Irish Roots If a person is of Irish descent and wishes to tracehis ancestors, it can be a lot of fun, and quite often it ends in success although the odds are very much against finding all there is to know in manycases! In the first place, it is handy to know lrom which of the Thirty-TwoCounties the ancestors came, bearing in mind that Queen s County is now calledCounty Laoais King s County, County Offaly Queenstown is now Cobh, andKingstown, Dun Laoghaire to name but a few. The county of origin on bothparental sides should ideally be established, along with the correct spellingof the surname, since often an 0 or a Mac becomes loston emigration.
Christian names are helpful, as the custom has largely been topass down a fathers christian name to his son. With the surname, christian nameand county of origin, it is useful to glean from family folklore, word ofmouth, old letters, old deeds, or inscriptions in old books, from what parishor town the ancestors came. If a family can remember a parish or a townland,then half the quest is over. It is helpful to know if the relations werefarmers, shopkeepers or professional people and their religion, be itCatholic, Church of Ireland, Presbyterian or Quaker, as each has its ownrecords. The most difficult tracings are, of course, from the mass emigrationof the famine years from 1845 onwards.
But it is still possible to do a tracein many cases.In Ireland, the registration of births, marriages and deathsbegan in 1864, and records are kept at the offices of the Registrar-General atthe Custom House in Dublin.
Non-Catholic marriages are recorded here from 1845.The Public Record Office in the Four Courts, Dublin, holds many tithe paymentrecords, and all manner of records relating to wills.The Registry of Deedsoffice, Henrietta Street, Dublin, has property information dating from the1700s. The National Library in Kildare Street, Dublin, hasone of the best-informed, most patient and diligent library staffs in the whoieancestor-tracing world. Here are directories, antiquarian journals, familyhistories, and vast collections of national and local newspapers in which todelve.
If the ancestor was of the Catholic faith, then once aparish or a townland of origin has been established, a visit can be paid to theparochial registers of the local Catholic parish church in Ireland, where mostparish priests are of considerable help, understanding and patience in the gameof roots.In the Twenty-Six counties there are, alas,considerable gaps in many public records, as in the turbulent days of the fightfor freedom, and in the subsequent Civil War, hundreds of thousands of publicrecords were blown sky-high, or burnt to the ground.
In the SixCounties however, the Public Record Office in Belfast has excellentrecords, particularly of tithes and their payments. Tombstone hunting has its place in ancestor tracing,but the mass of unmarked graves of famine victims, or families frequently toopoor to erect inscribed stones, rather limits this field of interest.
Theancestors would need to have been wealthy indeed to have had family tombs! Despite the difficulties which can be encountered, itis still well worth the attempt to trace ones ancestors, even though thatattempted trace may be unsuccessful, since in the process something will belearned of the time and place of leaving the original homestead, and this helpsto illuminate the history of the dispersal of a restless people all over theknown world.