This is the story of my maternal great grand uncle, Tobias Burke (1843 - 1917), the brother of my great grandmother Bridget Burke.
Our Common Ancestors are: James Burke and Catherine Crotty.
Tobias is not at all a common name on my family tree. As a matter of fact, my great grand uncle is the one and only family member on my extensive family tree with that name.
Apparently, the name Tobias is of Greek origin and means God is Good. Tobias is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Tobiah.
I have yet to uncover why my great grand uncle, born in Ireland, was given this name. I suspect it may have been a family name further back in the generations before him, but records from that period in Irish history are so difficult to find that proving such an idea may never be possible.
The name does not appear in any of the Burke generations that followed him, at least none that I have found in my research.
Interestingly though, the meaning of his name seems to sit rather well beside the life Tobias chose as an adult.
Until fairly recently, I had very little knowledge about the life of Tobias. I had collected only a handful of records and scraps of information from other family members and from family trees compiled by others.
The facts I had found included these:
Tobias Burke was born in 1843. He was the third-born son of James Burke and Catherine Crotty, my 2x great grandparents. When Tobias was born, James was 32 and Catherine was 29 years old.
Tobias was baptised on the 18th of April in the Carrick-on-Suir Parish, in County Waterford. He was born in the area known as 'Three Bridges' between the town of Carrick-on-Suir and the townland Tibberagany (also spelt as Tybroughney).
He grew up in this area, along with his older sister (my great grandmother), two older brothers and three younger brothers.
When Tobias was 21, in 1865, his older brother William left home, bound for Australia and he never returned. By that time, all of Tobias's siblings would have been considering their own futures, as the small tenant farm on which they had grown up would not have been able to support them all into adulthood.
It appears that Tobias left home sometime around 1870 to begin a religious vocation and receive the Sacrament of the Holy Orders in the Catholic Church. At least, that was the story handed down orally through the generations.
Then .......
I stumbled across a source of information I had previously under-used: the “Directories & Member Lists” filter on the Ancestry search page for an individual. I noticed there were hundreds of entries for a Tobias Burke, and I began clicking through them, looking for matches in dates and places.
That led me to the city and regional directories of Ireland, particularly Thom’s Irish Almanac and Official Directory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the year 1871.
It was there I found the name Tobias Burke in the index of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.
This Tobias was listed on page 1202, and the entry states he was a "curate" near the town of Carrick-on-Suir in the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore. The year, the district, and the name all pointed to the strong possibility that this was my Tobias Burke, and that the family story had indeed been grounded in truth.
From there, I followed the trail and found out quite a bit about the adult life of Tobias.
All of a sudden, my Ancestry page for Tobias Burke exploded with details I had never expected to uncover.
A Vocation, Not Simply a Livelihood
What strikes me most as I follow Tobias through these records is that his life was not simply a career path in the modern sense. Religious life was traditionally understood, and fundamentally lived, as a calling — a vocation — rather than a job designed to make a living.
Of course, a priest worked. His days were filled with responsibilities, duties, travel, administration, prayer, teaching, and the care of parishioners. But the work was only one part of something much larger. At its heart, religious life was a total commitment to God and to the service of others.
For men like Tobias, this meant giving up the ordinary patterns of family life that most of their brothers and sisters would go on to know. It meant not marrying, not raising children of their own, and in many ways stepping away from the intimate rhythms of home and kinship in order to belong more completely to the Church and to the people they served.
That kind of life was not without sacrifice. Tobias would have watched siblings emigrate, marry, grow older, and die, all while he moved from parish to parish within the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore. He remained connected to his family, of course, but his life followed a different path — one shaped not by inheritance, marriage, or farming, but by vocation.
Seen in that light, the records that list Tobias as curate or parish priest are not merely occupational entries. They are markers of a life given over, step by step and year by year, to a calling he believed came from God.
Tobias's World
In the 1870s, at the time of Tobias’s first entry in Thom’s Directory, a Roman Catholic curate in Ireland was a newly ordained priest assigned to a parish, but subordinate to the parish priest. The parish priest carried canonical responsibility for the parish and was installed by the bishop of the diocese. The curate was there to support him in all aspects of parish duties.
I found a short passage in a text titled The Rise and Fall of Stations in Ireland that offers a small glimpse into the life of a curate.
"The story opens with the local parish priest announcing from the altar before the end of mass on Sunday that he will hold Stations Monday through Friday at the houses of five of his more substantial and respectable parishioners, whom he then proceeds specifically to name. On the appointed day, the parish priest and his curate arrive early in the morning, by which time the near neighbours have gathered. The priests then hear the confessions of the assembled penitents, men and women, while their clerk sets up the portable altar for the celebration of mass. When the confessions are heard, one of the priests celebrates mass, and the people receive communion. After mass, the priests and their clerk take their breakfast with their host, his family, and some of the more respectable of the neighbours, who have also been invited. After breakfast, the priests examine and catechize the children, and hear the confessions of those they had not been able to attend to in the morning. The parish priest then proceeds to collect his dues and any arrears that may have accumulated from the head of each household present. This period of religious instruction, additional confessions, and collection of dues continues until dinner time. At three o'clock, the clergy, the host, his family, and a number of specially invited local notables, clerical and lay, sit down to dinner, and for three or four hours there is considérable eating, drinking, and merry-making, which takes the form of spirited conversation, storytelling, and singing, usually fuelled by generous libations of whiskey punch. The routine was repeated at each house during the week, and the Stations usually continued from some six to eight weeks, depending on the extent and population of the parish. They were, moreover, normally held twice a year, just before Christmas and after Easter. Finally, it should be noted that Stations were essentially a rural phenomenon because in the cities and larger towns they were not held in private houses but in the parish churches and chapels. Such then is the barebones of the custom of Stations that evolved into a national system between 1750 and 1850."
