O'Murphy (No.5) family genealogy
Of Cork: Of the "Clan Moroghoe" Sept
Arms: Quarterly, ar. and gu., four lions ramp. counterchanged, on a fess sa. three garbs or. Crest: A lion ramp. gu., holding in fore paws a garb or. Motto: Fortis et hospitalis.
THIS family is a branch of the Clan Moroghoe Sept, whose genealogy is traced in the "O'Murphy" (No. 4) pedigree; and is a branch of the "O'Murphy" family of Muskerry, in the county Cork; which ancient clan went from Leinster about the thirteenth century; and, as may be seen by ancient Maps, possessed the territory between Cork and Macroom, on the northern side of the River Lee.
At the commencement of the eighteenth century, in the year 1709, just after the enactment of the Penal Laws [1] of the reign of Queen Anne, Nicholas Murrough or Murphy, a descendant of the once powerful Clan Moroghoe, of Leinster, migrated from the land then held by the Sept to which he belonged in the barony of "Clandonagh," Queen's County, and settled at Cloghroe, in Muskerry, county Cork.
In the year 1756, one of the last "Bills of Discovery," in that part of the country, was filed against his son Jeremiah Murphy, of Cloghroe, as a "Papist," by one Samuel Windus, of Grafton-street, Dublin, an informer. Jeremiah Murphy refusing to conform to Protestantism, and preferring the loss of his property to that of the Faith of our Fathers, was thereupon dispossessed of his lands. By his marriage with Mary-Anne Kedmond (? Redmond) of the county Tipperary (a descendant of an adherent of King William III., who came with him to Ireland in one of his Danish regiments), Jeremiah Murphy, whose wife embraced the Catholic religion, had two children, both being sons: 1. Daniel, 2. Jeremiah. The altered circumstances of the family consequent on this confiscation, obliged the second son Jeremiah to engage in trade and commerce in the city of Cork, in which both he and his descendants have, since then, been singularly successful; thus verifying in a remarkable manner the words of a great Catholic Writer:
"God never permits himself to be outdone in generosity."
Jeremiah Murphy married Mary O'Hallinan, and had issue:
I. James, of Ringmahon, Cork, born in 1769.
II. John, who was Catholic Bishop of Cork, b. 1772.
III. Jeremiah, of Hyde Park, Cork, b. 1779.
IV. Daniel, of Belleville, Cork, b. 1780.
V. Nicholas, of Clifton, Cork, b. 1783. And Mary-Anne, who married Mr. John Murphy, of the Fermoy Sept, and was the mother of the late Jeremiah-John Murphy, Master in Chancery; and of Michael Murphy, late Official Assignee to the Court of Bankruptcy, Dublin.
There are numerous descendants of the above named children of Jeremiah Murphy resident in the county and city of Cork; in other parts of Great Britain and Ireland; in the United States of America; in Canada; Australia, etc.; and in the Church, Army, and Navy.
There are no descendants of Daniel, the elder brother of Jeremiah Murphy, that can be traced in Ireland, at present; but a grandson and two granddaughters of his are (1887) still living in the Colony of Victoria, Australia.
This ancient Irish family would be perfectly within their rights in, at any time, re-assuming their original patronymic "MacMOROUGH-MURPHY;" for it is their birthright.
NOTES
[1] Penal Laws:
In that dark time of cruel wrong, when on our country's breast,
A dreary load, a ruthless code, with wasting terrors press'd—
Our gentry stripp'd of land and clan, sent exiles o'er the main,
To turn the scales on foreign fields for foreign monarchs' gain;
Our people trod like vermin down, all fenceless flung to sate
Extortion, lust, and brutal whim, and rancorous bigot hate—
Our priesthood tracked from cave to hut, like felons chased and lashed,
And from their ministering hands the lifted chalice dashed—
In that black time of law-wrought crime, of stifling woe and thrall,
There stood supreme one foul device, one engine worse than all:
Him whom they wished to keep a slave, they sought to make a brute—
They banned the light of heaven—they bade instruction's voice be mute.