The Mayburys of County Kerry, Ireland
M. A. Smithson
December 2023
The story of the Maybury family in Kerry is very much part of the tumultuous history of modern Ireland. Don Collins' book, 'The Mayburys', contains the most comprehensive published study of the family. This summary of the family's history includes some recent research.
The First Mayburys in Kerry
The Mayburys of County Kerry are sometimes considered to one of the Cromwellian Protestant settler families of Ireland. Although the first Mayburys were Protestants, there is no evidence that any of the Mayburys who worked or settled in Kerry saw service in the forces sent by Oliver Cromwell to invade Ireland in 1649 during one of the last phases of the English Civil War. Indeed, the first Maybury recorded in Ireland arrived in Bandon, Cork, with a party of tradesmen years earlier in 1620, probably brought to Bandon by Richard Boyle, Baron of Youghal, whose business enterprises included iron smelting.¹
The Cromwellian subjugation of Ireland did, however, provide opportunities for Sir William Petty (1623-1687), a doctor, scientist, inventor and professor at Oxford University. Petty was made physician-general to the parliamentary army in Ireland in 1652. He later conducted a mapped survey of all Ireland, known as the Civil or Down Survey, designed to facilitate the redistribution of confiscated Irish Catholic lands to English Protestants. As a reward, Petty was granted large areas of land in the baronies of Glanarought and Iveragh in Kerry. He hoped to establish a thriving colony or plantation near the present town of Kenmare, based on agriculture, fishing, forestry and, especially, an ironworks that he established around 1668. Petty induced three Mayburys: the hammermen Thomas, Francis and John Mayberry, to work in his Glanarought ironworks around 1670. They formed a ‘chafery’ team, typically composed of related individuals.
The few records mentioning the three Maybury hammermen suggest that one, almost certainly Thomas, was a very skilled iron-working technician and a leader among the ironworkers. Unfortunately for Petty, his dreams for Kerry foundered on harsh realities. His ironworks struggled and, in 1675, he was forced to admit that
our iron, it seems, is ill-made and but little of that, and what is made is squandered away. It's made at excessive charge and sold at less rates.²
By late 1672, the poor management of the ironworks caused the Mayberry hammermen and many of their fellow workers to leave Glanarought and return to their previous workplaces. For at least one Mayberry, this was at Enniscorthy, Wexford, Ireland. In 1677, Petty closed the Glanarought ironworks and relied on rents and timber to extract an income from Kerry.
The Mayburys take up land
It is not until 1686, more than a generation after Cromwell's war had ended, that another 'Mabury' is recorded in Kerry, paying a bond to Richard Orpen, Petty's agent. This was almost certainly William Mabury who, in an affidavit of 1692/3, stated that he and his partners had leased a farm at Dromoughty in the parish of Tuosist, near Kenmare, before 1688. ³
Dromoughty, the first land held by the Mayburys in Kerry.
William Mabury's position as a leaseholder on the Petty Estate was short-lived. In 1688/9, Ireland - and William - was caught up in 'The Glorious Revolution' during which King James II lost his throne to William of Orange. Irish Catholics supported James II and rose in revolt. In Glanarought, Protestant settlers, including William Mabury, fortified the area around Richard Orpen's residence, the 'White House'. They were soon besieged by 3000 Irish Jacobites, forced to surrender and, after some mistreatment, fled from Ireland to Bristol, England.⁴
After James II (and the Irish Catholic cause) was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne, William Mabury returned to Ireland. He found Richard Orpen locked in a struggle with a Captain Topham to secure the position of agent to the late Sir William Petty's son, Charles Petty, Lord Shelburne. Mabury joined Orpen’s struggle when Topham refused to restore William's lease over Dromoughty. By 1694, Topham had lost the Glanarought agency to Orpen and William regained Dromoughty - land held by his descendants for almost the next two centuries.
In 1697, Richard Orpen in Glanarought and John Mahony in Iveragh negotiated a 'Grand Lease' over the Petty estate with James Waller. Waller was acting for Henry Petty, Lord Shelburne, a minor who had succeeded his elder brother Charles in 1696. Orpen, in turn, sublet a proportion of the Glanarought estate⁵. William Mabury became one of Orpen's sub-tenants, having leases over land at Dromoughty and in the townlands of Currabeg, Gortnadullagh and Gortalinny, thereby earning himself the appellation, 'gentleman'.
Kenmare and its surrounds.
