New book explores the lives of Bandon gentry

A new book from historian and genealogist Catherine FitzMaurice – The Sealy, Cornwall and Allin Families of County Cork: Merchants and Bandon Gentry – will be of interest to researchers with ancestral connections to the town of Bandon or to these named families.

These three families arrived in Bandon as English Protestant settlers and are not thought to have arrived in the first influx. Their descendants became influential merchants and made significant contributions to the economic boom of the 1700s and prospered well into the 1800s. They built up significant landholdings as a result of their business activities and, in the early 1800s, through marriages.

Like many prominent Protestant families in County Cork, they were all faced with considerable challenges from the mid-1800s, and this book provides an insight into the life – the highs and the lows – of the gentry in the area throughout this period.

The 234-page book is split into three parts, each concentrating on one of the named families, and appendices follow each section with details of interest to researchers of the particular family.

Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (ISBN-10: 1543295452 / ISBN-13: 978-1543295450), the book can be ordered via Amazon €12.91. All proceeds will be donated to the Allin Institute Restoration project, which seeks to repair and restore a community building bequeathed to the community by James Allin in 1867.

Catherine FitzMaurice has undertaken detailed research into Bandon family history over the past ten years and is the author of Bandon County Cork: A Social History of North Main Street and Kilbrogan Hill and The Tresilian Family of County Cork: Landowners and Bandon Merchants.