Friends of the Dorgan Family Research

Some of the most valuable contributions to family history do not come from official records. They come from people who know the families, the townlands, the old houses, the roads between them, and the stories that were remembered locally.

For the Dorgan family research in East Cork, two such people were Jo Cashman of Knockglass, Ladysbridge, and Pete Morrison of Churchtown South.

Their help became an important part of the effort to reconnect the Rhode Island Dorgan family with its roots around Carrigkilter, Ballybraher, Cloyne, Churchtown South, Ballycotton, Garryvoe, and the surrounding East Cork countryside.

Both Jo and Pete are now deceased, but the information, encouragement, friendship, and local knowledge they shared remain part of this family archive.

Jo Cashman and Pete Morrison in East Cork, April 2005. Their local knowledge and generosity became an important part of the Dorgan family research.

How the Connection Began

The connection developed through family-history research in East Cork.

Pete Morrison lived at Churchtown South, Cloyne, County Cork. After receiving an inquiry from William J. Dorgan III concerning the Dorgan family tree, Pete spoke with his friend Mrs. Jo Cashman and asked her to write down what she remembered about the family.

Pete then forwarded Jo’s information to Bill.

The correspondence is dated 25 May 2004.

Pete wrote:

Dear Bill,

Just a few lines in reply to your letter. I met with a friend, Mrs. Jo Cashman, and she wrote out the information. As you can see, my writing is not the best. I hope what was sent to you will be of use.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Morrison

What Pete and Jo sent proved to be far more than a casual family recollection. Their information supplied names, relationships, places, and local connections that became guideposts for years of later research.

Jo Cashman of Knockglass

Jo Cashman wrote from:

Knockglass

Ladysbridge

Castlemartyr

County Cork

Ireland

Her letter preserved a remarkable amount of local family knowledge concerning the Dorgans and several families connected with them.

Jo Cashman of Knockglass, Ladysbridge, April 2005. Jo’s 25 May 2004 letter preserved valuable recollections of the Dorgan, Healy, Shinnick, Hartnett, and related East Cork families.

Among the people and places mentioned in Jo’s account were:

- David Dorgan and Elizabeth Ahearne of Ballybraher

- John Healy and Margaret Grahame

- Michael Dorgan and the Cloyne branch of the family

- Elizabeth Dorgan and John Shinnick of Ballycatoo

- Mary Dorgan and Jeremiah “Jerry” Healy of Lisanly

- Patrick J. Dorgan and Carrigkilter

- Mary Catherine Hartnett and the Hartnett family of Garryvoe

- James Hartnett and Mary Coleman

- the Millerick, O’Brien, Healy, Shinnick, Grahame, Ahearne, Hartnett, and related families

Jo also identified David Dorgan, Michael Dorgan, Elizabeth Dorgan Shinnick, and Mary Dorgan Healy as brothers and sisters of Patrick J. Dorgan.

Her account therefore provided an important framework for reconstructing the wider Dorgan family before many of the individual parish, civil, census, land, cemetery, and valuation records had been assembled.

Ballybraher and Carrigkilter

One of Jo Cashman’s most memorable statements concerned Patrick J. Dorgan and the family’s movement within East Cork.

She remembered Patrick as having left Ballybraher and moved to Carrigkilter, which she described as being about a mile down the road.

That recollection became an important research clue.

Later documentary research established Patrick J. Dorgan’s association with the Carrigkilter farm and traced the holding through valuation records, the Irish Land Commission purchase of 1892, and the sale of the farm in August 1896.

Jo also remembered that Daniel O’Connell of County Kerry later acquired the Carrigkilter property. Later valuation research has independently shown the succession of the holding through Patrick Dorgan, Margaret Curtin, and Daniel O’Connell.

Jo’s recollection did not replace the land records. Instead, it pointed the research toward a story that could then be tested against documentary evidence.

That combination of local memory followed by documentary verification has become one of the guiding principles of this family-history project.

The Hartnett Connection

Jo also supplied information about Mary Catherine Hartnett Dorgan, wife of Patrick J. Dorgan.