Disputed ancestry
For some time, it has been accepted that William Mabury had married Richard Orpen’s sister Rachel and together they gave rise to the Maybury family of Kenmare, one branch of which later decided to adopt the Mayberry spelling of the surname. This interpretation owes much to the work of 19th century Orpen genealogists and the paucity of historical evidence for the doings of the 17th century Mayburys.⁶ It appears that the Orpens decided that information seemingly gathered from the Kenmare Mayberry family, that their ancestor was John Mayberry who married Rachel Orpen, was mistaken and that the progenitor of the family was William Mabury, whose name was far more prominent in late 17th and early 18th century documents. Writings by the noted Irish historian Goddard Henry Orpen and the 6th Marquis of Lansdowne in the 1930s supported this opinion, despite the latter having access to a document showing that the hammerman John Mayberry was in Glanarought in 1672, around the time Rachel Orpen was believed to have married.⁷
A revision of this Kenmare Maybury genealogy has occurred recently, influenced in part by DNA testing. DNA tests have indicated that Maybury families in the Kenmare and Killarney areas were closely related, descending from one man or a group of very closely related men. They also shared a common late 16th century ancestor with a Maybury/Mabry family established in the colony of Virginia by Francis Maybury around the 1670s. It is calculated that this common ancestor was Clement Maybury (b.1575), son of John Maybury of Sussex (c.1540-1618) and his wife, Margaret Bourder. It is suggested that Clement’s son, Thomas Maybury (bp.1621 at Wednesbury, Shropshire), was the master hammerman Thomas Mayberry, who worked in Glanarought in the early 1670s, and was the progenitor of the several branches of the Kerry Mayburys.⁸
A reassessment of the documentary evidence noted that the hammerman Francis Mayberry had a continuing association with Glanarought, Richard Orpen and Richard Maybery, the claimed son of John Mayberry. This association continued with Francis’ probable descendants, the Maybury family of Dungeel, Killorglin, and Cloghereen, Killarney, exercising a financial interest in property held by William Mabury, marking Francis as one of William’s partners in the acquisition of Dromoughty in 1686. In addition, it was noted that there was evidence of two distinct inheritance pathways operating at Kenmare by the 1760s: William Mabury’s properties passing to Augustus Maybury of Kilgortaree and William Maybury of Cleady; while Richard Maybery’s properties, including his residence, passing to John Mayberry of Greenlane. Augustus, William and John had been considered brothers by 19th century genealogists - sons of Richard Maybery and grandsons of William Mabury. The new interpretation, however, claims that Augustus and William were William Mabury’s sons, who adopted the extended Maybury version of his preferred surname; while John was their cousin and Richard Maybery’s son. John adopted the extended Mayberry version of his father’s preferred surname.
Click image to enlarge. Family tree of the Mayburys of Co. Kerry, Ireland (proposed Dec.2023). This tree is based on documentary and DNA evidence. While it shows only those family lines established by FTDNA BigY DNA testing, it does provide an overview of all the families of the Kenmare-Killarney region. The accuracy of entries in black text are well-established; the relationships of those coloured blue (Mayburys of Gortnadullagh and Gearhanagoul) and green/grey (the Mayburys of Killaha and Muckross) are very likely; the entries in orange are likely - based on DNA and limited documentary evidence. Entries in green text show the most-likely relationship of the descendants of Francis Maybury (d.1712) of Surry County, Virginia, within haplogroup R-FTA43422. SNPs (Single Nuclear Polymorphisms) and STR (or Short Tandem Repeats) values that define particular family lines are shown in red text. Future DNA testing and documentary research may see some changes to this tree.
In summary, the Maybury settlement of County Kerry was essentially a family affair with a ‘chafery’ team of hammermen being introduced to the opportunities offered by Petty’s colony at Glanarought while engaged there in iron-making. This was more so, when John Mayberry married the sister of Richard Orpen, a Petty agent with plans to revive his employer’s ironworks. When these plans became reality over a decade later, two Mayberry hammermen, Francis and John, invested in their younger brother William’s settlement and acquisition of property at Glanarought - William had been too young to have been recorded in the 1670s list of workmen alongside his father and brothers. John Mayberry’s son, Richard Maybery, joined William at Glanarought by 1711 at the latest. Both William and Richard founded families at Kenmare: the Mayburys and the Mayberrys. The Mayberrys maintained very close relations with the Maybury descendants of Francis Maybury who moved into the Killarney area as Thomas Browne, Lord Kenmare, began his program of improvements in the district from the 1750s.
This has been the latest revision of early Maybury history in County Kerry. As research continues apace, especially in the field of genetic genealogy, it may not be the last.
Struggles for Power and Land
In the early 1700s, William Mabury and Richard Mayberry settled into a life of farming and subletting land around Kenmare, becoming middlemen landlords. Richard sought additional income by harvesting timber. But it did not take long before they faced challenges. As social and political conditions settled in England and Ireland, Henry Petty, Baron (later Earl) Shelburne, came to regret granting the 'Grand Lease' and mounted a legal challenge. Land owned by Trinity College Dublin had also been caught up in the 'Grand Lease' and the College began legal proceedings in 1713 to recover its land. William and Richard were forced to accept Trinity College's chief tenant as their landlord over part of their lands in 1714. The threat from Lord Shelburne to their possession of other lands was unresolved when Richard Orpen died in 1716. William died sometime between 1719 and 1721/22 and Richard sometime before 1763.
The valley of the Roughty River, homeland of the Maybury and Mayberry families of Kenmare, Kerry, Ireland.
It was not until 1763 that the ‘Grand Lease’ tenants discovered that the Orpen family had come to terms with Henry Petty around 1720-21 and they were now subject to a new immediate landlord, Henry Petty’s successor William Petty-Fitzmaurice, Earl of Shelburne. It took a new generation of Mayburys: Augustus Maybury of Gortescrehane or Kilgortaree (Gortree), William Maybury of Cledagh or Cleady (d.c.1794) and John Mayberry of Greenlane (d.1792), a decade of legal action and negotiation to obtain new leases on the lands they held from Shelburne. They were joined by Francis Maybury of Cloghereen, acting as administrator of his deceased father William Maybury’s estate that included the hammerman Francis Mayberry’s old financial interest in Dromoughty and Maybury land at Kenmare.⁹
For his part, John Mayberry of Greenlane was left dissatisfied with the leases given to him by Shelburne, at one time during negotiations virtually accusing him of lying.¹⁰ Their relationship worsened when Mayberry unsuccessfully took Shelburne to court over a tree-harvesting contract they had signed which had run into difficulties. Over the years, tensions simmered between the two. Shelburne, who became Lord Lansdowne in 1784, considered that Mayberry aimed ‘to stir up discontent and lessen the march of anything I do’ and appears to have used his agent Samuel Nelmes to gather what would today be termed a ‘dirt file’ on Mayberry. ¹¹
John Mayberry also came into conflict with Trinity College Dublin’s chief tenant at Kenmare, Gerald Blennerhassett.¹² In 1782, Blennerhassett substantially increased his under-tenants’ rents on the College’s Estate, including Mayberry’s, threatening to replace them with new tenants if they did not comply. John Mayberry opposed these actions and appealed to the College for mediation. The end result was that the Mayberrys obtained a lease with a clause that essentially made their lease renewable forever.¹³ Blennerhassett’s other tenants, including Mayburys, soon applied for identical clauses in their leases.
