Hurleys of Coolnagarrane, part 2

I wasn't planning to turn my attention back to the Hurleys for a while, but this has landed in my lap and I have to take what comes.  If you are interested in Hurleys from Coolnagarrane, you can read part 1 here.

My Hurley family tree can be found here.   John Hurley, son of Michael Hurley and Bridget Cahalane (married 25-May-1838, Leap, Kilmacabea), had three brothers we know about.  John (b. 1839) is the oldest.  Patrick (b. 1841) is somewhat questionable, only because the mother's surname shows up as Coughlan, not Cahalane (maybe a recording error by a priest who was hard of hearing).  Then Daniel (b. 1843) and finally Michael (b. 1849).  Notice the gap - maybe the famine had something to do with it?!?

It is Daniel that I am looking at.  There were descendants of Daniel Hurleys in Coolnagarrane early in the 20th century, according to the Southern Star archives.  Sorting them out is a work in progress.  In part 1 I said the Hurleys were a lonely bunch but by the early 20th century there were enough of them to be confusing!

A Daniel Hurley married Honora McCarthy, probably early 1852 or before, and had Ellen bap 17-Dec-1852; Catherine bap 29-Apr-1855; Honora bap 13-Sep-1857; Daniel bap 3-Jun-1860; and John bap 6-Mar-1864.  (Thankfully, these records are all online.)  My Hurley family had names Ellen, John, and Catherine so the two families do look confusingly similar.

I think this son Daniel married Julia McCarthy 22-Apr-1894 (witnesses John Hurley and Hanoria McCarthy) in the R.C. Chapel of Drimoleague.  The age recorded for Daniel was 28, when it should have been 34.  The marriage record says his father's name was Daniel (dead). 

Ordinarily I would have thought that there were two different Daniels (one age 28, one age 34), but the 1901 census shows Daniel age 40 in Coolnagarrane, along with wife Julia and children, and they show up again in 1911.  So the census corrects the age. 

Julia, from Drominidy according to the marriage record, died in 1917 and was a McCarthy-Sowney according to the Southern Star news of 3-Feb-1917.   Her husband Daniel was already deceased.

If Daniel the younger was born 1860, then who was Daniel his father?  Daniel Senior was likely not gg-grandfather John Hurley's younger brother (b. 1843), he would have been an incredibly young father, not impossible but improbable.  Perhaps Daniel Senior was a cousin of John's, his father Michael's nephew?

To add to the mystery, there is an older Daniel Hurley in the 1901 census with wife Nellie.  If the census age is correct his birth year would have been around 1832.  They don't show up in the 1911 census - at least where I looked, in Coolnagarrane - so presumably they were both deceased.  In the 1901 census is a daughter Mary Ellen, age 28.  She's all I have to go on so at some point I will look for her birth record (circa 1873), which I should be able to do at the Los Angeles FHL.  Maybe from there I'll be able to approximate when her parents married.   I was thinking this Daniel was gg-grandfather John's uncle - a brother of ggg-grandfather Michael.  But if the 1894 marriage record is correct, this older Daniel cannot be the father of Daniel who married Julia.  So how are these people all related?

Julia McCarthy may be worth my pursuit too, as she could be distantly related through my Granddad's McCarthy-Sowney lines.