The Tutty Family

Our great-great-great grandparents on our mother’s side were John Pennefather and Emily Courtenay who married in St. Mary’s, Dublin, on January 2nd 1848.  John and Emily had a daughter, Isabella Anna Pennefather (aka Mama) who married Charles Jones, decorator;  their daughter, Tennie, married Joseph Edwards Dickson and was the mother of our maternal grandmother, Vera Williams, née Dickson.

Emily Courtenay, who married John Pennefather in Dublin in 1848, was the daughter of Frederick Hall Courtenay and Mary Tuty or Tutty of 27 Wellington Street.

Frederick Hall Courtenay (1791 - 1875) was married to Mary Tutty  (1816 – 1878) who died in 1878.  I discovered her family name in the parish register of St. James' Catholic Church. when their son, Thomas Courtney/Courtenay married Mary Browne on 5th June 1859.  This register has her name spelt as 'Tuty' whereas an Edwardian Courtenay genealogy has her named as 'Tutty' of Carnew, Co. Wicklow.  

Ancestry DNA Link:

My Ancestry DNA shows up a link with a user ‘HoldstockM’ who is a direct descendant of a William Tutty (1903 – 1982) and Roseanne Ffrench (1910 – 1996) of Dublin, and whose DNA is also shared by other descendants of Frederick Courtenay and Mary Tutty.

Was William Tutty (1903 – 1982) a member of the same Tutty family as our Mary Tutty who married Frederick Courtenay? I have pieced together a rudimentary genealogy of HoldstockM’s Tutty ancestry from the sparse records available.  The earliest traceable ancestor of this line was possibly the following Isaac Tutty who died in 1829.

Isaac Tutty (died 1829):

The earliest member of this Dublin-based Protestant Tutty family that I can identify is Isaac Tutty who is contemporary to my immediate ancestor, Mary Tutty.  The two might be siblings or cousins.   A grandson of Mary Tutty was later named as Robert ISAAC Alleyne Moore in 1871 – his parents were Mary Tutty’s daughter, Mary Courtenay, and Herbert Gilman Moore.

Isaac Tutty of the Dublin Horse Patrol died on 14^th September 1829 during a riot at Broadstone and left a widow Ann Tutty who petitioned the Lord Lieutenant for relief in November 1829 – this information comes from the newspapers of the time. 

The above Isaac Tutty might not be related to us in any way but the name ‘Isaac’ reverberates down through the following Tutty family whose DNA we match….

William Tutty (1828 – 1872):

My DNA match, HoldstockM, descends from a William Tutty who had been born in Dublin in 1828.

The Irish Court of Chancery Records note a document of 5^th February 1833 in which was mentioned the infant William Tutty – in legal terms ‘infant’ refers to a child under 18 – whose guardian was Henry Keegan and whose next friends were Elizabeth Grier and Samuel Grier.  No other details were given but William Tutty would later marry a daughter of Samuel Grier.

On 18^th August 1851 in St. Thomas’s, this William Tutty, born 1828,  a widower and dealer of Great Britain Street (now Parnell Street), son of bricklayer Isaac Tutty, married a servant Margaret Grier of 6 Aldborough Place who was the daughter of gardener Samuel Grier.  The witnesses were William Grier and Elizabeth Cope and the wedding took place in the Scots’ Presbyterian Church on Lower Gloucester Street.  (Earlier a William Tutty married Sarah Robotham in 1845 but it’s unclear if this was the same William Tutty and if Sarah Robotham was his first wife).  Was the bricklayer, Isaac Tutty, the same man as the policeman Isaac Tutty who died in 1828?

Another daughter of Samuel Grier was Elizabeth Grier who had married a soldier, Joseph Cope, son of John Cope, in St.Bridget’s on 22^nd August 1849.  Elizabeth’s address was Great Ship St and the witnesses were a Couch and Bridget Cormack.  Elizabeth Cope acted as witness to her sister’s 1851 wedding to William Tutty.