The 18th Century Kerry Mayburys
By the mid18th century, three branches of the family had been established at Kenmare. Augustus Maybury had acquired land at Kilgortaree on Trinity College Dublin’s Gortagass Estate by his marriage to the widow of Robert Bowen. She was probably a cousin from an early Maybury-Bastable marriage. His ‘Gortree’ line was short-lived. Augustus died in 1785 and his only son Bastable died some months later. Bastable had married Petra Duckett in 1779 and they had only one daughter, Mary. She inherited certain Maybury lands that found their way into the possession of the Hawkes family after her marriage to Cornelius Hawkes.¹⁴
William Maybury of Cleady established his family on the Gortagass Estate on the northern side of Roughty River. His very extensive line included the Kingston Mayburys of Slatefield and Firgrove; the solicitor Richard Maybury (d.1886) whose descendants still live at Tubrid, Kenmare; and the descendants of Dr. William Augustus Maybury (1809-1892) who married Clara Constable in 1838 and established his residence in Frimley, Surrey, England.¹⁵
John Mayberry settled into a new house at Greenlane that replaced his father Richard Maybery’s residence in the townland of Gortalinny on the College Estate. His family line prospered, apparently due to business activities in Cork. Of his descendants, the Kenmare Mayberry doctors: George Mahony Mayberry (b. c.1814-1816) and his son Francis George Mayberry (1847-1920), are the best known. Dr George began his medical career grappling with disease in the midst of the Irish Potato Famine and died in 1880 as one of the largest Maybury landholders in Kerry.
Killarney became another centre of Maybury settlement in the 18th century. Most prominent was the family of William Maybury of Cloghereen (d.1803) whose brother Francis had been involved in lease negotiations between Lord Shelburne and the Kenmare Mayburys between 1763 and 1773. They are believed to be the descendants of the hammerman Francis Mayberry, although there is a ‘missing’ generation between Mayberry and William Maybury, father of William and Francis of Cloghereen. This family was originally based at Dungeel, near Killorglin, and several members remained in the Killorglin-Tralee area into the 19th century.¹⁶ One was John Maybury, church warden of Kilgobbin parish in 1758. Another was Alexander Maybury who married Julia Flynn. Their son, Richard (bp. 1828) was a private in the 17th Regiment of Foot and was deployed to Canada where he married Jane Miller in Quebec in 1856. He apparently returned home with his regiment, then emigrated back to Canada. On the 19th September 1889, Richard, Jane and their young son Richard were tragically killed in the catastrophic Quebec Landslide of 1889. Richard was survived by at least four of his children.¹⁷
Maybury landholdings in the Killarney, Kerry, area in the 1850s.
The Mayburys of Cloghereen began their residence at Killarney from the late 1740s working as road and building contractors and suppliers of timber. William Maybury of Cloghereen soon began taking leases on Lord Kenmare’s estate, more so after 1773. His family produced several doctors, solicitors and army and militia officers. The best known of this family are George Maybury of Lackabane (d.1846), solicitor and lieutenant in the Kerry Militia; Dr. Thomas Duckett Maybury (c.1816-1877), a surgeon with the British Army and the Kerry Militia who was twice decorated for bravery, and Lieutenant Richard Maybury (b.c.1824), who died during the Indian Mutiny in c.1857.
Another Maybury family lived midway between Kilgarvan and Killarney, in the parish of Killaha. They appear to have been headed by William, son of William Maybury of Cleady. Beginning as tenants of the Herbert family of Muckross House, the family provided the Herberts with a ready supply of workers into the 19th century, employed largely on the reforestation of the estate. The best known is the extensive family of James Maybury (1799-1870) and Maria Matilda Shaw (1810-1888), many of whom later emigrated to Canada and the United States.
James Maybury of Muckross, Killarney (d.1870).
It would be expected that only a minority of Maybury offspring would, in an era of meagre record keeping by church and state, achieve enough prominence to have their relationships and doings recorded for posterity. By the 19th century, the names of many Maybury individuals appear in Killarney historical records whose 18th century family connections or affairs are shrouded in mystery. One individual, John Maybury, was at least recorded as a son in William Maybury of Cloghereen’s 1803 will. He seems to have been born in the late 1770s, but nothing else is known of him except that, coincidentally, a John Maybury turned up in Lansdowne Estate rentals in 1796. This John was recorded as a tenant at Gortnadullagh, Kenmare, following the death of William Maybury of Cleady in 1794-5 and the division of his lands.
