placenamesBallingarrane
Baile an Gharráin
Known locally as Ballingrane, this Limerick settlement retains a church commemorating two emigrants associated with the beginnings of Methodism in New York.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Baile an Gharráin · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballingarrane · English · main form
- Ballingrane · English · main form · local name
Place & story
A community described by John Wesley
John Wesley’s journal gives a contemporary glimpse of Ballingarrane’s Palatine community. In 1758 he counted fifty families among the German settlements around Rathkeale. Returning in June 1765, he found a much reduced community and blamed landlords for allowing tenants to leave despite their hard work. Some had moved elsewhere in Ireland and others to America. The entries, reproduced by William Crook in 1866, document both the settlement’s scale and the movement of families away from it. [2]
Philip Embury and Barbara Heck
Philip Embury was baptised at Ballingrane in September 1728, the son of a German Palatine immigrant. A carpenter and Methodist lay preacher, he emigrated from Limerick to New York in 1760. There he began preaching to family and friends in 1766, encouraged by his cousin Barbara Heck. The growing congregation eventually built its chapel in John Street. Their work gave the small Limerick community a lasting connection with the establishment of organised Methodism in North America. [3]
The Embury Heck Memorial Church
Ballingrane’s Methodist church was built by the local Palatine community in 1766 on land donated by the Heck family, replacing an earlier meeting house. Memorial tablets recall Barbara Heck and Philip Embury and their American work. The adjoining cemetery, laid out in the nineteenth century, preserves a concentration of Palatine surnames, including Shier, Switzer, Sparling, Teskey and Bovenizer. Together, church and burial ground retain a visible record of families whose history extends beyond Ireland. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Limerick
- Barony
- Connello Lower
- Civil parish
- Nantinan
- Coordinates
- 52.55265, -8.94365 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414025 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballingarrane. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Ireland and the centenary of American Methodism, pages 25–27: Wesley’s journal extracts · William Crook, 1866, reproducing John Wesley’s journal
- Embury, Philip, biography a 2918 · Vivien Hick, Dictionary of Irish Biography, revised 2021
- Methodist Church, Ballingrane · Cappagh: A Sense of Place
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2018-08-07. How this page was prepared.