Curated public place points for the Davis Moneylawn and Garrynew research file. Exact townland and estate coordinates are still being verified, so unmapped places are skipped until they can be placed with confidence. 4 places awaiting verified coordinates are not shown.

For years, the Irish side of the Davis family history reached back to a single document. In an 1824 lease among the White Family of Peppard’s Castle papers at the National Library of Ireland, Henry White of Clonganny leased the lands of Garrynew to Joseph Davis of Moneylane. One of the three “lives” named in the lease was Joseph Davis, aged five, the son of the lessee.1 That was a rare gift — a land record that explicitly named a father and a son, and fixed them in County Wexford at a precise moment.

But “Moneylane” opened as many questions as it answered. Where was it? Was it a real townland, a variant spelling, a mistake? And what came before 1824? Those questions sent me back into the Registry of Deeds.

Finding Moneylawn

The first thing to sort out was the place name itself. “Moneylane” wasn’t an error — it was one of several renderings of a single townland that appears in the memorials as Moneylane, Monemalane, Monemalone, Monenalayne, Monelane, and similar forms. The modern Townlands Index preserves it as Moneylawn — surviving as Moneylawn Lower and Moneylawn Upper — in the Gorey area of north County Wexford, near the village of Ballycanew. Garrynew lies only a few miles away, down toward the coast in Ardamine civil parish, Barony of Ballaghkeen North. Once I treated the spellings as variants of one place, the records began to connect.

One memorial records a lease dated 1 May 1807 from James and John Darcy to Joseph Davis and William Davis, farmers of Monemalane, County Wexford.2 That pushed the Davis presence at Moneylawn back seventeen years before the Garrynew lease. The same records place the two men firmly inside a tight local lease network, farming alongside their landlords, the Darcys, and neighbours such as the Brownriggs.3

Then I found the record that pulled everything together. An 1830 assignment described Joseph Davis and William Davis as “late of Monenalane and now of Garrynew.”4 That single phrase settled the question I had circled for weeks. The Moneylawn records and the Garrynew records were not two disconnected families. They were the same Joseph and William Davis, moving their leasehold interests from one townland — and one estate — to another.

The William Davis Problem

Joseph Davis never appears alone in the Moneylawn memorials. From 1807 onward, William Davis is beside him — co-lessee, co-assignee, the other name in the transaction. But what was their relationship? Brothers? Father and son?

The answer came from a neighbour’s paperwork. A June 1808 settlement tied to the Brownrigg property describes the Moneylawn boundaries in passing, recording the land as “formerly in the tenure and occupation of William Davis Senior and now in the tenancy and occupation of William Davis and Joseph Davis.”5 That is about as close as these deed memorials come to saying it outright: an older William Davis gave way to a younger William Davis and Joseph Davis on the same land, strongly pointing to a father-and-sons arrangement.

The surrounding records fall neatly into line with that reading. In March 1807, a lease to the neighbour Richard Brownrigg names William Davis Senior as the sitting occupant along the western boundary — the family’s earliest documented footprint on the land.3 Weeks later, in May 1807, the Darcys grant the formal lease to the younger generation, Joseph and William.2 Joseph is usually, though not always, named first — a hint of seniority between the brothers, but only that. Deed scribes were not always consistent about order, so the sequence of names carries little weight next to the 1808 statement.

There are, in other words, at least three William Davises moving through this research, and keeping them apart is half the puzzle: William Senior, the patriarch; William, Joseph’s brother and co-lessee; and a later William who appears at Garrynew, almost certainly Joseph’s own son, likely named for his grandfather. After 1808, William Senior simply disappears from the record — whether he died, moved, or faded into informal occupancy, I can’t say.

There is also a third generation in the record. A boundary description in an 1832 lease updates the legal description of the old family parcel to land “held by William Davis and sons.”6 By the 1830s the patriarch was long gone, so this is the brother William — now himself a father — whose branch stayed and worked the old Moneylawn borderlands after Joseph shifted his operations to Garrynew. Where Joseph’s line moved on, William’s put down deeper roots. The same record sets that Davis holding directly beside a Butler parcel — a detail that matters for the question of Catherine’s origins.

What the 1831 Tithes Don’t Say

When I searched the 1831 Tithe Applotment for Moneylawn, I found no Davis entries at all. That looked like a problem — until the 1830 assignment had already shown Joseph and William gone to Garrynew before the survey was taken.4 Their absence is exactly what we should expect.

