Developing an accurate outline regarding the life of Thomas McCauley (1888-1961), has been challenging for me. As I was to find many clues were right in front of me, but fragmented. I believe it was a lack of familiarity with the family and locating some key documents earlier, that were barriers. As a member of what I consider to be, the Fermanagh ten, the ten children of Bernard McCauley the 1^st, and Anne Kerrin, Thomas is the last one to receive a first meaningful post here in this genealogy blog. Thomas is the youngest of them all.   

A good place to start this story are the notes my father left.  Bernard McCauley the 4th wrote these notes regarding Thomas.  My father’s notes indicate that Thomas served in WWI and stayed in England after the war. Thomas married a nurse named Elsie and had a son named Eric.  A copy of Bernard’s notes in his handwriting is below.

I was able to secure the civil birth record of Thomas McCauley. I have attached that below. He was reflected in the first family record I would find, that being the 1901 Irish censes. In that record Thomas was aged 12 and his occupation was that of a coachman. I have speculated that he was in service to the Earl who lived at Florencourt, not a mile from the farm on Newtate Road.

One day I found a break though clue while working on Thomas’s sister, Ellen McCauley-Auchman’s profile. Ellen McCauley Aunchman made efforts to visit her family. In 1947 at age 60, Ellen boarded the passenger ship Cunard to visit someone at 16 Ashdell Road in Broomhill Sheffield England. I wondered who this could be and slowly realized that Thomas was the strongest possibility. I still had no other corroborating documents about Thomas’s life. A copy of Ellen’s travel record is below.

In the summer of 2025, I did another expansive search using all of the various spellings of the McCauley name and was able to find a corroborating document in the form of the 1921 censes for England.  This placed Thomas in England at the end of the war, married to Elsie and having a son named Eric. Thomas’s occupation was that of a colliery worker watchman This means he was a night watchman at a coal mine.  Using information from the 1921 English Censes, I was able to complete a search and locate probate information and establish a date of death.  After his was service, Thomas McCauley it appears that he stayed in the area of Sheffield, England.   Below is the actual 1921 censes citation. Below that is the entry from the probate court.

I have not been able to confirm details regarding Thomas’s military service history.  I have shared documents and family history with the Genealogy society in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland but have not yet heard a response.  This is a notion that Thomas had enrolled his WWI military service with the Inniskilling Fusiliers. Another possibility is that as Thomas had experience with horses, that he had enlisted in the Inniskilling Dragoons who, in that time, were a carvery unit. This is an item for further exploration.   

In addition, more needs to be explored on Thomas’s wife Elsie and her family. If Elsie and her family were from that area of England, it is reasonable to assume that is why he stayed there after the war. I was able to locate some information on Thomas’s son Eric I will share in another post.  

Thomas McCauley died in 1961. He is buried in Crooks Cemetery, Sheffield, Metropolitan Borough of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Section H Grave 6028. While blurred below, the inscription on the grave reads, “In Loving memory of Thomas, Beloved Husband of Elsie McAuley Died November 10 1961 73 years.