Searching for Information on McMahon Family Tailors of Main Street, Castleisland

Members of the West London based McMahon family pictured on Main Street, Castleisland on Monday in search of the premises in which their ancestors conducted a tailoring business up to the early 1900s. ©Photograph: John Reidy 23-9-2024

The Castleisland Community Museum committee members are grateful to all the dancers and gymnasts, musicians, poets and singers who have shared their talents with the attendances on the two nights of sessions to date. Thanks also goes to local artist Rachel Gallagher for being the first to hang an exhibition of her work in the museum. The committee is also very thankful to its sponsors and contributors who have played a major role in the setting up and running of the museum since its opening on July 27th. **There are so many suggestions of events for which the space could be used and all will be considered with a keen awareness of the onset of the winter ahead. We’ll keep you posted.**

**A Slater’s directory of tailors in Castleisland from 1881 places John McMahon on Main Street – but where on the street did the McMahons live and work up to the early 1900s?**

Monday was another red letter day in the short history of the Castleisland Community Museum as its opening times have changed to 2pm to 6pm daily from and including Monday to Friday.

That was due to Tommy Dom O’Connor taking on the role of museum attendant and keeping the door open and the light on for an allotted number of hours each week – with out of hours opening times an option with volunteers.

Monday also saw a visit by a West London family of McMahons who visited Castleisland after their family roots search led them here.

Their search centred on the nearby St. Stephen’s Cemetery where they found the burial place of their ancestors who remained in Ireland in the late 19^th century.

Tailors on Main Street

The information they have is that the McMahons ran a tailoring business somewhere on Main Street.

There is a brief mention of a John McMahon a tailor on Main Street, Castleisland under an 1881 trades and services directory in the late Fr. Kieran O’Shea’s 1981 published Castleisland Church and People.

He is also mentioned with equal brevity in a Slater’s Directory covering the same era.

Having traced their family roots from West London to Main Street, Castleisland and, I suppose more tangibly, to the family headstone near the western gable of the former St. Stephen’s Church, they would like to take their search to its logical conclusion.

Any Scrap of Information

They will send us more information over the coming days and we will share it here in the hope that we can pinpoint where exactly on Main Street, Castleisland John McMahon worked and lived out his life.

If there is anyone out there who has any scrap of information on the McMahon family of tailors who operated from a Main Street base up to and for a while after the late 1880s turned into the early 1900s – it would be greatly appreciated by the family.

Anyone with information can ring 087 2359467 or email: jreidy@mainevalleypost.com

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