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Johanna's Father and Mother

Johanna’s father was James Phelan and her mother was Anastatia Fahy.

James Phelan

Johanna's father was born in the family home in Piltown in October 1844. He was baptised in the local church on the 24th according to the entry pictured here.

One of his sponsors was Margaret Carew (we will come back to the Carew connections later). James became a stonemason, following the same trade as his father William. They both appear in commercial listings of the time. Here is an extract from Bassett’s Directory of 1884, with their entry highlighted:

His father took over the lease of small farm in Jamestown in 1871 and they built a new house on the site in 1878. This picture of the house was taken in the 1950s with his grandson James (Jimmy Whelan) outside.

James married Anastatia Fahy in Templeorum Church on 17 February 1881 and moved into the house in Jamestown. After Anastatia died in 1882 on the birth of Johanna, James remarried in 1885. His second wife was called Bridget Walsh, a dressmaker from William Street in Carrick on Suir. They went on to have six children, half brothers and sisters of Johanna. Although Johanna did not live with James, family lore reports that he often met his daughter in Piltown village. While happy to see her, he did not provide any support for her other than the occasional sixpence. James is captured with his bicycle in a photograph taken in the 1900s outside the Tower Hill house.

James’ wife died on 26th March 1909 and James died seven months later, on 13th October from cardiac failure at Jamestown. Johanna was present at his death. James left a will with a total value was £335-16-1d. This is equivalent to about £44,000 in 2020 money, but when compared with per capita GDP, has a relative value today of about £220,0001.

Anastatia Fahy

Johanna’s mother had a short life and little is known about her apart from the essential fact that she was the youngest child of Nicholas Fahy and Johanna O’Neill from Kilmanahin, a townland adjacent to Jamestown. She was born on February 26th, 1854. Her only child Johanna was born on 29th of January 1882 and Anastatia died on 21 February a few days before her twenty-eighth birthday. There appears to have been no contact between the Fahy and Phelan families after the death of Anastatia. Johanna never mentioned or visited her Fahy grandparents or aunts, uncles, cousins who lived only a couple of miles from them. One might wonder if there was some bad feeling with the Fahys about the death of their youngest daughter.