I wish I could say that Mary Osborne’s “Rea of Ballynahinch” book was a well organized generation by generation genealogy like Ray Jones’s “Ulster Pedigrees,” but it is not.
It is strongest in listing all known descendants of Hugh Rea (1749-1822) and his wife Margaret McKelvey of Ballynahinch, which easily number in the hundreds. It is also quite strong on research into Reas of colonial America and the early 19th century, plus research into Rea emigrants to Australia and New Zealand.
Mary had a considerable amount of correspondence around 1970 with J. Harris (Jack) Rea of Banbridge who researched land records in an effort to close the gap between Hugh Rea b. 1749, and the well documented David Rea, born 1672 and buried in the Saintfield Church of Ireland churchyard, as are many of my Garrett, Porter and McCullough ancestors.
The book does contain a great deal of information, but Mary chose an often hard to follow method of organization based on Roman numerals to indicate family groupings as well as generations, so if at all possible, I recommend spending some time with PRONI’s copy, or hopefully the Ballynahinch public library still has the two copies that they ordered years ago.
I can probably be of most assistance if you can give me a few names and dates in the 19th century, and I’ll see if they are in the book, and if so, how far back they are traced. The best documented related families are probably the McElveens, Armstrongs and Smylies.
I have added some of these Reas to by ancestry.com tree
http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/24333383along with five source documents under the Hugh Rea b. 1811.
Ken Duzy