It is worth being careful with this kind of negative evidence, though. Absence from a Tithe Applotment can also mean untithable land, an occupier recorded only under the head tenant’s name, or a farm arrangement that did not place the person directly into the tithe list. In this case the tithe silence is consistent with the move, but it doesn’t prove it; the 1830 assignment does that. As for William Senior, after his 1808 appearance he leaves no further trace, and the tithe tells us nothing either way. He remains the most elusive figure in this part of the family.

Catherine Butler and the FAN Club

The Moneylawn research also bears on a question Davis family historians have debated for years: who was Catherine, the woman Canadian records name as Joseph’s wife and the mother of his children? John Davis’s 1910 Ontario death registration names his parents as Joseph Davis and Catherine Butler, both born in Wexford.7 That is late evidence, but it is direct.

A word on the generations, because the Canadian records hold two wives’ names. Catherine Butler was the wife of Joseph Davis Senior — the 1824 lessee and the subject of this article. Sarah belongs to the next generation: she was the wife of Joseph (Henry) Davis Junior, the five-year-old “life” named in the 1824 lease, who would later carry the family to Ontario.1 Keeping the two Josephs — and their two wives — distinct dissolves an apparent contradiction that has tripped up more than one tree.

What the Irish land records add to Catherine is context. The 1832 boundary description sets the Davis holding directly beside a Butler parcel, and a George Butler appears as a Moneylawn neighbour as early as 1807. That doesn’t prove Catherine came from Moneylawn, but it puts the Butler surname exactly where you’d hope to find it — in the same townland, abutting the same Davis land, across a quarter-century. By contrast, “Bell” appears in many online trees as Catherine’s maiden name, yet I have never found a source for it. Until someone can point to where that name originated, Butler remains the only candidate with an actual record behind it.

The Move to Garrynew

The 1824 Garrynew lease is more than a place-name change; it is the family’s economic high-water mark. Henry White leased Joseph 104½ acres — land “of late in possession of Henry Hopkins,” at a rent of £119 a year, on the customary three lives.1 Two of those lives were drawn from the local gentry, as was the practice: Stephen Ram of Ramsfort, aged eight, and the Rev. Henry Stopford, son of the Earl of Courtown. The third was Joseph’s own five-year-old son. Anchoring a lease to healthy young aristocrats was a way of buying longevity for the term; it tells us nothing about kinship, only about how the agreement was built. The contract bound Joseph to plant 300 ash or fir trees within three years and threatened a fine of £5 an acre for subletting — the texture of a working tenancy, not an absentee one.

For several years Joseph held both holdings at once. A September 1827 estate transaction shows the Darcy landlord selling an annuity to a Dublin investor; because Joseph and William were still actively farming the Moneylawn land, they signed an “attornment” — formally agreeing to redirect their rent — witnessed at Gorey by the Sub-Sheriff.8 Only in 1830 did they finally assign away the remaining years of the old 1807 lease and consolidate at Garrynew.4

Where Joseph Stands Now

Pushing the Davis records back to 1807 does more than extend a timeline. It sharpens the portrait of Joseph Senior: an established leaseholder at Moneylawn by 1807, a son of the William Davis Senior of the 1808 memorial, holder of a substantial 104½-acre lease at Garrynew by 1824, and a working tenant still managing both interests in 1827. A man farming in his own name in 1807, with a five-year-old son in 1824, was very likely born in the 1780s — old enough to be the established son of a local farming family already rooted in the Moneylawn district.

Where the Davises came from before Moneylawn is still a genuine mystery. The parish registers thin out quickly before 1800, and William Senior’s informal tenure left almost no paper trail. The White estate papers, the Valuation Office cancelled books, and any surviving Darcy estate records are the next places I plan to look.

But the picture has grown enormously from where I began. What started as one man and one lease in 1824 is now a farming household across three generations, a FAN club of neighbours and co-tenants, and a community — Davis, White, Hopkins, Darcy, Butler, Brownrigg, and others — that makes those leases intelligible.

A single lease gave me a father and a son. The surrounding records gave me the family behind them.

