(O) Crotty

  The family of Ó Crotaigh is traditionally believed to be a branch of the O'Briens of Thomond which at an unspecified date settled in west Waterford and east Cork, Where both in the sixteenth century (as the Fiants testify) and at the present time persons of the name Crotty (or O'Crottagh as it was first anglicized) were and are chiefly found.  In the seventeenth century Petty's "census" found them numerous in the baronies of Decies and Coshmore & Coshbride in the western half of Co. Waterford.  At that time the prefix O had already been dropped and it has since seldom been resumed.

  The two most prominent persons of the name were noteworthy in very different walks of life, for Bartholomew Crotty (d. 1846), appointed rector of the Jesuit College at Lisbon in 1790, was afterwards Bishop of Cloyne and Ross, while William Crotty, who was hanged in 1742, was a famous highwayman.  Canon Power in his Short History of County Waterford asserts that the traditional view of him as a hero is misguided.

REF:
'More Irish Families' by MacLysaght, Page 70, dated 1996.