She associated Mary Catherine with Garryvoe and described a Hartnett family there that included James Hartnett, Mary Coleman, Maurice Hartnett, Hannah Hartnett, and Minnie Hartnett.

Subsequent research has confirmed important parts of the Garryvoe Hartnett family network, although individual relationships must continue to be established from parish and civil records rather than from family recollection alone.

Jo’s letter remains valuable because it preserved the geographic and family associations remembered locally in East Cork.

Pete Morrison of Churchtown South

Pete Morrison played a different but equally important role.

He served as the link between Bill Dorgan and Jo Cashman and helped make the exchange of local family information possible.

Pete lived in Churchtown South, an area deeply connected with the Dorgan family story. The surrounding countryside includes Ballybraher, Carrigkilter, Ballycatoo, Shanagarry, Ballycotton, Garryvoe, and other places that appear repeatedly in the family records.

Pete Morrison of Churchtown South, April 2005. Pete helped establish the connection between Bill Dorgan and Jo Cashman and played an important role in preserving local Dorgan family knowledge.

By taking Bill’s inquiry seriously, speaking with Jo, and forwarding her recollections, Pete helped preserve information that might otherwise have disappeared.

His contribution illustrates an important truth about genealogy: sometimes the person who knows who to ask is just as important as the person who holds the memory.

Meeting Jo and Pete in Ireland

In April 2005, William J. Dorgan III traveled to Ireland and had the opportunity to meet Jo Cashman and Pete Morrison in person.

The meeting transformed names on letters into real friendships.

Jo and Pete shared additional Dorgan family information and local history, and the visit provided something that records alone cannot supply: a sense of the physical landscape in which the family had lived.

The roads between Ballybraher and Carrigkilter, the villages around Churchtown South and Ladysbridge, and the wider Cloyne and Ballycotton countryside became part of the family story in a much more immediate way.

Their generosity made that possible.

Jo Cashman and William J. Dorgan III during Bill’s April 2005 visit to East Cork.

William J. Dorgan III and Pete Morrison during the April 2005 visit to East Cork.

These photographs preserve something the written record cannot: the personal relationships that grew out of the research.

The Dorgan project was no longer simply an effort to locate names in old registers. It had become a connection between descendants in America and people in East Cork who still knew the families, the places, and the stories.

Family Memory and Documentary Evidence

Jo Cashman’s information is preserved on this website as family and local testimony.

That distinction is important.

Local recollection can identify people, relationships, places, nicknames, migrations, occupations, and family connections that may never appear together in any official document. It can also preserve errors, compressed generations, or relationships remembered imperfectly.

For that reason, the information supplied by Jo and Pete has been used as a guide for further research rather than as a substitute for original records.

Over the years, many of the people and places Jo mentioned have been compared with:

- Catholic parish registers

- Irish civil birth, marriage, and death records

- Griffith’s Valuation

- Valuation Office revision books

- Irish Land Commission records

- census records

- passenger manifests

- Providence and Cranston city directories

- American vital records

- cemetery records

- newspaper notices

- family photographs and correspondence

Some of Jo’s recollections have been strongly supported by later documentary research. Others remain useful clues requiring further verification.

Preserving both the recollection and the later evidence allows the history of the research itself to remain visible.

Why Their Contribution Matters

Jo Cashman and Pete Morrison helped bridge a gap of more than a century between an emigrant family in Rhode Island and the East Cork communities from which that family came.

They remembered people.

They knew places.

They understood how families in Ballybraher, Carrigkilter, Churchtown South, Cloyne, Garryvoe, Ladysbridge, Ballycotton, and the neighboring countryside were connected.

Most importantly, they were willing to share what they knew.

Their contribution helped turn a collection of names and dates into a family story rooted in a real landscape.

In Appreciation

This page is dedicated to Jo Cashman and Pete Morrison with gratitude for their friendship, generosity, and assistance to the Dorgan family research.

The letter of 25 May 2004 and the memories and photographs of the April 2005 visit to East Cork remain part of the permanent history of this project.

The family archive preserves their contribution not because every recollection was necessarily exact, but because their knowledge opened doors that records alone could not have opened.

Their help continues to influence the research more than twenty years later.