An unnamed child was born to William Tutty and Margaret Grier of 3 Newmarket on 1^st September 1859 and was subsequently baptised in St. Luke’s Church.    A James Tutty was born to William and Margaret of 46 Newmarket on 27^th January 1862 and Susanna Tutty was born at 78 Cork Street on 26^th December 1857.

The family of William Tutty and Margaret Grier struggled financially.  Margaret must have died young since, in 1870 the Poor Law and Board of Guardian Records show the widowed William Tutty being admitted to the workhouse due to illness.  A mason, he gave his last address as 57 New Street and the records confirm that he was Protestant.  The previous year, on 5^th May 1869, he had been admitted again – the records note him as a widowed Protestant bricklayer of 46 New Market.  He was discharged on 13^th July 1869.  A later note in the same workhouse register shows his 13 -year -old son William Tutty who had been admitted along with his father.  William Tutty of 59 New Street died in the workhouse on 28^th November 1872 – a mason by trade, he died a widower aged 51.

Another son of William Tutty (born 1828) and of Margaret Grier was the Protestant bricklayer Isaac Tutty who was admitted to the workhouse for a week on 10^th February 1870.  Isaac Tutty joined the army – he had been born in St. Luke’s, Dublin, in 1852 and was discharged from the East Lancashire Regiment on 23^rd September 1884.  Isaac Tutty died aged 56 on board the ‘SS Cambria’ at the North Wall in Dublin on 11^th July 1907 – his very sudden death from heart disease was reported in the papers of the day who gave his last address as 51 Brooklyn Street, Wandsworth Road, London. An employee of the London and North Western Railway, he had been visiting his sister Susan Greer in Dublin at the time of his death.   The beneficiary of his will of 1907 named his widow as Fanny Tutty of 51 Brooklands St, Wandsworth.  They had married in 1881 in Hampshire, and she was Fanny Elizabeth Harfield.  In 1890 Fanny and Isaac Tutty were living at 14 Charles St in Lambeth, London, with their children George, William, Annie, Mary and Albert.  By 1901, James and Elizabeth had been added to the list.

Isaac Tutty had been visiting his sister Susan Greer at the time of his death in Dublin in 1906.  Susanna Tutty had been baptised by her parents, William Tutty and Margaret Greer of 78 Cork Street in St. Catherine’s on 7^th May 1858.  A Protestant servant, Susan Tutty of 4 Nashes Court spent time in the workhouse when she was 16 – she left the institution on 7^th October 1875.  

On 20^th June 1882 in St. Nicholas Without,  Susan Tutty, the daughter of mason William Tutty and Margaret Grier, married brewery man Richard Greer, the son of Richard Greer who was also a brewery man. The bride was living at 11 Coombe St while the groom’s address was 9 Mountjoy Parade – witnesses were Robert Watson Greer and Helena Mary Rock (both witnesses were the groom’s siblings).  The bride’s mother, Margaret Grier, might have been a relation of the groom.    Richard Greer/Grier had been born in the early 1860s to a clerk of Mecklenburgh St, Richard Greer and to Mary Anne Watson.  Richard’s mother, Mary Anne Watson (1825 – 1906) had been born in Rathdrum, Wicklow, to John and Mary Watson – this from their descendant, Damien Rock, who put his family tree up on Ancestry.      Along with Richard Greer, Richard and Mary Anne of Mecklenburgh St, also had Margaret Greer (1871 – 1872), William Greer who had been born in 1865 and Robert Watson Greer.

By 1901 Richard Greer and Susan Tutty were living at 14.2 Common St, North Dublin, with their children Margaret, Isabella, William, John, Thomas and the younger Robert Watson Greer who had been named after his paternal uncle.

On 20^th April 1906 Margaret Greer, daughter of Richard Greer and Susan Tutty, married Frederick Albert Arden in Derry.  He was a solder and the son of brass moulder Robert Arden.  According to his UK military records, he had been born in London and had one older brother Harry Arden of Shoreditch.  The children of Frederick Arden and Margaret Greer were Susan Alice Arden born 1907 in Derry, Frederick Albert Arden born 1908 in Tidworth, Lilian Isabella Arden born 1910 in Aldershot, William John Arden born 1911 in Aldershot, Richard Arden born 1913 in Devonport and Margaret May Arden born 1916 in Camberwell.

