Mc Cartans of County Leitrim
This account of the McCartans settling in County Leitrim was obtained from Patrick Tohill in Carrick on Shannon. The information originator was Peter McCartan of Kiltygarry, County Leitrim:
This statement was taken around 1900.
'If there is any means of showing such information, I would like to put on record the only tradition I ever met in my 20 years in Connaught, of people here whose ancestors came from Ulster in the upheaval of the plantation. It is that sometime between the Battle of the Boyne and Queen Anne a convoy of families all of the three surnames Mc Cartan, Mc Goohan and Mc Guckian vacated Dolly's Brae near Belfast and moved at first to County Longford, but failing there they settled in the townland of Kiltygarry near Ballinamore in County Leitrim. They are still living there but the surnames have scattered further. McGuckian is so widespread over south Leitrim as to cause incredibility... The McCartans are in fair number round Kiltygarry and for miles out. The McGoohans declined'.
After leaving Dolly's Brae, Castlewellan, County Down, in a time of great upheaval, these families, with all the belongings and livestock, they could muster, trekked firstly to Ballinamuck in County Longford. This area has some of the poorest land in Ireland. Most of the Mc Cartans had moved into the neighbouring county of Leitrim by 1760, although today the surname has survived around Drumlish in county Longford.
In county Leitrim the McCartans settled around the town of Ballinamore. A lease dated 1756 in the Registry of Deeds, Dublin, gives Hugh Mc Cartan, Laurence Mc Cartan and Patrick Mc Cartan as tenants of lands on the shores of Lough Garadice. Their landlord was William Gore, from whom they rented lands in Aughlinavallen, Carricknaheegan, and Clinabothin.
In Fenagh graveyard, near the ancient monastery founded by Saint Caillin in the sixth century, are an abundance of McCartan gravestone-inscriptions.