John’s Gortnadullagh land was in the hands of another John Maybury (1801-1881) in 1852, presumably his eldest son. The descendants of two other suspected sons have been traced: Thomas Maybury who was recorded as living in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, in the English census of 1881 and George Maybury who established the fourth major branch of the Kenmare Mayburys at Gearhanagoul. The clue that ties John Maybury of 1796 and his descendants to the Mayburys of Cloghereen is their continued use of the surname Duckett as a given name in celebration of the marriage of another son of William of Cloghereen, George Maybury of Lackabane (d. 25 Nov 1846), to Isabella Duckett in 1804. Isabella was the daughter of Thomas Duckett and Mary Mayberry, daughter of Augustus Maybury of Kilgortaree.¹⁸ It would appear that John Maybury’s acquisition of Gortnadullagh from the Kenmare Mayburys in 1796 saw the final settlement of the debt carried by them since the 1680s.
Maybury farmland at Gearhanagoul, parish of Bonane, Kenmare, county Kerry. The Mayburys of Gearhanagoul are believed to have been a late 18th-early 19th century branch of the Maybury families of Gortnadullagh, Kenmare, and Cloghereen, Killarney. (photo M. Smithson)
Maybury Middlemen, Merchants and Mariners
As we have seen, Augustus and William Maybury and John Mayberry held land in the Kenmare area from the chief tenant of Trinity College Dublin and from Lord Shelburne (later Lansdowne) during the 18th century. Probably most of this land was sub-let. As such, the Mayburys were classed as middlemen landlords. By 1853, there was some diversity among Maybury landholders. Mayburys at Gortnadullagh and Gearhanagoul were tenant farmers making a comfortable living. James Kingston Maybury (1810-1875) of Slatefield, later Firgrove, sublet farms, but he also worked his own substantial farm. Rents from sub-tenants supported Margaret Maybury of Cleady and her spinster sisters. Rents also supplemented the incomes of the Kenmare merchant Samuel Kingston Maybury (1809-1863) and solicitor Richard Maybury (d.1886). However, of all the Mayburys, the Greenlane Mayberrys had expanded their landholdings most considerably.
John Mayberry of Greenlane did not rely only on tenant rents for his income. During the 18th century, the family became part of a wider economic system, the provisions trade, in which the port of Cork supplied casks of salted beef, pork and butter to the West Indies and to Atlantic shipping. In 1769 John and three partners invested heavily to lease Lord Shelburne's woods, some of which were used to manufacture staves for casks. At least one, possibly two, of John's sons became coopers in Cork and another became a ship's captain, noted for his high-seas adventures. John himself was referred to as a merchant of Cork. In Kerry, John invested in land and a modern building in Lord Shelburne's revitalised town of Kenmare. It appears that John and his son, Duckett, also loaned money to fellow landholders and held their land in mortgage. John Mayberry's descendants reaped the benefits of all this activity, holding about 4,000 acres around Kenmare in 1852 as well as various lands in Cork.
The Greenlane Mayberrys were not the only Mayburys to head to County Cork. Augustus Maybury, a vintner of Cork and probable descendant of William Maybury of Cleady, appears to have invested in property in the Kenmare area. Another member of the Cleady branch of the family, Charles Maybury (c.1816-1878) established a family in Ballyvourney, County Cork. Francis Maybury, son of William Maybury of Cloghereen, Killarney, married into the Hillgrove merchant family of Cork who were also related to the Dumas family, old business partners of John Mayberry of Greenlane. As a result, the Killarney Mayburys acquired substantial property in Cork city. It is expected that future research will trace the ancestry of still more Cork Mayburys back to County Kerry.
Not all Kerry Mayburys were engaged in farming or sub-letting. Mayburys were also involved in a range of business enterprises. One of the most prominent was Charles John Maybury (1842-c.1908) who, by 1881, operated a bakery, grocery, insurance agency and a flour and meal dealership. Charles established the Kenmare Woollen Mills before losing all in the Munster Bank collapse of 1885. Mayburys also entered the trades. John Maybury (b.1848), the son of John Maybury of Gortnadullagh (d.1880), worked as a carpenter at Kenmare. His sisters worked at the Kenmare Workhouse and it was there that John met his wife, Catherine Phelan, whom he married in 1874. Maybury women also made their mark in business. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Catherine (Kate Aldworth) Maybury (1852-1928) was a driving force behind the Maybury family retail business at Kilgarvan and Agnes (Aggie) Mayberry (b.1864) managed the Lansdowne Hotel in Kenmare for many years before inheriting it.
Famine and Emigration
In 1845 the Irish potato crop failed after being infected by an introduced fungus and serious outbreaks of the 'blight' occurred for several years afterwards. Potatoes were a cheap source of food and the crop had underpinned the Irish rural economy and society and a growing population. The blight caused a famine that claimed the lives of around one million people and transformed Ireland.
