Early documents record the origins of our Winters family in the South East of County Limerick, near the Tipperary/Cork border. The earliest known ancestor is John Winter, who was born before 1744 and lived in 1785 at Ballintubber, County Limerick, Ireland.
According to the records of the Castle Oliver Estate, the Rt. Hon. Silver Oliver leased 34 acres in 1785 to John Winter in 'Ballintubber' (likely the present-day townland of Ballintober, about 3 miles due east of Kilfinnane). Castle Oliver was the seat of the Oliver family, who had resided there since the 1600s, and the estate encompassed around 20,000 acres.
We are fortunate that John Winter's 1785 lease was a "lease for 3 lives", as it provided the names of three of his children: John Winter, then aged 20, Chris Winter aged 17 and Phil Winter aged 8. (A lease for lives was granted for the duration of the lifetimes of a specified number of named individuals, typically three.)
Unfortunately, there is no information available about John Winter's place of birth or early years. However, recent Y-DNA tests show that the Castle-Oliver Winters line shares a common ancestor with descendants of some Winter(s) families in Co. Cork, documented in this Winters Family Tree on Ancestry. The common ancestor likely lived one or two generations earlier than John Winter. Due to the lack of documentary records, it is not possible to identify this person. More information can be found in the Stories menu item DNA Evidence of Earlier Ancestry.
Around 1759 onwards, several Palatine families from Rathkeale were re-settled on the Castle Oliver Estate. However, there’s no evidence that the Winter(s) family descended from the Palatine immigrants. This is discussed in more detail in the Stories menu item The Irish Palatines.
The first mention of the Winter(s) family at Upper Sunville was in the 1833 Tithe Applotment Book. It recorded a John Winter (assumed to be the son named in the lease for three lives) paying a tithe on 27 acres of land on the Castle Oliver estate. The farm at Upper Sunville remained in the family for the next 130 years, through four generations.
More detailed information about this period can be found in several items in the Stories menu, including:
The names of direct descendants and spouses of this Family Line can be found in the Winters Surname Index.
The family history can also be explored through:
- A Chart that visually represents the relationships and family groups visually.
- Royal Irish Constabulary Service Records.
- A Schematic Diagram that shows the connections between the various Family Lines documented on this website.