I am looking for any information on the marrige of edward mccann to alice healy around 1860, they are my GGG parents and moved to Coatbridge in Scotland about 1880.

I have only just found discovered my mccanns came from Lurgan

james

All mc cann's wherever they are came from Lurgan.

Before the English planters arrived in 1609 the area was the homeland of the Mc Cann family. They had a centre of local chieftanship on a long ridge of land with a resemblance to the shin bone. In Irish this land formation is called "lurgie". If one were to examine Lurgan's Main Street and observe how all the side streets fall away downwards they will visulaise the shin bone with the Church Resting on the nob of the ankle.

The settlement was a "baille" or "Bally" and the name first recorded by the english was "BallyLurgieMcCann" or "baillielurgievacan" which eventually corrupts to Lurgan.

It is my understanding that before Anglicisation that the old Gaelic tradition was that if a man married into a clan such as the Mc Cann's and chose to live in the territory of the Mc Cann then he adopted the clan name. This explains how the names remained in such predominance in certain geographical areas for hundreds of years.

With the coming of the English they introduced the idea of individual land ownership whereas in the Gaelic tradition the land belonged to the tribe and the Chieftan or "Ri" supervised how it was utilised among the members of the tribe. With land ownership they also brought the idea of legitimacy of marriage and registration which were not known or needed by the native Irish.

Obviously the English got rid of many of the McCanns by depriving them of their land and dispersing them either to other parts of Ireland or abroad. For example 6-8,000 soldiers of the defeated armies of O'Neill (Overlord of the Mc Canns) were shipped out to join the army of Sweeden in circa 1608.

There were of course many Mc Canns who were not pushed away but these were probably moved on to the bad boggy land of what is known as the Montiaghs about 3 miles north west of LurganMCCann on the shores of Lough Neagh.

They eventually dispersed all over Ireland and in 1850 there were 1,831 McCann families in Ireland of which 900 familes lived within 20 miles of Lough Neagh.(Greenhams Irish Surnames)

Could I put a caveat on the above. I sincerely believe all the above but i am only an amateur historian and not defensive and so i invite criticism or debate.

In response to your particular query about your4 GGG parents the answer will be in the parish records of St Peter's Church. I dont live in Lurgan myself so i will leave it to someone else to advise how they can be accessed. I would be very surprised if they were available on line at this date.

St Peter's, in Lurgan, have computerised their records. I telephoned them a few years ago, with a query re grandparents. They sent me a copy of their computer entry (I live in Scotland). I was able to use that info to get a copy of the marriage cert. from the Records Office. This, in turn, gave me some more details.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for that info i will try

Jim