The Mayberrys had been amongst the first to realise the danger posed by the blight in Kenmare. Dr George and John Mahony Mayberry served on a committee formed at a meeting of Tuosist parish landlords and tenants in October 1845 to press upon the authorities the need to respond promptly to the threat of starvation.¹⁹ Both Mayberrys initiated works to provide employment for the destitute and they, and their brother Duckett, helped support and organise local fundraising.²⁰
Duckett Mahony Mayberry had been elected to the first Board of Guardians of the Kenmare Poor Law Union formed at Kenmare back in 1840. Its task was to administer the Irish Poor Law. It had been modelled on English legislation and was wholly unsuited to Ireland. Ominously, George Nicholls, the architect of the Irish Poor Law, had warned that the Poor Law workhouse system would not adequately cope with a famine.²¹ This was borne out in 1847, in the midst of the Famine, when Duckett was elected once again to the Board. Duckett entered upon a Board that was essentially insolvent. It struggled to collect rates from middlemen landlords and their tenants who had received no income for more than two years, yet had to finance relief for the destitute in the workhouse, which at one time was assailed by 5-6,000 persons asking for admission into a structure designed to house 500 persons, and repay a loan to the Poor Law Commissioners.²² The task was impossible and the Kenmare Union, along with another 31 Unions across Ireland, was dissolved in 1848 and its administration placed into the hands of paid officials who equally were unable to make the system work.²³
The humanitarian impact of the Famine around Kenmare was horrific. In 1847, the dead littered the countryside and the starving struggled into Kenmare town. In 1849, 10,000 people were in receipt of relief and the Kenmare workhouse was overcrowded and overflowing. The newly graduated Dr. George Mahony Mayberry took over medical supervision at the workhouse, which was experiencing outbreaks of disease, and made available the old Mayberry house at Greenlane to house orphaned girls.²⁴
Unlike some of their tenants and all of the labourers, the collapse of the potato economy did not rob the Mayberrys of their basic sustenance. There is no evidence that the various Maybury family branches were among those starving in Kerry. Nevertheless, the Famine severely affected every level of rural society and it dealt a crushing blow to Maybury finances as the blight endured year after year. The impoverishment and loss of tenants had immediate effect and, combined with subsequent emigration, meant a continuing and severe loss of income. Duckett, John and George Mahony Mayberry saw a forty-percent reduction in the numbers of families tenanted on their Trinity College lands between 1845 and 1851. In the Tuosist townland of Dawros, where John Mahony Mayberry held around 80 tenanted acres and three house blocks from Lord Lansdowne, there was an eighty-percent loss in population between 1845 and 1851. According to the stereotype current at the time and enduring to the present day, evictions by the Mayberrys should have contributed to this drop in population. It did not. Had they evicted, Fr John O’Sullivan, a local champion of tenant farmers, would have been among the foremost to condemn them. Instead, in 1849, O’Sullivan could point to only one Kenmare landlord who had evicted ten tenants.²⁵
The Mayburys were in dire financial straits by the 1850s. It appears that the Mayberry Estate was saved by Dr George Mahony Mayberry. As the only Mayberry not wholly dependent on rental income, he seems to have borrowed in order to take over much of his brothers’ indebted land.²⁶ The stress appears to have taken its toll on his brother Duckett, the then head of the family, who died an early death in 1854. Among the Mayburys, Margaret Maybury of Cleady and her sisters had to plead with Lord Lansdowne to meet their Poor Law rates.²⁷ One Maybury was forced to surrender land at Coolanaroo, Dromoughty, and the Hawkes family surrendered all of Augustus Maybury of Gortree's old holdings at Dromoughty in 1855. Elsewhere, descendants of William Maybury of Cloghereen, fell into debt and lost their Killarney and Cork properties.²⁸
In 1850, Lord Lansdowne’s agent William Steuart Trench conceived of a program whereby paupers of the Lansdowne Estate would be offered free emigration to America. The program, although initially not unpopular, was poorly planned and executed. The harsh conditions experienced by the emigrants, combined with a history of overbearing management of the estate, gave the Trenches a terrible reputation.²⁹ The Mayburys did not require such assistance. In fact, emigration had been common enough among Mayburys before the Famine. In the early 1840s Augustus Kingston Maybury of Slatefield (c.1815-1894) and Richard Mahony Mayberry of Greenlane (c.1813-1864) had emigrated to England, the former becoming a surgeon and the latter was a manager at Bass's brewery at Burton-on-Trent.
The Kerry Mayburys were certainly caught up in a wave of Irish emigration after the Famine. Among the Mayburys of Muckross, the family of James Maybury and Maria Shaw favoured Canada as their destination. The young author of a Maybury genealogical paper, Richard Hawkes Maybury (1845-c.1926), chose the United States, as did James William Maybury (1850-1927), one of the Cloghereen Mayburys of Killarney. Two sons of John Mahony Mayberry (c.1809-1870) of Greenlane and Mucksna and their neighbour James Purdon Maybury (1865-1953) of Slatefield sailed to Australia. Some Mayburys ventured only a little distance from Kerry: John Maybury, the Kenmare carpenter, took his family to County Laois, Ireland. A few Mayburys later returned to Ireland. Daniel Maybury (1849-1934) of Gearhanagoul returned from England to establish a business and a farm at Peafield, Lissaniska, Kenmare.
Revolution and Decline
In 1852, about a dozen members of the Maybury family controlled, as occupiers or immediate lessors, just over 20% of all the land in the parish of Kenmare. An enormous social and economic gulf separated one of these landholders, Dr George Mahony Mayberry, a Protestant, from his tenant Patrick Sullivan of Currabeg, a Catholic. Patrick had nine acres of land and his house was valued for rating purposes at 5 shillings. The value of Dr George's house, 'Riversdale', was almost fifty times that of Patrick's and Dr. George held about 1400 acres (3160 acres by 1876). Dr. George, his father and his son were all magistrates. He, his son and his grandson attended Trinity College Dublin while eighty percent of Dr. George's tenants at Currabeg were illiterate.³⁰ It was understandable that, for poor Catholics, landholding Mayburys represented the dispossession and injustices of the past: of Cromwell, penal laws and the Protestant Ascendancy - the cause of their powerlessness and poverty.
