The settlement has been a meeting point of the McDermott clan and trading centre throughout the centuries and was recorded as a townland and farm as far back as 1585.

The object of the meeting was to get the landowners and chieftains to surrender their lands to Elizabeth I and then receive them back from the Crown at a rent of one penny an acre.

The next mention of Ballygar is in the Book of Survey Distribution; this shows the Earl of St Albans as being the beneficial owner of the land of Bealagara in Killeroran Parish in 1641.

All the tenants who had received tickets were invited to have dinner with him in Castle Kelly Another innovation introduced to Ballygar in 1835 was the Reproductive Loan Fund.

The Great Famine, 1845–1850, with all its hardships, hunger and deprivation brought a halt to the rapid development of the town, but not for long.

By the end of the decade, a 93-foot stone tower was erected in Killeroran Graveyard, the Courthouse was built, also the Grand Bridge, a magnificent cut-stone structure which spans the river that flows through Castle Kelly.

Mrs Bagott contested the last will made by her husband, and a much-publicised trial ensued at the Probate Court in Dublin.

The population structure of Ballygar Parish (Killeroran and Killian) has been like most other parts of rural Ireland in steady decline since the Great Famine of 1845.

The Great Famine or An Gorta Mór as it has become known, of 1845 had a devastating effect on Ireland, and Ballygar didn't escape the horror that resulted from the failure of the main food crop, the potato, throughout the years of 1845 to 1849.

Few details survive of An Gorta Mór even though it is of relatively recent origin, one hundred and sixty years ago.

The story of how hundreds of local people, mostly peasant rural dwellers, died of starvation, remains unrecorded.

Probably the greatest tragedy of all surrounding An Gorta Mór was the sale by farming communities of large amounts of eggs and animals in order to pay rent to their local landlord, while they themselves, and their neighbours, were dying of starvation.

In a well-researched piece on Trihill National School, Norma Hoilean records how the residents of one townland Bohill all emigrated on the same day.

It must have been a horrific day in Bohill – with the entire community of old and young taking with them their meagre belongings and heading off to locate one of the coffin ships in Cobh or Galway.

It was this exodus of people from Ballygar, which resulted in virtually every family in the parish of today having a set of relatives in some part of America.

A feature of the Gorta Mór was that few people were prepared to talk about it afterwards, and few stories survive even in local folklore about the event.

[citation needed] Established in 1977, Murray Timber Products Limited has grown to become one of the largest sawmills in Ireland.

[citation needed] The public library in Ballygar is open every Tuesday and Saturday morning and on Fridays in the afternoon.

[citation needed] Townlands in Ballygar include Mucanagh (the ford of the pigs) on the Galway side of the River Suck.

[citation needed] Mucanagh is liable to flooding though this is disregarded by many locals who use tractors or four-wheel drives into or out of the townland.