From: "The Rise and Fall of Stations in Ireland, 1750 - 1850" pp.19-32 in 'Chocs et ruptures en histoire religieuse' by Michael Lagree.
Turning back a few pages in this 1871 edition of Thom's Directory, I found an exact location for Tobias, along with the name of the Parish Priest and the nearest town.
He was curate at Ballyneale Parish, near Carrick-on-Suir, under Parish Priest, John Dee. Tobias would have been 28 years old at this time. From this time onward, Tobias spent his religious life in the Diocese of Waterford & Lismore.
There, Tobias was curate under Parish Priest Stephen Lonergan, and this time he was not the only curate. That likely suggests the parish had a busier life than the previous one.
It appears Tobias spent another two years in that parish. During this time, his mother Catherine Burke, née Crotty, died, and his youngest brother James left home for the United States. His younger brother John married and began his own married life near Pilltown in County Kilkenny.
By 1875, Tobias was curate in the neighbouring parish of Clogheen, under Parish Priest Patrick Meany.
In the following year, 1876, he can be found in the Parish of Rathcormack and Clonee, near Carrick-on-Suir once more.
He was still there in 1877,
and 1878.
The Parish Priest was Timothy Dowley, and again there was another curate, John Power, working in the parish alongside Tobias.
In 1879, Tobias moved to the parish of Passage, also known as East Passage. He was to remain there for 15 years, from 1879 to 1894.
During the years 1879 to 1881, he worked with a parish priest named Edmund O’Donnell, which is another interesting detail, as I am descended not only from the Burke family, but also from the O’Donnell family. I do not yet know if there is a connection, but it feels like a possibility worth keeping in mind.
Edmund O’Donnell appears to have moved on, or perhaps died, in 1882, because Tobias was then working under Parish Priest John Crotty and remained under him from 1882 to 1887 in that same parish.
Crotty, of course, was Tobias’s mother’s maiden name, which raises the possibility that the parish priest may have been a relative. Once again, that is something I cannot yet prove, but it is a thread I would very much like to follow further.
From 1888 to at least 1894, Tobias worked under Parish Priest Maurice Flynn. During those years, Tobias's older brother William, who had emigrated to Australia, died, as did their younger brother Maurice, who had remained on the family farm in County Kilkenny.
In 1896, things changed significantly for Tobias when he became a parish priest himself in the parish of Kilgobinet.
Tobias had acted as a curate for 25 years, which seems a rather lengthy period of time to remain in a subordinate role. Of course, given the times, the diocesan bishop may have had a very long list of priests awaiting appointment whenever a parish became vacant.
By the time Tobias was appointed parish priest, he was 53 years old.
As previously noted, Tobias was parish priest in Kilgobinet, near the town of Dungarvan. He remained there for about four years, and perhaps not surprisingly, he chose a man named Michael Burke as his curate. A relative? Very likely.
Tobias then moved on from the Parish of Kilgobinet. Information gleaned from the book titled 'Waterford & Lismore - A Compendious History of the United Dioceses' (published in 1937 and written by Patrick Power) states that the Reverend Tobias Burke became parish priest of the Parish of Aglish, upon the death of the Reverend Matthew Walsh in 1899.
Tobias was then 57 years old, and that is where he remained until his death at the end of 1917.
Tobias Burke died on 27 October 1917 at the age of 74, in the townland of Curraghmoreen, County Waterford. By then, all of his siblings had passed away. His two younger brothers, John and James, had died in 1902 and 1904 respectively.
In the 9 March 1918 edition of the Dungarvan Observer, a statutory notice to creditors appeared mentioning the Reverend Tobias Burke, who had died on 27 October 1917. The notice refers to a Tobias Burke, a John Burke, both farmers, and Rev. William Ormond as executors of the will.
This other Tobias Burke was likely a relative of my Tobias, though I have no idea yet where he fits into the family tree. Fingers crossed that answer appears one day.
The John Burke mentioned as an executor was also likely another relative, though again I cannot say for certain.
Reverend William Ormond is described as hailing from Kinsalebeg, Youghal, County Waterford. I find myself wondering about that connection too.
There was also an interesting item in the Dungarvan Observer dated 16 March 1918.
In his will, Tobias left charitable bequests to selected religious figures — the Abbot of Mount Melleray and Rev. William Ormond — so that they might offer prayers during Masses for his soul, the souls of his deceased family members, and the souls in purgatory. He also left a small amount to the Convent of the Sisters of Charity in Dublin to support their work among the poor.
That final gesture feels fitting.
The records I have uncovered show Tobias moving from parish to parish, year after year, quietly carrying out the duties of religious life. They do not tell me everything about the man himself, but they do reveal the shape of his life: one marked by devotion, service, and perseverance.
For a man who left behind no wife, no children, and no direct descendants to remember him in the ordinary way, these traces matter all the more.
They allow him to step forward again, not just as a name on my family tree, but as a real person — a son of James Burke and Catherine Crotty, a brother to my great grandmother Bridget, and a man who gave his life to the service of God and others.
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