Dr George Mahony Mayberry in his trap, with servants at Riversdale. (courtesy Paul Burden).
Yet two hundred years in Ireland had changed the Mayburys. Dr. George Mahony Mayberry's father, like many Mayburys, had married a Catholic and her surname was bestowed as a middle name on sons and grandsons; two of the former, Duckett and George, publicly supported 'The Liberator' Daniel O'Connell's campaign for Catholic emancipation and forthrightly condemned conservative reaction in 1829. Dr. George, a sister and a brother were Protestants, two brothers were inclined towards Catholicism while a sister, Catherine, was a Catholic. Catherine (c.1817-1862), married Denis Brennan, a Catholic, and, after his death, the brother of David Moriarty, the Catholic bishop of Kerry. They were not the only Maybury family in transition: over half of all Mayburys in Kerry were Catholics by 1901 and most Mayburys were not landlords. Indeed, some were less than sympathetic to the landlord class. George Maybury (b.c.1838), boatbuilder and one of the Gortnadullagh Mayburys, was moved to join the revolutionary Phoenix Society at Kenmare and was arrested in 1858.
Dr George Mahony Mayberry died in 1880 on the eve of a revolutionary struggle that would destroy landlordism in Ireland and culminate in the Easter Rebellion of 1916 and the declaration of the Irish Free State in 1922. Tenant campaigns, launched under the auspices of the Irish National Land League, aimed to reduce rents, protect the rights of tenant farmers and return land to the tenant farmers. The largest Maybury landholders, Robert Marshall Maybury (1846-1931) of the Cloghereen Mayburys, and Dr. George's son, Dr. Francis George Mayberry of Kenmare, were obvious targets. The home of Robert Marshall Maybury's mother, Isabella, widow of Dr. Thomas Duckett Maybury of Tralee, was attacked and robbed in 1882, an incident of rural violence characteristic of 'The Land Wars'. On the other hand, the Land Acts, various laws enacted to dismantle Irish landlordism in the nineteenth century, benefited some Mayburys. Maybury tenant farmers took control of their farms and even old 'middleman' Maybury families were left with viable farms.
The Mayberrys at Kenmare occupied an ambiguous space in this struggle. On the one hand, they were substantial landlords targeted by nationalist rhetoric; on the other hand, they were appreciated as local doctors who regularly attended the poor. At a meeting of the United Irish League in 1900, Dr Francis Maybury was condemned as a wealthy ‘tyrant landlord’, yet one Rural District Councillor, put a contrary view stating that ‘he thought that Dr Mayberry was a lenient landlord’. While Dr Francis controversially evicted some tenants in the course of his management, he also allowed numbers of other tenants to run up four or five years’ arrears. Ironically, he was criticised for this by one solicitor appearing before the Trinity College Estates Commission in 1904: ‘… it is more or less the landlord’s fault if they are in arrear’. It is indicative of the difficulties of Dr Francis’ situation that, despite his willingness to sell up to his tenants under government programs, the complexity of tenure existing on Trinity College Dublin’s Gortagass Estate made it impossible unless he was prepared to face financial ruin. The attitude of the College towards their tenants in such circumstances was bluntly put by the College Provost, Anthony Traill, in 1905: “…so long as the estate itself can pay our head-rent, the first duty is to give us our money and wipe the middleman out, sorry as I am for it’.³² In the end, it took a government Commission to resolve the seemingly intractable problem. By 1918, little was left when Dr Francis described himself as ‘a medical man with a farm and fishery’.³³
Mayberrys and Mayburys at the ceremonial ‘turning of the first sod’ in the construction of the Kenmare railway, 1890. Pictured are: (6) William T. Maybury [Cleady Mayburys]; (8) Louisa Henrietta [Watt] Mayberry; (11) Dr Francis George Mayberry [Greenlane Mayberrys], (9) Daniel Maybury [Gearhanagoul Mayburys]; and (19) William Maybury. Also shown are: (7) John Townsend Trench and his wife, Leonora (10).
A quite different perspective on the struggles of this period is revealed by the career of George Maybury, one of the Gortadullagh Mayburys. A revolutionary Phoenix Society member in his youth and a local politician and organiser in his sixties, he was noted for his independent stance on many issues. George was more concerned with the bottom layer of Kenmare society, the labourers, than he was with tenant farmers who stood to gain a great deal from the Land Acts. He stood out for his frequent criticism of the tenant farmers who were ‘considerably jealous of the working people’, dominating employment opportunities on public works and obstructing the acquisition of land for the construction of cottages for labourers: ‘There are farmers having land running wild and they will not give an acre plot for a labourer’s cottage’.³⁴ George’s campaign for labourers’ cottages lasted for nine years and ended with him being hired as Clerk of Works to build cottages in 1908 (the council had received a grant for cottages in 1890). George died while working for the Council in 1915.
