Seymour of Lisnacody and Killagally Park

© Donal G. Burke 2013

The Seymours of Lisnacody, County Galway and later of Killagally Park, Belmont in King’s County descend from Charles Seymour, the founder of the family of Ballymore, Co. Galway who leased Ballymore Castle by the late seventeenth century or at the very least the earliest years of the eighteenth century. This Charles had four sons, the third son of whom, another Charles, married Hannah Donelan in 1739 and established himself on lands in the parish at Crow’s Nest in the parish of Clontuskert and where he constructed a new three storey house named Somerset. While Charles was succeeded at Somerset House by his eldest son Simon or Simeon, one of the younger sons of Charles, Richard Eyre Seymour married another Hannah, daughter of Charles Donelan in 1773 and came to be seated at Lisnacody and Cloughbrack near Eyrecourt.[i]

Richard Eyre Seymour had two sons and three daughters. His eldest son, Thomas of Cloughbrack married a Miss Bloomfield, whose descendants in the male line would be extinct by the beginning of the twentieth century. Eyre Seymour of Lisnacody, the second son of Richard Eyre Seymour, married Catherine (commonly known as Kitty), daughter of John Bolingbroke of Old Castle, County Mayo. He had two sons, Donelan and Edward and two daughters, Elizabeth and Kate and died on the 20^th July 1852. His wife survived him by twenty two years, dying in 1874 at the age of ninety-one years.

Rev. Donelan Bolingbroke Seymour, born in 1815, eldest son of Eyre and Catherine Seymour, pursued a career in the Protestant Church of Ireland and was appointed Rural Dean of Clonmacnoise. He married in 1840 Harriet Louisa, daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Joseph Brooke, Bart. and by her had at least one son, Edward and three daughters; Louise, Lizzie and Harrieta, all of whom emigrated to Australia, with Edward Seymour settling in Sydney, New South Wales. After the death of Harriet in 1847 at the age of thirty-three years, Rev. Donelan Bolingbroke Seymour remarried in 1848. His second wife was Augusta Emily, daughter of Rev. Thomas Shuttleworth Grimshawe, by whom he had at least seven more children, a son, Charles Barham Eyre Seymour, born in 1848 and two daughters; Charlotte and Georgina. Four of their children died in infancy and were buried at Moystown churchyard in King’s County; Bolinbroke Livins Seymour, who died in November of 1849, Bolinbroke Richmond Seymour, who died in 1851, Grimshaw Eyre Seymour in 1853 and Cathleen Emily Eva Seymour in June of 1856.[ii] Rev. Donelan Bolingbroke Seymour died in April 1884.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Charles Barham Eyre Seymour, J.P. was seated at Killagally Park, Belmont in King’s County.