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COMERFORD
This name is of an English village in Staffordshire. It is not found today as a surname in England. It has been in Ireland since 1210 and since has been one of our most distinguished Irish families, particularly in the counties of Kilkenny and Waterford where they first settled. By the seventeenth century they were numerous there and in parts of Co. Tipperary. The head of the family was Baron of Danganmore, Co. Kilkenny, a Palatine title; junior branches were seated at Ballymacka, Ballybur, Callan and Inchebologhan Castle. Thomas Comerford of Ballymacka was attainted in 1572 for his part in resistance to Elizabethan aggression, and a century later 14 Comerfords are found serving as officers in James 11's Irish army. After the Jacobite defeat many Comerfords were outlawed and settled in France and Spain, seven were Wild Geese officers in the Irish Brigades of the eighteenth century. The best known of them was Joseph Comerford, Baron of Danganmore and afterwards Marquis d’Anglure. In Ireland the most distinguished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were the Comerfords of the Waterford branch. This family was outstanding for its adherence to the old faith at the time of the Reformation. The celebrated Louvain lecturer and controversialist Dr. Nicholas Quemerford (c. 1542-1599) who was the first of sixteen Waterford Jesuits of the name living in the time between 1590 and 1640. His nephew, Patrick Comerford, O.S.A., was Bishop of Waterford from 1625 to 1652, was an ardent supporter of the Nuncio and was the cause of his native city's opposition to the Ormond peace in 1646. Other bishops were Edmund Comerford or Quemerford (Ferns 1505 to 1509) and Edward Comerford (Archbishop of Cashel 1695 to 1710). The name is prominent too in the municipal records of Waterford and Kilkenny and also of Clonmel. John Comerford (c. 1762-1832), a noted miniature portrait painter, was born in Kilkenny. In Irish speech and documents the Comerfords or Quemerfords were called Comartún. In Counties Cavan and Longford the name Comerford has been used as an anglicized form of Mac Cumascaigh, a Breffny surname normally MacCumiskey or Cumesky in English.