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First Mortons
in 1740's
Most Mortons arrived Ireland in the northern province of Ulster after the plantations of the 17th Century. Aunt Nancy, in her 1968 Morton Family History, makes mention of County Armagh in Ulster as a place related to their origins. Very few Mortons were to be found south of Dublin, where the oldest of the Mortons settled in the 13th Century.  It appears our Mortons, who are found in Tinahely, County Wicklow, arrived there in the mid-18th Century, and they probably descend from one couple as early as the 1740's.

...First Mortons in Ireland

...why just one Morton couple?

It is not recorded who were the first Mortons in the Tinahely area, but in the church of the Parish of Kilcommon, there are recorded many people we can call the first Morton generation.
Mary Morton,
d. 1766
The oldest legible grave in the church yard is for Mary Morton who died in 1766. It's a large "table grave" that has since collapsed, and any other names on it have worn away. The picture below shows a portion of her stone as it looked in 1968.
See some Morton graves in Tinahely Church Yard
George Morton MD, 
d. 1780
Doctor George Morton, Esquire, of Johnstown in the Parish of Kilcommon died in 1780 and is also buried in the Tinahely church yard. His stone includes a memorial for Ellen Duggan, born circa 1770, who died in 1858. Their grave is just off the left edge of the above picture.
Other Mortons of the 1740's generation include John, b.c. 1743, Henry, b.c. 1744, Jane, b.c. 1747, and William, b.c. 1749. There was only one Morton birth recorded in each of the next two decades: James, b.c.1758, and Sarah, b.c. 1764.

Histories: mid-1700's , 1760's , 1770's

Any one of these may be the ancestor(s) of our Francis Morton (1827-1911), who left Tinahely for Canada in 1880.

Continue with the next generation.