Paul - As you say it is unwise to believe th family myths. My wife's mother's family is called Gillanders from Monaghan. One story was that her half uncle emigrating to America taking all but one of his 9 children and leaving the other at school. When I eventually go access to the emigration records I discovered that the children had gone in 3 waves and that he had followed last. Similarly another man had "inherited a shop, drunk it and gone to Hereford". In fact he joined the Liverpool police at 19, retired from it as a Chief Inspector in his 50s and bought a farm in Hereford.

The McAuley family siblings are

Rev Matthew b 1809 d 19/2/1895 Rathfriland - never married
Isabella b ? d 1/12/1903 Rathfriland - never married
Nancy b ? d 17/3/1907 - never married
Susannah b ? d ? married ? McNeilly Unnamed children (from Matthew's will)
James b ? d ? - before Matthew m ? Children Matthew b 1860 - GP in Kircubbin, William b 1862 - farmer of family farm The Rock Moneyslane
John - who was probably another Presbyterian minister in Millisle but this is hard to prove - there was certainly another John McAuley in Drumgooland who may have been the minister. If he was the minister b c 1818 d 18/12/1893 There is another sister I haven't got the name of yet - just "late sister" in Matthew's will. Married to ? Parkinson

The reuse of forenames and the absence of mothers' names on the baptisms makes life difficult and care must be taken about assuming who is who.

Incidentally I wonder where you get your McAuley.Macaulay (etc) listings. I know of nowhere on the net you can do this. They are certainly not on Ancestry, which is weak in Irish records. I would be interested in subscribing to anything which had reliable Irish records.

I could send you the McAuley tree but would bneed an email address since cannoy post a PDF here.