Province Leinster | ||
Raheenduff is a small hamlet situated near Oulart in County Wexford, South East Eire.
Map of Raheenduff, Co. Carlow, Ireland
The Cooney Family own most of the farmland in Raheenduff along with the local grain store "Kevin Cooney Grain Ltd". In the early 1900s there were only eight houses. Houses 1 & 7 occupied the Cooney Family, House 2 occupied by Mr Cullen, House 3 occupied by the Mythen Family, House 4 occupied by the Webster family, Houses 5 & 6 occupied by the Devereux family and House 8 was occupied with the Earle family. The village looks similar today as it did in the 1900s especially at Raheenduff Cross-Roads, where opposite Kevin Cooney's village grain store, the Redmond's runs the local Public House and Local Stores.
At the time of the 1911 census, William Cooney aged, aged 73, who had lost his wife at the start of the century, worked as the farmer and grocer. William's son, named John, a 40 year old single man, worked as his dad's farm hand. John learnt to read at Oulart School in his youth and passed on his skills to his father, enabling him to run the shop and keep the accounts. William's granddaughter Catherine, also resided with them. Aged 7, she had not learnt to read and write, but was attending Oulart Primary School.
In the year of 1910, James Fitzgerald from Wexford, aged 16, worked as a grocer's assistant at William's Raheenduff Store. He took up residence with the Cooney family, whilst learning the trade. As William spent more time in the store, he employed a general labourer to help out in the house and the fields. James Kinsella, aged 23, moved in with the Cooney family. William rented out the spare bedrooms to the Doyle sisters Annie Elizabeth aged 24 and Mary Anne aged 20. On the 15th of June 1916, William Cooney ages 78, transferred the holding of the Local Pub and grocery shop to James Cooney.
The Peter Mythen and his wife Elizabeth arrived in Raheenduff in the early 1800s and built a small farmhouse out of Marl. They had two children, Ellen born 1857 and John born 1870. John married Mary in 1885 and two years later baby Maggie was born. They had 11 children in all, but lost 3 at birth. Lizzie 1899, twins Peter and Andrew 1901. Patrick 1901, Nellie 1904, Jack in 1906, Minnie in 1909, and Alice 1911. Damp got to the small marl house in 1913 and it started to sink, so a larger farm house 200 feet away and John and Mary moved in, leaving Peter and Ellen in the old house for a couple years. Lizzy joined a Missionary in South Africa at Port Elizabeth. John and Mary died in the 1930s leaving the children, to run the farm. Minnie married Robert Wafer and left the farm to become a farmer's wife in Ballycanew and Jack married Kitty in 1957, then moved to Bray, near Dublin where they had a daughter named Mary. At the beginning of the Second World War, Alice left Raheenduff to take up nursing in London, where she met Frederick Potts and got married. This left Patrick, Peter and Nellie to carry out the farming at Raheenduff.
In 1974, the farm became too much work for Peter, Patrick and Nellie. Hence they had a bungalow built a few hundred yards east of Raheenduff Crossroads and sold the farm lock, stock and barrel. Within their first year of living at the bungalow, Peter became ill and died in October 1975 and Pat at the age of 87, died in June 1989. The following year Nellie died aged 85. This would mark the end of Mythen's living in Raheenduff.