Information sought on Purcell family
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| Hannah Purcell lived in the right-hand side of the double house on the market square, pictured above in the late 1940s, the 1920s, and in 2005 when it had been modernised and extended by the Dunphy family. The houses were demolished for the Market Square development. |
Frank Jones, who lives in Connecticut, USA, visited Kilcullen earlier this summer and found parish records birth dates for Lil and her siblings Thomas, Edward, Anne, John, Maria and Hannah.
Their parents were Edward Purcell and Maria, nee Gaffney, who were married in 1879 in Kilcullen's then new Church of the Sacred Heart and St Brigid.
This writer has a childhood recollection of Hannah Purcell, a seamstress who lived in one of the two houses in the market square which were subsequently demolished to make way for Pat Dunlea's Market Square development. I used to visit her with my mother, for whom she made and altered dresses. Hannah died in 1959 and is buried in New Abbey.
Nessa Dunlea met Frank Jones during the summer, and told him she remembers Hannah, and also her brother Edward who worked for Nessa's father as a driver in O'Connell's Bakery.
Frank Jones's grandmother Lily married a British soldier after WW1, whom she may have met while working in the kitchens on the Curragh military camp. They settled in Salford in England. Frank's father was in the Royal Navy and stationed in Derry during WW2 and met Elizabeth there who was to become his wife.
There may still be other memories of the Purcell family in Kilcullen, as when Frank and his father visited the town around 2010 they briefly met someone who remembered Tommy Purcell, 'who had a hump'.
If anyone has any further information, Frank would be very pleased to hear of it.
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