The passage of the Government of Ireland Act, known as the Home Rule Act, through the British parliament in 1914 seemed to be the peaceful culmination of the previous forty years of political struggle. Many Mayburys supported it. But its deferral due to the outbreak of World War One saw opportunity pass from the reformers to the revolutionaries. During the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) that followed the Easter Rising of 1916, the Mayburys found themselves sandwiched between contending forces. Dr. Francis George Mayberry received a series of anonymous death threats from Republicans while Charles Herbert Maybury (b.1885), a farmer, was thrice detained for questioning by English troops.³⁵ By this time, however, most of Dr Francis Mayberry's estate had been conveyed back to tenants and the Mayberrys did not suffer the attacks on their property commonly meted out to large landowners, such as the Orpens and Lord Lansdowne. Dr Francis died during the struggle in 1920. His cousin, Aggie Mayberry, had just finished renovating the Lansdowne Hotel she had inherited from her MacCarthy relatives when it was commandeered by the British Army as their Kenmare headquarters.³⁶ After the effects of this occupation and the fighting that occurred in Kenmare during the Civil War of 1922-1923, she was forced to sell up and retire.
Sadly, by the turn of the century there were few Mayburys left in Kerry to experience life in the new post-revolution Ireland. Their numbers reduced by emigration, only 43 Mayburys were counted in the 1911 Kerry census, virtually all from Kenmare. As the 20th century progressed, the Maybury houses at Cleady and Greenlane deteriorated and disappeared. Dr. George Mahony Mayberry's residence at Riversdale stayed with the family until the 1960s when it was sold and engulfed by a hotel development; both buildings now languish in a dilapidated state. However, members of the Maybury family remain in Kenmare today and Maybury descendants from across the globe are regularly drawn back to Kerry.
The Mayberry residence of Riversdale in 2011, absorbed into the fabric of a modern hotel. Both structures closed up and ravaged by vandals and decay.
¹ George Bennett, The History of Bandon, Henry and Coghlan, Cork, 1862, p.34.
² W. Petty to P. Bunworth, 15 February 1674(5), postscript to letter, Petty Papers, Vol.19, quoted in T. C. Barnard, ‘William Petty as Kerry Ironmaster’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 82, p. 21. See also T. C. Barnard, ‘Sir William Petty, Irish Landowner’, in Hugh Lloyd-Jones et al., History and Imagination: essays in honour of H R Trevor-Roper, Duckworth, London, 1981, pp.206-207
³ Goddard Henry Orpen, The Orpen Family. Being an account of the life and writings of Richard Orpen of Killowen ... together with some researches into his forbears in England and brief notices of the various branches of the Orpen family descended from him, Butler & Tanner: Frome & London, 1930, pp.99-101.
⁴ Richard Orpen, ‘An exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies and Losses Sustained by the Protestants of Killmare, in Ireland’, reprinted in The Kerry Magazine: a monthly journal of polite literature, Vol.III, No.26, 1 February 1856, p.27.
⁵ The details of Orpen’s ‘Grand Lease’ and the subsequent dealings between the Lords Shelburne and Orpen’s subtenants are found in Gerard J. Lyne, ‘Land Tenure in Kenmare and Tuosist 1696-c.1716’, Journal of the Kerry Archaeological & Historical Society [JKAHS], No.10, 1977, pp.19-54; ‘Land Tenure in Kenmare, Bonane and Tuosist 1720-1770’, JKAHS, No.11, 1978, pp.25-55; and ‘Landlord-Tenant Relations on the Shelburne Estate in Kenmare, Bonane and Tuosist 1770-1775’, JKAHS, No.12, 1979, pp. 19-62.
⁶ John Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Enjoying Territorial Possessions or High Official Rank: But Uninvested with Heritable Honours, Vol.4, Henry Colburn, London, 1838, p.vii-viii. Emanuel Hutchinson Orpen (John H. Glascott J.P., amanuensis), A Pedigree and Genealogical History of the Family of Orpen of the County of Kerry with the collateral descendants thereof. Copied from the Collections of the late Emanuel Hutchinson Orpen, Esq. For his nephew John Herbert Orpen Esq., Barrister at Law, LL.D., With the later Generations added on thereto., Co. Wexford, Ireland, 1874: Monksgrange archives, Co. Wexford.
⁷ Goddard Henry Orpen, The Orpen Family, pp. p.99; 106, n2. Henry William Edmund Petty FitzMaurice Lansdowne, 6th Marquis of Lansdowne, Glanerought and the Petty-FitzMaurices, Oxford University Press, 1937, p.18.
⁸ See Don Collins, The Mayburys, Otter Bay Books, Baltimore, 2011, pp.53-54.
⁹ See Gerard J. Lyne, ‘Land Tenure in Kenmare, Bonane and Tuosist 1720-1770’, JKAHS, No.11, 1978, pp.25-55.
¹⁰ Taylor to Shelburne, 2 September 1773, Kerry – Jas Taylor 1773-1776 Letter Book, No.49, Trustees of Bowood Collection.
¹¹ Directions and Observations respecting the Barony of Glanerough and the town of Kenmare in the County of Kerry – for Mr Pelham, 13 July 1793, No.17 – Dromoughty, Co. Kerry 1792-1803, The Trustees of the Bowood Collection. Samuel Nelmes, Report on Lord Shelburnes Property in Kenmare and Tuosist 1777-1784, The Trustees of the Bowood Collection, p.37.
¹² State of Mr John Mayberry’s case with Blennerhassett, 27 May 1787, Trinity College Dublin Manuscripts Library, MUN/P/23/1486.
¹³ See discussion of the leasehold arrangements and their consequences in MacCarthy, The Trinity College Estates 1800-1923: Corporate Management in an Age of Reform, Dundalgan Press, 1992, particularly pp.22-23; 92-95; 101.
¹⁴ Valuable information on this family was recorded by Henry Pelham,‘A Report on the Several Petitions & Memorials of Thomas Palmer, Corless Hawkes etc’, c.1797, No. 75, Bowood Papers - Co. Kerry 1792-1803, The Trustees of the Bowood Collection.
