Brief overview of doaghbeg
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As stated in our introduction, not much is known or recorded about the history of Doaghbeg or its early settlers. The Wikipedia entry for Fanad - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanad, provides information on the occupation of Fanad, but not Doaghbeg.
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Birth, Marriage and Death records only started being formally recorded from the mid-1800s, and while these have been key in shaping family settlements and movements during these years, it means we are limited in the level of information we would like to have. It can also be quite difficult to figure out ‘who is who’ as many families shared the same names and in certain instances, there were no birth, marriage or death certificates recorded.
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Eunan Sweeney had the following;
The population in Doaghbeg was low at the time of the Plantation and following it Doaghbeg and Doaghcrabbin was held by Donal Og the son of Donal Gorm McSwine. By the Civil Survey of 1659, a Thomas Wallace was listed as title holder. The number of residents at that time were 5 in Doaghbeg and 6 in Doaghcrabbin (all Irish).
The Hearth Money Rolls mention three names for Doaghbeg i.e. Owen McTyre, Mulmury McSwyne and, also, a Shan O'Brogan.
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The OSI maps are also very helpful in identifying where specific homesteads were located in the 1800s;
http://geohive.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9def898f708b47f19a8d8b7088a100c4
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From Wikipedia - The 19th century was furthermore a time of great change and upheaval in farming practice. In the first half of the century, many landowners began to introduce “improvements” to their holdings which effectively saw the end of the clachans and the old ways of farming based around the old Rundale system. The farm landscape of Fanad as we know it today, with small individual holdings and regularised boundaries was imposed from the 1830s onwards, often against the wishes of the tenant farmers. The introduction of these “improvements” saw the demise of some major centers of population in Fanad including the well-established large villages of Doaghbeg and Glinsk. Emigration continued and grew as a response to the significant growth in population, and in response to the famine and food shortages including the Great Famine of the late 1840s. Fanad’s population, which was estimated possibly about 4,000 in 1766, was 10,344 and rising in 1841. However, it had fallen to 8,244 by 1851 and continued to decline to a figure of 5,778 in 1891.
As we can see, Doaghbeg was a populous area in the mid-1800s. Here are the important numbers in regards to Doaghbeg's population in the 1800s as per the census reports. Unfortunately the census records from 1841 until 1891 were all destroyed in some way or form meaning the best census records we have are the 1901 and 1911 censuses. We also wait in anticipation for the 1926 census which is due to be released in 2026.
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1841 - 344 People. 173 Men. 171 Women. 58 houses.
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1851 - 246 People. 128 Men. 118 Women. 43 houses.
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1861 - 238 People. 121 Men. 117 Women. 38 houses.
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1871 - 201 People. 100 Men. 101 Women. 38 houses.
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1881 - 206 People. 98 Men. 108 Women. 35 houses.
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1891 - 202 People. 98 Men. 104 Women. 31 houses.
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1901 - 157 People. 79 Men. 78 Women. 32 houses.
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1911 - 151 People. 74 Men. 77 Women. 32 houses.
To think that Doaghbeg was a thriving fishing 'town' with a population of 344 in the pre famine years seems so strange. Times would have been tough especially as the famine decimated a lot of Ireland's population. You can see a decline of 98 people in the 10 years between 1841 and 1851, and then a further decline of another 95 people in the 50 years that followed. The lack of death and emigration records from these years mean so many Doaghbeg people will have been forgotten from the numbers above, however the work we are doing means that those people from the later part of the 1800s onwards can be remembered.
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The most common surnames in the area were McAteer, Sweeney, Martin and Kelly. There are many different variations in spelling for these surnames such as; McAteer/McTeer/McTier/McAtier and Sweeney/Sweeny,Swiney,McSwine/McSwyne. This makes searching records quite difficult.
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Presently, Doaghbeg is very sparsely populated. Malachy O’Doherty still has his shop in business while the local primary school is still open, although they are being hit hard with low numbers. Over the past few decades, Doaghbeg continues to be hit by emigration or indeed just locals moving to town/city areas within Donegal/Ireland to seek employment. There is simply very little to keep people in the area these days which is desperately sad to see.
Both the 2011 and 2016 census listed 55 people as being in Doaghbeg on the night of the census.
In our group chat, we estimated that there are 60 people living in the Doaghbeg area as of October 2020.
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We aren't going to expand too much into the history of Doaghbeg on this section, that's what the other sections are for. We have done our best to capture as much details about Doaghbeg as possible. This information would have been forgotten or lost had it not been for the efforts of the group. We are absolutely delighted to have such a high level of detail provided, and the group chat along with the Facebook page has gathered a lot of attention after their formation. Our main aim is to gather information about Doaghbeg, document this information for future generations, remember those that would have been forgotten and hopefully inspire other townlands to do something similar.
Below is a map from 1779 which details the land type in Doaghbeg. It is difficult to make out the text.