Frederick Arden and Margaret Greer had Susan Alice Arden who went on to marry Andrew Paton and whose descendant Anne Jones is another of our DNA matches on Ancestry.

Robert Watson Greer, who witnessed the marriage of Susan Tutty to his brother, Richard, in 1882, died a widower aged 72 at 36 Commons St., North Wall, on 19^th October 1934 – his son was William Greer of 15 Eblana Villas.  Robert Watson Greer, son of Richard Greer and Mary Anne Watson had married twice, first wife being Ellen Reynolds of Mecklenburg St, and then Annie Graham of Commons St.

Robert Watson Greer, son of Richard Greer and Mary Anne Watson, lived at 36 Commons Street – in 1911 at 33.1 Commons St. lived another member of this same Greer family.  This was James Norton Greer (born UK 1873 – died Dublin 1942) who was the son of Wicklow-born John Greer and Isabella Teer who had married in Dublin in 1866 (the witnesses were William Hamilton Teer and Ann Ardill).   John Greer, porter and then boiler man, was the son of commercial clerk Richard Greer and Mary Anne Watson – John had been born in Wicklow, presumably at the home of his mother Mary Anne Watson.  John Greer and wife Isabella Teer must have spent a few years working in England where at least 3 of their children were born – James, Ellen and Richard Greer – but had returned to Dublin at some stage.   James Norton Greer died in Dublin in 1942 and administration of his affairs was granted to policeman Henry Greer who was probably his younger brother.

William Tutty (born 1856):

William Tutty was the son of William Tutty and Margaret Grier.  William lost his mother before he was 13 years of age and spent time in the workhouse along with his widowed father.  The Irish prison records also record his serving time for malicious assault aged 19 in 1874.  He had been born in Cork Street, was Protestant, worked as a bricklayer and his last address had been at Ward’s Hill.

William Tutty (born 1856) had married twice.  Although being born to a Protestant family, his first marriage occurred in a Catholic church, St. Nicholas of Myra, on 7^th January 1881 to Ellen McEntyre the daughter of the late plumber William McEntyre.  Both bride and groom were living at 106 Francis Street in 1881.  William Tutty and Ellen McEntyre had had a son, William Tutty, at 106 Francis Street 25^th November 1880. 

First wife, Ellen, died of TB/phthisis on 10^th September 1899 and William Tutty (born 1856) of 61 Cork Street remarried on 18^th February 1900.  The wedding took place in St. Kevin’s, and the bride was the widow Catherine Fox of 86 St. Stephen’s Green South who was the daughter of currier William Handcock.  The witnesses were John Baker and Mary Anne Buckley.  Catherine Handcock’s first marriage had been to James Fox of Francis Square, the son of John Fox.

This family were living at 3 Brabazon Row in 1911.  William Tutty was a bricklayer.  With him and Catherine were Catherine’s 14-year-old daughter, Mary Fox, James Tutty aged 11, William Tutty aged 7 who had been born in the Coombe hospital on 5^th August 1903, who married Rosanna Christina Ffrench and from whom HoldstockM descends) and Susan Tutty aged 5 (Susan Tutty was born to William Tutty and Catherine Handcock at 10 Ward’s Hill on 25^th October 1905).   James Tutty had been admitted to the workhouse in 1907 aged only five – he had skin disease and his last address had been 9 Braithwaite Street.  Catherine’s 12 year old son, William Fox, died of shock on 15^th July 1906 after being hit by a tram on Victoria Quay.

In 1915 William Tutty (born 1856) was noted in the Irish prison records as being fined for having assaulted a Mary Browne.  His last known address was 2a Brabazon Row, his next of kin was his wife, Kate Tutty, and he was listed as a bricklayer.