Rev. John Treanor 1800-1879 Mayo & Galway, Ireland How many among us can say we have family connections to County Galway’s celebrated historic churches? FamilyHistoryWA member Marny Howe’s interest in researching her family history was sparked when she learnt about her great-grandfather Rev Thomas Stanley Treanor’s years as a member of the Missions to Seamen in Kent, but when she investigated his story further, Marny discovered that his father, Rev John Treanor, was a Galway man who had served in some of Connemara’s most significant historical churches in Tuam and Galway City. In this article, Marny shares details of John Treanor’s life and the Galway locations where he ministered, including two celebrated churches of medieval origin: St Mary’s Cathedral in Tuam and the 800-year-old St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church in Galway City. 74 | THE IRISH SCENE
BY MARNY HOWE My father had some books written by his grandfather Rev. Thomas Stanley Treanor about his years as a member of the Missions to Seamen in Kent, which is one reason I started researching my family history. During my research I found that Thomas’s father, Rev. John Treanor, had been a Minister of the Church of Ireland, born on 11 March 1800 in Co. Mayo, the son of Thomas Traynor/Trenor, a farmer, and Eleanor Burke. The clerical directories of the time recorded that John was educated by Mr. Rogers and entered Trinity College on 22 October 1827, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1832. He was ordained at Limerick on 25 March 1834, and 4 September 1835 he married Frances Ann Page in her local parish church of St. Mary, Dublin. From January 1836 to end of June 1840 John was in England, where he served as Curate in the parish of Farlow and Stottesden, not far outside the industrial city of Birmingham and ten miles from the Shropshire Hills, today celebrated as an Area of Natural Beauty. It was during this period that his son Thomas Stanley was born. Another son Arthur was to follow in 1840, though to date I have not found a baptism record for Arthur. Rev John Treanor soon found himself back in Galway, where he served at various times in Moyrus, Roundstone, Rahoon, Kilmoylan and as Prebendary at Taghsaxon from 1876 to 1879, the year of his death. He also served in positions one might expect of the Church of Ireland clergy, including time as the Established Church’s Dean of Residence at Queen’s University, Galway, and as chaplain to the Galway Union Workhouse, serving alongside the Catholic chaplain Rev Peter Daly PP, but it was his extended service as Vicar of St. Nicholas, Galway City and Canon of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tuam that brought him into the medieval environs of those celebrated treasures of Irish ecclesiastical architecture. The Griffith’s Primary Valuation of 1855 shows that John was living on Prospect Hill in Galway City, not far from St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church. Here he occupied a house, offices, yard and garden with an area of ten perches, at a rateable annual value of twenty pounds. St. Nicholas’ Collegiate Church in Galway is the largest medieval parish church in Ireland, still in constant use. It was built about 1320 on the site of an earlier chapel, and its history is linked very closely with the history
