You know I love a bit fresh research to round off the year. Having talked about famous Noels and Christmas traditions in the past, this time I thought I’d look at people whose surname was Christmas.
It’s not a very common name. The 1911 census finds just 14 people, mostly one family in Co. Louth, who were members of the Church of Ireland. The 1901 finds 13 people, some of that same Louth family and another on Eden Terrace in Glasthule in Dublin. That family was headed by an English man and so their Christmas origins may not be in Ireland.
The Louth Christmases look to have been in Rathcor for some time. Here’s a William Christmas on Griffith’s Valuation in 1854. He’s renting 96 acres from a Lewis Upton, who looks to be the significant landholder in the area.
The civil records show just 74 entries for Christmas and 48 of them are based in Dundalk registration district, so clearly it is a Christmas stronghold.
Spare a thought for poor Mary Christmas, born in 1918 to parents with a sense of humour. Maybe she was known by a middle name…
Herbert appears several times in the dog licence registers in that same decade owning a black and white terrier.
But I had a memory of Christmas people in Waterford from some old landed gentry research I’d done years ago. A search in Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ireland 1912 found what I was looking for. A Christmas family who married into the Andersons of Grace Dieu. The trouble with Burke’s is that they give no sources and often don’t bother with silly things like dates, or give details on women. They just believed people when they said things like “we’re descended from Edward III”. Take this, er, Christmas tree, created from Burke’s for the Anderson-Paul-Christmas family, which has almost no dates of use. Indeed, some of these were added by me when I found records. I set about trying to back it up with any sources I could find.
Rootsireland’s Waterford section turned up a transcribed marriage record from Trinity Church of Ireland – Jeffery Paul married Elizabeth Christmas in 1709.
On Findmypast1, the Ulster King of Arms himself, William Betham, came to the rescue with some information on the Christmas family which notes Thomas Christmas was alive in 1699, a merchant living in Waterford. He adds some family names and a clue that Ms Gammon was from Barnstaple, which is in Devon in England.
Given the subject matter, I have not really tried to find the family in newspapers. However, they do get some mention in the Thrift Genealogical abstracts, which are notes on Chancery court bills. Gertrude Thrift was a noted genealogist in the early 20th century. A woman after my own heart, here’s her census return in 1911. She’s fully deserving of a separate blog post but considering she was also a teacher, she could take some lessons in legible handwriting!
The Prerogative Court in Armagh processed some wills for Christmas people in the 18th century. Likely nothing survives of these but it does tell us that they probably had money and property for it be handled there and not in the local Consistorial court. I’m amused at William Christmas, Esq. who has “large” written after his name here. Is this a comment on his will or his size?
When you’re looking at people who might have had money, land and therefore some power, you always want to look at land records, so my first port of call was the 3 volume Registry of Deeds abstracts of wills, which you can download for free as pdfs from the Irish Manuscript Commission.2 Thomas is mentioned as witness or trustee a few times but as we can see above, his will was likely never in the Registry of Deeds (founded 1708).
Between Familysearch’s AI-power full text search transcripts of the Registry of Deeds and the Virtual Treasury of Ireland’s collection, there is a host of Christmas goodies. This particular indenture shows the connections between Jeffrey Paul and Richard Christmas, which were shored up by the marriage of their children. Indeed, perhaps this deal was part of the marriage negotiations.
So you can see there is a veritable selection box of Christmas treats. There is, however, no map to guide you, and you must search far and wide for the best samples. Hopefully this serves as a reminder to not get stuck in the rut of just using one genealogical resource online, and that you may ultimately have to leave the house to physical research!