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Your ancestor Thomas Meade probably emigrated from one of these three counties in Ireland - Limerick, Clare or Cork - that are traditionally associated with the Meade family. His wife Catherine(?) Manning should be easier to trace as that is an unusual name in Ireland, so there would be few families of that name. It sounds English, and Catherine was probably descended from an English settler or soldier who may have arrived in Ireland in the 17th century. If you can find a Manning family in either Limerick, Clare or Cork than you should also find Thomas Meade's family; it appears from what you said that they married before emigrating around 1857. While it is unlikely that their marriage registration could be traced, other (land) records - Griffith's Valuations- may place the Manning and Meade families in a local town or barony in a rural area. In those days people married within a very restricted area, generally no larger than a day's horse ride, or even a long walk between valleys. Thomas Meade may have been a younger son of a family that leased a small farm. His wife, the daughter of a family on a neighboring farm. It is easier to trace rural families - who remained in the same place for generations - than people living in towns, who moved around a lot, with few traces left behind. Until the Irish famine of the mid 1840s, Irish families remained pretty much in the same place where they were born and were to die. The famine changed that, sending a million migrants overseas, most to America. But your Thomas Meade didn't emigrate until 1857, which suggests his family survived the famine and maybe benefited from it. Those farmers who did survive generaly expanded their tiny farms by leasing the adjacent lands abandoned by those who emigrated or who had died. Someone who didn't leave until 1857 could have come from a better economic background than those forced to flee a decade before. It's all relative of course. He left for a better life in America. Anyway, it's a way to start, if you are really interested in getting back to your origins. Thomas was a christian name often used by the Meades, who were generally Catholics, although one branch was Protestant.
Regards Alan (Meade) Fitzgerald
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