placenamesBallynacor
Baile na Cora
Quaker family records and emigrant correspondence connect this Seagoe townland with communities in Lurgan and New Zealand.
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 na Cora · Irish · main form · validated name
- Ballynacor · English · main form
- Ballynacorr · English · main form · local name
Place & story
A seventeenth-century Quaker household
Genealogist Fredric Z. Saunders identifies Stephen and Isabel Atkinson as residents of Ballynacor and members of Lurgan’s Quaker monthly meeting. His research cites the 1664 hearth-money roll, which records Steeven Attkinson at Bellenecorr, and Friends’ registers for the family’s later history. Stephen died in 1699; an index preserves evidence of his will, although the will itself does not survive. These records place a named household here before the later development of nearby Craigavon. [2]
Elizabeth Ferguson’s journey
Elizabeth Ferguson, later Elizabeth Ayson, came from Ballynacor in Seagoe parish. Angela McCarthy’s research traces her assisted passage to New Zealand with her sister Hessie Jane aboard the British Queen, arriving in Westland in February 1884. Both sisters were described as machinists. Elizabeth later married the Scottish-born farmer Robert McIntosh Ayson and settled at Warepa. Letters from her sister Mary Ann Gilpin near Portadown, and one from her brother Hugh, preserved family connections across the distance. [3]
The townland in 1901
The 1901 census records Ballynacor within Kernan electoral division and Seagoe parish. The townland had 141 residents, with 33 inhabited houses and seven unoccupied ones. Its population had fallen from 192 in 1881 and 174 in 1891. These are figures for the rural townland, providing a view of the local settlement before the twentieth-century planning and expansion of the Craigavon area. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Armagh
- Barony
- Oneilland East
- Civil parish
- Seagoe
- Coordinates
- 54.46016, -6.42693 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 56428 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Ballynacor. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Genealogy of Atkinson Family of CountyArmagh, revised8January2019 · Fredric Z. Saunders
- Irish Migrants in NewZealand1840–1937:The DesiredHaven(2005), introductionp13 · Angela McCarthy, The Boydell Press
- Census of Ireland1901, CountyArmagh, Ballynacor/Kernan · Census of Ireland / Central Statistics Office
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-12-20. How this page was prepared.