¹⁵ Robert Maybury, Recollections of Kenmare 1915-1925, unpublished typescript, Tralee Library, Kerry, Ireland. An excellent source for the genealogy of this branch of the Mayburys is Richard Hawkes Maybury, ‘An Account of Richard Hawkes Maybury’s Forefathers’, unpublished paper, 1865. Richard’s claim that Augustus and William Maybury and John Mayberry of Greenlane were brothers has recently been disputed. It has been suggested that this perception arose from family arrangements among the Mayburys and Mayberrys following the death of William Mabury, the young Maybury boys’ father, in c.1720.
¹⁶ Marriage articles: William Maybury of Dunguil, farmer; Richard of Killarney, surgeon; Ellen Hamilton of Killarney 1792, ROD 548 452 369344.
¹⁷ Québec Rockslide - September 19, 1889, SOS! Canadian Disasters, a virtual museum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada, Library and Archives of Canada, <http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca>, archived document, created: 2006-02-14, updated: 2006-02-14, accessed 2011. Commission to Investigate the Nature and Extent of Losses Incurred by Inhabitants of Quebec City in Consequence of the Landslide that Occurred in September, 1889, Chair: William Cook, 1897: The Privy Council Office, Archived Commissions, <http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca>, accessed 2011, pp.4-5. Otago Daily Times, 17 October 1889, p.3, at <http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz>, accessed 2011. Pittsburg Dispatch 26 September 1889, p.8.
¹⁸ This adoption of Duckett as a given name should not be confused with the similar tradition operating among the Mayberrys of Greenlane, which celebrated the marriage of Richard Maybery with Mary Duckett, sister of William Duckett of Gortalinny, in the early decades of the 18th century.
¹⁹ Cork Examiner (Cork, Ireland), 26 November 1845, p.3. Kerry Examiner and Munster General Observer (Tralee Ireland), 25 November 1845, p.3.
²⁰ Ireland, Famine Relief Commission Papers, 1844-1847, Incoming Letters: Baronial Sub-series RLFC3/2/12/23. Tralee Chronicle (Tralee, Ireland), 20 June 1846, p.3. Danny Moriarty, ‘Early Years of Kenmare’, in Kenmare Journal: a bridge to the past, Kenmare Literary & Historical Society, Tralee, 1982, p.18-19. Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Guardians of the Kenmare Union, 15 June 1849.
Tralee Chronicle (Tralee, Ireland), 10 March 1849, p.4.
²¹ Paul Bew, Ireland: The Politics of Emnity 1789-2006, Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, p.150-151; 191.
²² Tralee Chronicle (Tralee, Ireland), 18 July 1846, p.1. Ommanney to Commissioners, 10 December 1847, p.512; 2 February 1848, p.538; Papers Relating to the Relief of Distress and State of Unions in Ireland: Kenmare Union 1847-8, Proceedings for the Relief of Distress, and the State of Unions and Workhouses, in Ireland, Seventh Series, Alexander Thom, Dublin, 1848.
²³ Tralee Chronicle (Tralee, Ireland), 10 June 1848, p.1.
²⁴ Danny Moriarty, ‘Early Years of Kenmare’, p.18-19. Minutes of the Meetings of the Board of Guardians of the Kenmare Union, 15 June 1849.
²⁵ Evidence of Fr John O’Sullivan, Select Committee on Poor Laws (Ireland), Fourteenth Report, House of Commons, 1849, p.142.
²⁶ Tralee Chronicle (Tralee, Ireland), 11 January 1851, p.1. In 1851, proceedings in the Court of Chancery were initiated by Dr George Mahony, with Duckett and John as respondents, that called for persons to furnish particulars of any ‘charges or incumberances’ affecting Duckett and John’s lands of Gortlahard, Upper Kippaghs, Lackaroe and Curraghmore. A deed was executed by Dr George in 1851 and, although details have not survived, it probably saw transfers of property to Dr George.
²⁷ Gerard J. Lyne, The Lansdowne Estate in Kerry under W S Trench 1849-72, Geography Publications, Dublin, 2006, pp. lviii-lvix; 541-542.
²⁸ Hunt C. (contrib), ‘In the matter of the estate of Thomas Hillgrove Maybury...’, Encumbered Estate Sale, <http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ire/cork/land/land-est012.htm>.
²⁹ See Lyne’s account in The Lansdowne Estate in Kerry.
³⁰ Griffith’s Primary Valuation of Tenements and Danny Moriarty, ‘Trinity College Estate in Kenmare parish’ in Kenmare Journal: a bridge to the past, Kenmare Literary & Historical Society, Tralee, 1982.
³¹ Kerry Weekly Reporter (Tralee Ireland), 16 Jun 1900; 10 Nov 1900, p.7.
³² R. B. MacCarthy, The Trinity College Estates 1800-1923, p.236.
³³ Liberator (Tralee, Ireland), 11 July 1918, p.3.
³⁴ Kerry Sentinel (Tralee Ireland), 16 January 1907, p.3; 14 June 1902, p.4; 28 February 1903, p.4. Kerry People (Tralee Ireland), 14 July 1906, p.9. Kerry News (Tralee Ireland), 25 February 1903, p.3.
³⁵ Robert Maybury, Recollections of Kenmare 1915-1925, p.33-34.
³⁶ Liberator, 7 August 1920, p.4.