The map shows that in the mid-1800's the County Armagh Garveys were mostly found in the southwestern part of the county in an area known as The Fews. A more detailed map of the distribution of Garveys in southwest Co Armagh can be seen here.

The County Armagh Garveys are the descendants of the ruling family of a medieval kingdom known as Ui Breasail Macha. The early Ui Breasail genealogy is shown on this page. The Co Armagh Garveys are likely named after a Gairbid (son of Domnall, and father of Aed) who died about 1070 AD. The kingdom was located in the northern part of County Armagh along the shore of a lake called Lough Neagh. It was part of a loose confederation of kingdoms in that area known as the Airghialla. In the years between about 400 AD and 1200 AD the main superpowers in the area were the Northern Ui Neill kingdom to the west (in the present day Counties Donegal and Tyrone), and a group to the east known as the Ulaid (in Counties Down and Antrim). The line of Airghialla kingdoms seemed to form a buffer between the two warring powers. The origin of the Airghialla themselves is unknown, but they may have been subject kingdoms to the Ulaid back when the Ulaid controlled the whole of the north of Ireland. More information about the Airghialla is available here (the description of the kingdom of Ui Breasail is about 1/3 of the way down that page).

The Garveys lost their kingdom to invasion by the MacCanns in about 1154 AD and were driven south to The Fews area. At that time The Fews appears to have been a heavily wooded, sparsely inhabited area in the southern portions of another Airghialla kingdom called Ui Echdach. Records show that another Ui Breasail family called O'Callaghan (O'Ceileacain) also moved to The Fews in large numbers. In addition, there were also many O'Hanrattys, who had been driven out of their kingdom of Ui Meith (located in Co Monaghan), and relocated to The Fews about that time. All those groups ended up conquered once again by an invasion into The Fews by the MacMurphy family in the 1200's. They were conquered again by an invasion by the O'Neills (from Co Tyrone) in about 1450. The Fews were ruled by the O'Neills, from their castle on Lake Glassdrummond, until the area was finally conquered and confiscated by the English in the mid-1600's.

While the exact boundaries are uncertain, Ui Bresail Macha was located between the kingdoms of Ui Bresail East and Ui Bresail West. Ui Bresail East was ruled by the O'Lorcain (O'Larkin) family, and Ui Bresail West was ruled by the O'Longain (Longan), O'Duibheamhna (Devanny), and O'Conchobhair (Connor) families. The ancient genealogies describe the Garveys as kinsmen with another local Airghialla family called the Hanlons. But in those days, genealogies were crafted to be more a statement of political relationships rather than genetic relationships. Genetic testing has subsequently shown that the Garveys and Hanlons do not share the paternal heritage claimed by the old genealogies. However the genetic signature of the Co Armagh Garveys has been shown to be a signature common to several other ruling families among the Airghialla kingdoms, with the Maguires of Co Fermanagh and the McMahons of Co Monaghan being the most notable. Joseph Donahue has some done some great research on this genetic signature and has dubbed it the "Subgroup P1" cluster (also known as the Airghialla 2 cluster). A comparison of the various surnames belonging to this cluster can be seen here (you'll need to type the distorted "Captcha" words to see the list). More technical information about the Airghialla 2 cluster is available here. (Be forewarned that this is a 12MB pdf file that takes a while to download).

Many Irish names were formed by adding the prefixes of either "Mc" or "O" to the given name of an illustrious ancestor. "Mc" meant "son of" while "O" meant "grandson of", and the choice of prefix just depended upon how far back in time the ancestor had lived at the time surnames were taken. After the completion of the English conquest in the 1600's, most Irish families dropped the prefixes as part of their assimilation into English culture. A wave of nationalism in the 1800's led to many Irish adding the prefixes back onto their names. However the 200 year interval was long enough that in some cases knowledge of the original prefix had been forgotten, and the 1800's families assumed the wrong prefix. This seems to have been the case with the Armagh Garveys. Records from the 1600's show that these Garveys had originally been McGarvy - not O'Garvey (but they had no relationship to the Donegal McGarveys).

There are still a couple of Garvey families left in the Tullyvallen area. Those Garveys are settled in the town of Cullyhanna and along Garveys Road (whose east end is at Garvey's Bridge). The Garvey families in the area have a tradition of celebrating their weddings on the top of Tullyvallen Hill - though no one remembers how that tradition got started. The local Garveys have also always known that their line of Garveys was no relation of the Garveys in County Down. The Co Down Garveys refer to the Co Armagh Garveys by the nickname of "Stonebreaker Garveys" since many of them worked in quarries or as stone masons.