The Coonans of Roscrea By Michael F. McGraw, Ph.D.
[email protected] October 26, 2018 Introduction This continues the effort to organize, consolidate and extend the research of Robert Conan. The following paper concerns the Coonan families found in the area of Ireland around Roscrea, Co. Tipperary. The material found in Conan’s notes pertaining to this subject consists of two parts: (1) a structured family report covering five generations and (2) a set of interviews conducted by Robert Conan in Ireland in 1970 and 1972. The data in the structured family report covers the period from the mid-1700s to the early 1800s and is discussed in Part I of this paper. Information was also found on a Roscrea family which had immigrated to Australia in 1865; they are also included in this part of the paper. The Robert Conan interviews covered the then current generation of Coonan descendants and went back one or two generations and which forms Part II of the paper. The overall goal is to connect the earlier Coonan generations with the more recent descendants, where possible. As many church and civil records as possible were collected to complement those collected by Robert Conan during his visits to Ireland. The information has been structured as family trees to achieve a concentration of the information and to increase the probability of discovering other family connections. The geographic proximity of the families described in this paper holds the promise of finding connections among them. A more long range goal is to find connections with the Upperchurch Coonan families, which were described in an earlier paper.