The Irish Palatines were a group of German Protestant refugees, who were settled on the Castle Oliver estate during the latter part of the 18th century. Originally from the Rhineland region of Germany, they fled their homeland due to war, religious persecution, and economic hardship. In 1709, the British government brought approximately 3,000 Palatines to Ireland as part of a colonisation effort. While more than two-thirds returned to England and Germany over the next three years, most who stayed settled on the estate of Sir Thomas Southwell of Castle Matrix near Rathkeale, County Limerick.
Around 1759, a secondary colony expanded to the Castle Oliver estate and the surrounding Ballyhoura region, as tenants in areas such as Glenosheen, Ballyorgan, and Ballyriggin. They were given small farms of around 30 acres at favourable rents. Today, surnames like Young, Ruttle, Teskey, and Sparling remain associated with Palatine heritage in Ireland.
It is tempting to speculate that the earliest known ancestor of the Winters family line, John Winter, was one of the Irish Palatine settlers who later relocated to the Castle Oliver Estate. The surname does appear in the lists of Palatine emigrants: a Henry Winter and family arrived in England in 1709, and a John Winter was a Palatine emigrant from Amsterdam to Pennsylvania in 1737. However, the surname does not appear in lists of the Palatines who settled in Ireland. Moreover, the surname Winter was widespread across Northern Europe at the time, and is not regarded as being specific to the German Palatinate.
So it is more likely that the presence of the progenitor John Winter in an area settled by Palatines is coincidental. Indeed, an anecdotal reference to this is made in a journal article by Vivien Hick,1
which describes later Winters descendants as "Associated Families":"The Palatines in the Kilfinnane and Glenosheen area in the 1950s were according to Pilib Ó Conaill: Barkman; Barrer; Bovanizer; Fitzelle; Legere; Piper; Schumacher; Sherrit (Sherwood); and Steep. Associated families were Henchy; Winters; Childs; Bishop; Thornhill, and Touchstone."
There appears to have been little or no intermarriage between the Castle-Oliver Winters families and the Palatine community, which may also be significant.
While the Winters surname might not have been of Irish Palatine origin, the Barrer name was. The above quote by Vivien Hick specifically mentions the Barrer name, and further evidence can be found in the records of Rathkeale Church of Ireland, which go back as far as 1742.
The Rathkeale Church of Ireland registry records several Barrer baptisms and burials. The earliest entry is the baptism of Margaret Barrer to Thomas and Ellenor on May 16, 1747. Her mother, Ellenor, was baptised into the Church of Ireland on July 7, 1748. A note accompanying the record states: “Nee Donnell, wife of Thomas, Conversion.” This suggests that Margaret’s father, Thomas Barrer, was born before 1730, possibly making him the son of one of the original Palatine immigrants who settled on the Rathkeale estate.
Thomas and Ellen 's third child was a son named Thomas, who was baptised in 1753 at Rathkeale. Unfortunately, there is no further information about him. However, it is possible that he was the father of the progenitor Thomas Barrer of the documented Barrer line, who is likely to have been born in the 1780s. The generational fit is right, and the name Thomas is consistent with an Irish naming convention where the first child is named after their grandfather.
However, the Barrers may not have arrived on the Castle Oliver estate with the post-1759 migration of Palatines from Rathkeale. No documents have been discovered recording them on the Oliver estate prior to Thomas’s lease of 1818 at Kilgarriff. In contrast, there are a number of records of the Barrer surname in Co. Cork.
Could the Barrers have arrived on the Oliver estate from Rathkeale via Co. Cork? Historical sources consistently note that by 1720, only 185 Palatine families remained in Ireland out of over 500 initially settled. Of these, 19 families are said to have stayed in County Cork, with the majority (around 150-166) concentrated in County Limerick, particularly on the Southwell estate near Rathkeale. Therefore, one possible scenario is that Thomas, the son of Thomas and Ellenor of Rathkeale who was baptised in 1753, moved to Co. Cork where other Palatine families were settled. His possible son, the Barrer progenitor Thomas, then moved to Kilgarriff on the Castle Oliver estate at the beginning of the 19th Century.