Thought to be a shipbuilder in Bandon. Family rumor is that William wanted his sons Thomas and Henry to join the family business, but were disowned when they did not. Rumored to have other children as well, who stayed in Ireland, while the disowned siblings went to Canada in 1823. Apprently his eldest son Thomas had at some point stated that they had 2 sisters, one of whom was lame.

Rose and Elizabeth are included by speculation as well; their birth entries recorded at a church in Ireland mention their father being William, and it is from the same are and rough timeline as Thomas and Henry.

Not possible to verify so far; records were destroyed in a fire in 1922.

From Boyle Bulletin #13: F. Clyde Lendrum had gathered some stories from two of Henry’s great-grandchildren (Agnes Campbell Boyle and Sadie Davies). One is a tape interview with William Boyle McMullan, and the other is from a black scribbler at the time owned by Agnes’ son, James Warren. He also had Henry’s seaman’s telescope that he brought over from Ireland.

According to the accounts of Mr. Warren and Mrs. Davies, Henry (and Thomas’) father was William Boyle of Bandon. There were two boys and three girls in this family. The two boys came to Canada, one girl died in infancy, one was a cripple, and one married but had no children.

This would tally with a guess we made based on family stories.

They also indicate that Martha died and was buried in Huntley Township. As yet we have no date or place.

The story is that William Boyle, Thomas’ and Henry’s father, was a ship-builder and owner. Apparently he lived in Bandon, an inland city but only 10 miles from the sea. Henry was educated at some college. On graduation he entered the business at the bottom and learned ship-building. Henry did not want to learn the business and the brothers came to Canada. Henry was a carpenter according to his son Robert.

With this skeleton of a story we can begin to fit together some of the bits of data coming from the research of the Irish records.

A William Boyle married a Sophia Davies, 1790, in the Diocese of Cloyne, the boundary of which runs only a few miles from Bandon Town. Unfortunately, the church records are gone. Could this possibly be our Mr. X?

One researcher in Ireland says, “Bandon was a thriving commercial centre in the 18th and 19th centuries” and he speculates that William Boyle may not have been a native of the town or surrounding area but an artisan or tradesman who moved to the town from elsewhere.

This same researcher points out that Boyle was not a common name and he suggests that possibly William had brothers Thomas and Robert, for the earlier Ballymodan church records list these Boyle christenings:

Parent: Thomas, kids: Elizabeth 1789, Mary (niece) 1790, Robert 1795,Anne 1803,Thomas 1805

Parent: William, kids: Rose 1795,Elizabeth 1797,William 1806

Parent: Robert, kids: Robert 1794,Joseph 1797,James 1799,Anne 1803

There is also a record for Elizabeth, daughter of a William Boyle, c1798,Macroom. If these two are the same Elizabeth, then their mother was Sophia Davies who married a William Boyle in Magourney,8 April, 1790. This data from LDS. Neither place is far from Bandon but it could be stretching a point to assume they are one and the same person.

The theory is that our two forebears, Thomas and Henry, were sons of this William Boyle but were for some reason disowned and removed from the records. Thomas was born in Bandon in 1793 according to Canadian records. Henry was born in 1803.

Two other Boyle entries in the Irish records are:

-Henry Boyle (1803) of Lord Viscount and Lady Bandon; this Henry Boyle was killed at the Battle of Waterloo.

-Rebecca Boyle (1813) of a Thomas Boyle and Margaret his wife. Rebecca may possibly be an older child of our Thomas Boyle as one of the boat lists give Thomas’ wife as Margaret.

The researcher suggests these three Boyles (ie Thomas,William and Robert, above) were brothers who came to Bandon in the late 1700’s because they were tradesmen, craftsmen or artisans and Bandon was booming. By 1820 the boom was over and people were leaving.

Based on Irish tradition, which our Boyles followed, one could speculate Thomas and Robert were brothers whose father was a Robert Boyle. William Boyle probably had sons older than William (1806) and this is where we feel our Thomas and Henry fit in. If all three men were brothers, perhaps William’s first son would have been a Robert as well (ie an older brother of our Thomas and Henry born before the move to Bandon).

To summarize the speculation, then; the William who married Sophia Davies in 1790 is probably the same William who had two daughters and one son recorded as born in Bandon. Probably this same William is also the father of our Thomas and Henry. And possibly there was an older son (brother to Thomas and Henry) called Robert. The pieces all seem to fit fairly well but unfortunately, there is no real evidence that nails any of this down. Apparently, the evidence was destroyed.

It is family lore that Thomas (our Thomas, the Peter Robinson settler) married the coachman’s daughter and lost his father, William’s, favour. It is not difficult to imagine that William was trying to raise his family to some level of social esteem and that his pride and plans suffered a setback by Thomas’ actions.

It seems that Thomas marries Mary Chekly (possibly the coachman’s daughter) and likely settles in Clonmeen. This is Blackwater Country from which Robinson picked his people. It is also near BallyGibblin and Kanturk. Thomas, a Protestant, was a prominent person to the Canadian BallyGibblins who were mainly Roman Catholics.

When he emigrated to Canada in 1823, Thomas was married, thirty years of age with a family. He may have had another daughter Rebecca (1813) who for some reason did not come with him. Thomas could read and write but his hand is not the flowing script of Henry’s.

One could sumrise Thomas decided to emigrate possibly because he and his father had disagreed over something or possibly because of economic reasons. Thomas may have had some connections of his own because we find no references in Robinson’s papers but he makes the same ship as Robinson. He could well have had some money, but because he was “disowned”, “could be properly called a pauper”.

So far everything is straight forward and in the open. Henry is only twenty, and may live in Bandon or in Cove. He, being the younger son, has lived in a more prosperous family period. He has been educated but does not want to carry on the business. Knowing his brother is emigrating, he decides to go along. It may well have been that Henry lived in or near Cove where ships were built and from where Robinson sailed. This could have been a spur of the moment decision without father’s knowledge or blessing.

Henry’s first wife was Martha McAdam Reade, a widow with a son John Reade. The Reade family apparently lived in or around Almonte, Ontario. Probably she was born in Ireland and possibly married in Ireland. This could be an explanation for the entry in the 1842 cenus of three born in Ireland. Another explanation is Catherine Sealy may be the woman and John Reade is the boy.

Jim Warren points out that his grandfather, William Boyle (Henry’s son), had two sets of half-brothers; the Boyles and John Reade.

Thomas second wife was Mary McAdam. We have these records but the two instances of the McAdam name may not mean the same family. In other words, we don’t know if Thomas’ second wife has any relation to Henry’s first.