A Millstreet Miscellany (3) - Aubane Historical Society

After the Powell family had moved to Dublin, Flintfield House passed to Timothy
O'Mahony. After his death in 1911, the house passed to his son, John O'Mahony. In recent decades,
Flintfield has been owned by the McSweeney family. The current owner is Noreen McSweeney,
who inherited the property from her husband.
Coole House
Across the Blackwater river, to the south of Flintfield House and only a few fields away, lies
Coole House (sometimes referred to as Coolmore or Coolemore). In his book, "Guide to Irish
Country Houses", Mark Bence-Jones estimates Coole House, the residence of Herbert Baldwin
O'Donnell, as being built circa 1760. Herbert O'Donnell was born in 1783 and married Sarah
Teresa Ellis in 1811.
Herbert was a land agent to Captain Henry Wallis of Drishane Castle, one of the largest land
owners in the Millstreet area. Apart from his duties as a land agent, we know that he also served as
a Justice of the Peace, farmed 300 acres and owned a mill. He was a warden at St. Anna's Church
for about 15 years. In the mid-1840s, he gave evidence before the Devon Commission (see Local
Evidence to the Devon Commission - Aubane Historical Society). The Commission sought to
collect information on the land issue and put forward recommendations for its solution. Herbert
died in 1856 at the age of 73 and his wife, Sarah, in 1860 at the age of 69.
Herbert's father, John O'Donnell of Egmont, was a barrister. Egmont lies about 19 miles
north-east of Millstreet, an area that was also home to the Perceval family (Earls of Egmont). John
O'Donnell was the eldest son of John O'Donnell of Egmont, a barrister, and Mary Freeman of
Ballinguile. Born after 1751, he trained at the Middle Temple, one of the four London Inns of
Court, and qualified as a barrister in 1788.
We have been unable to find any record of whom John married. However, the first and
middle names "Herbert Baldwin" given to his son indicate that his wife was almost certainly from
the Baldwin family of county Cork. All Baldwin's of county Cork from this period, descended from
a late 16 th
century marriage between Henry Baldwin and Elinor Herbert, granddaughter of Anne
Parr, sister to Lady Catherine Parr, surviving Queen of King Henry VIII. Elinor Herbert was a
direct descendant of King Edward III. Generations of subsequent Baldwin male offspring were
given "Herbert" as Christian names.
Another almost certain royal lineage comes via John O'Donnell's mother, Mary Freeman.
Burke's Landed Gentry does not mention the 1751 marriage at Ballinguile between Mary Freeman
and John O'Donnell senior. What we do learn from Burke's, however, is that Richard Freeman and
his wife, Judith Crofts of Churchtown, were the first of the Freeman family to settle at Ballinguile.
In 1706, Richard Freeman leased Ballinguile from Sir John Perceval (1 st
Earl of Egmont). Mary
Freeman would certainly have descended from this Richard and his wife, Judith. Judith Crofts was a
direct descendant of King Henry III.
Herbert and Sarah O'Donnell had four daughters (Mary, Eliza, Teresa and Sarah) and three
sons (John, Nicholas Michael and Herbert Eyre) that we know of. Of the daughters, Teresa married,
in 1858, Dr. Denis O'Connell of Flintfield House and Sarah married, in 1851, Adeodato da Silva
Lima, a Vice-Consul for Portugal. Herbert's 2 nd
eldest daughter, Eliza, died relatively young in
1835 and Mary, the eldest, died in 1858.
Herbert and Sarah's eldest son, John, married Mary Jane Cantrell in Guernsey on the 19 th
of
April, 1844. As John's marriage took place just before the outbreak of famine in Ireland, it's
possible that he did not return to the country.
The second eldest son, Herbert Eyre (b.c.1818) married on the 29 th
October 1845, in Cove,
Co. Cork, Anastasia Constantina Woollett (b.1822). Anastasia's father was a prosperous London
coal merchant of good family. Herbert was admitted to the King's Inns in 1836, where he trained as
a solicitor. We find directory listings for him practicing in various towns around Co. Cork and
Dublin. There is an immigration record of him arriving in Victoria, Australia on board the "Queen
of the Mersey" in May 1866; he was accompanied by Herbert O'Donnell aged 18, whom we can
assume was his son. Then, in the early 1870s he surfaces as a solicitor in Wangaratta (about 150
miles from Melbourne, Australia) and in 1871 he applied to be admitted to the Queensland Bar.
54