Key Evidence at a Glance

RecordDateWhat it showsResearch value
Brownrigg boundary / Darcy lease context1807William Davis Senior was the sitting occupant near the Moneylawn parcel before the lease to Joseph and William.Earliest documented Davis footprint on the land.
Darcy lease to Joseph and William Davis1 May 1807Joseph Davis and William Davis, farmers of Monemalane, held a formal lease from James and John Darcy.Pushes the family back to Moneylawn seventeen years before the Garrynew lease.
Brownrigg settlement / mortgage1808Land was formerly held by William Davis Senior and now by William Davis and Joseph Davis.Strongest clue that William Senior was the father of Joseph and the younger William.
White lease of Garrynew1824Joseph Davis of Moneylane leased 104½ acres at Garrynew; one life was his five-year-old son Joseph.Anchors Joseph Senior at Garrynew and directly names father and son.
Darcy annuity and attornment1827Joseph and William Davis were still actively tied to the Moneylawn lease.Shows overlap between Moneylawn and Garrynew interests.
Assignment to John Archbold1830Joseph and William Davis were “late of Monenalane and now of Garrynew.”Directly links the Moneylawn family to the Garrynew family.
1832/1833 boundary description1832/1833The old family parcel was held by William Davis and sons beside a Butler parcel.Supports the brother William’s continuing line at Moneylawn and adds Butler FAN-club context.
John Davis death registration1910Names Joseph Davis and Catherine Butler as John Davis’s parents, both born in Wexford.Late but direct Canadian evidence for Catherine Butler.

Notes

Footnotes

  1. National Library of Ireland, “White Family of Peppard’s Castle (Annesley leases) Papers, 1693–1933,” MS 29,612/12 (Garrynew leases), Collection List No. 171; lease, Henry White of Clonganny to Joseph Davis of Moneylane, 7 October 1824. Lands of Garrynew (104½ acres), late in the possession of Henry Hopkins, at £119 per annum, for three lives — Stephen Ram (aged 8) of Ramsfort; Rev. Henry Stopford, son of the Earl of Courtown; and Joseph Davis (aged 5), son of the lessee; covenant to plant 300 ash or fir trees within three years; fine of £5 per acre for subletting. Finding aid: https://www.nli.ie/sites/default/files/2022-12/171_white-papers.pdf. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Registry of Deeds, Ireland, “Memorials of Deeds, Leases, and Wills,” vol. 858, p. 131, no. 57422, lease, James and John Darcy to Joseph and William Davis, dated 1 May 1807 (registered 10 April 1830); digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSNH-H3JP : accessed 25 April 2026), image 528 of 565; citing DGS 008092832. The foundational 58-year lease for the c. 28-acre farm at Moneylawn; held privately until its retrospective registration in 1830. ↩ ↩2

  3. Registry of Deeds, Ireland, “Memorials of Deeds, Leases, and Wills,” 1807, book 588, p. 141, no. 390971, lease, James and John Darcy to Richard Brownrigg; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJ4-499T-D : accessed 25 April 2026), image 90 of 602; citing DGS 008094263. Names William Davis [Senior] as the sitting occupant on the western boundary, weeks before the May 1807 lease to the sons. ↩ ↩2

  4. Registry of Deeds, Ireland, “Memorials of Deeds, Leases, and Wills,” vol. 858, p. 125, no. 57027, assignment, Joseph and William Davis to John Archbold, 1830; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJ7-G96R-C : accessed 25 April 2026), image 82 of 308; citing DGS 008092832. Assigns the remaining years of the 1807 Moneylawn lease and identifies the brothers as “late of Monenalane and now of Garrynew.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Registry of Deeds, Ireland, “Memorials of Deeds, Leases, and Wills,” 1808, book 601, p. 91, no. 409547, settlement/mortgage, Richard Brownrigg to various; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJ4-W8RG : accessed 25 April 2026), image 524 of 666; citing DGS 008094520. The boundary recital describes the land as “formerly in the tenure and occupation of William Davis Senior and now in the tenancy and occupation of William Davis and Joseph Davis.” ↩

  6. Registry of Deeds, Ireland, “Transcripts of Memorials of Deeds, Conveyances and Wills,” 1833, book 892, p. 133, no. 17, lease, George Sutton et al. to Richard Brownrigg; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJW-F9TF-2 : accessed 3 June 2026), image 16 of 532; citing DGS 008093102. Updates the legal description of the old family farm to land “held by William Davis and sons,” beside a Butler parcel — confirming that the brother William’s branch kept an active agricultural presence on the Moneylawn borderlands after Joseph moved his operations to Garrynew. ↩

  7. Ontario, death registration for John Davis (1910), naming his parents as Joseph Davis and Catherine Butler, both born in Co. Wexford. TODO before final publication: complete registration number and Archives of Ontario / microfilm reference. ↩

  8. Registry of Deeds, Ireland, “Memorials of Deeds, Leases, and Wills,” 1827, book 828, p. 13, no. 556749, annuity and attornment, Arthur Darcy to Richard Woodroofe; digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSJW-NS4H-8 : accessed 25 April 2026), image 19 of 391; citing DGS 008092797. Joseph and William Davis signed the attornment clause, witnessed at Gorey by the Sub-Sheriff, agreeing to redirect their rent to the new annuitant — evidence they were still working the Moneylawn land in 1827. ↩