Maria (Merle) Curran (ha Cohen/ Cyran)

Merle Courlander aka Maria Courville. She belonged to a Dutch Jewish family that came as merchants to Ireland. The Courlander family took their name from the Latvian Duchy of Courland and they had been Jewish Latvian settlers in Tobago in the 17th century who after 1690 moved to Surinam and then to Amsterdam. Merle parents Jacob Courlander and Chana (Annatje) Koopman moved to Waterford and took the names of James and Anna Courville around 1800. They moved back and forth between Amsterdam and Ireland. Merle met a handsome Irish Frankist Jew in Waterford called John Curran (Jewish name Yehuda ha Cohen, Polish name Jan Cyranowski) whose family had arrived in Ireland after 1760 with a large group of Frankist settlers from Poland and Germany. Merle had two brothers Yehuda and Yekutiel who took the names John and James in Ireland who became British soldiers. Another brother David Courlander headed the family's merchant business in Amsterdam. Merle became a Catholic on her marriage to John Curran whose family had been Catholic for 3 generations.