so in words. The names, the town, the trade and the mark all agree, the 1881 birth ties Patrick of the 1901 and 1911 households to John and Ellen formerly Murphy at Fair Green, and no other John Brien or Bryan married an Ellen Murphy in Callan or the neighbouring districts between 1864 and 1877.
Children
Sources
If John Brien is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "John Brien (b. 1841)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-brien-1841-1c7e98.