Irwin's of Co Tyrone, Ireland and thence Australia, Canada & New Zealand

Surname Index Page Irwin Index Page My Irwin's of Ballygawley, Co Tyrone My Irwin's of New Zealand My Irwin's of Canada My Irwin's of Australia Unrelated Irwin Families Sources
This project is an attempt to chart the descendants of Thomas Irwin & Isabella Dunbar of Cavey townland, near Ballygawley, Co Tyrone, Ireland. Descendants of Thomas & Isabella settled in Australia, Canada, New Zealand & the USA (and possibly elsewhere since there are many dead ends who presumably ended up somewhere). Other descendants remained in Co Tyrone & continue to do so today. The charts linked above labelled "My Irwin's of .." chart the respective branches of the family. The USA branch is relatively recent and is included in the Ballygawley (Co Tyrone) chart. In addition to charting the descendants of Thomas & Isabella, I have also charted other, probably unrelated, Irwin families who have crossed paths with the Cavey Irwins. These include other families living in the same areas in Australia, Canada & New Zealand, as well as other Irwin families living in Co Tyrone. The "Sources" page is a master list of all sources for the various Irwin charts listed above. If you are a descendent of Thomas & Isabella (or have researched this family), please email me if you wish to share information. If you are connected to an unrelated Irwin family from Co Tyrone, New Zealand or Australia and would like to have your family listed in the "Unrelated Irwins" chart, please email me. Given the large number of published Irwin genealogies from the USA & Canada, I will only include those in the unrelated's chart if they were in the same local area as the descendants of the Cavey Irwins.
The Irwin's of Ireland are not actually of Irish origin but originally come from Scotland & the border counties of northern England. The majority of the "Irish-Scots" Irwin's, as they are known, arrived as part of  the "Ulster Plantations" which began in the early 1600s. Most of the Irwin's were 'planted' in County Donegal and then subsequently spread to neighbouring counties, including Armagh and Tyrone. Not all Irwins come of this line, there is an Irwin "clan" centred on the parishes of Allendale and Haltwhistle, Northumberland, England. Some Irwin's also settled in Co Down, in the east of Ireland. In contrast to this somewhat "humble" origin, a line of Scottish Lords (the Irvine's) settled in Co Antrim (at Glenoe) in the 1580's and the name spread out from there. By the early 1700s the name had mutated into Irwin in some branches. In these charts I have generally only included individuals born before 1930, so as to preserve the privacy of still-living individuals. There are a few exceptions, where the information on individuals born after 1930 is publicly available online. Even so, I have limited the material on those individuals to the publicly available material, where possible. Note that the "Location" of an event is often where it was registered and not where it actually occurred. This is especially so for information obtained from BMD indices. References are denoted by [..]'s and are listed on the Sources page.
Reproduction for the purpose of financial gain is prohibited. Redistribution of this material to a genealogical listing/service which resells or charges for access is strictly prohibited (this includes online pay-for-view services such as Ancestry). Much of the material used here is public domain or copyright by statutory authorities, unless specified otherwise in the sources section. I make no claim regarding the accuracy of this chart; the original sources are not free from error and a degree of guesswork is involved in genealogy. (c) David Powell, <roots-boots@hotmail.com>, http://roots-boots.net/ft/irwin.html.