RLP 137: Irish Research Part 2

Nicole (0s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 137 Irish Research Part two. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, The Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (45s):
Let’s go. Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro .

Diana (48s):
We are excited to have Jessica back with us today to talk more about Irish Research. Hi Jessica.

Jessica Morgan, AG (55s):
Hi, Diana, how are you doing?

Diana (58s):
Good. We loved listening to all of your great comments and the previous podcasts about researching in the United States for clues about your Irish immigrants. So we’re excited today to start talking about researching in Ireland.

Jessica Morgan, AG (1m 14s):
Yeah, I’m excited too. There’s a lot to talk about

Nicole (1m 18s):
For sure. Well, maybe we should start first with kind of some background on the history of Ireland and how that can relate to our research.

Jessica Morgan, AG (1m 26s):
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s really important to understand with historical context that records are actually pretty scarce in Ireland. And I think that’s why in the previous episode, I emphasize so many times looking at records in America, finding your answers in America, like just doing as many things in the United States as possible to consult your records and to get answers because you don’t have those sorts of resources when you jump over to Ireland. And there are a few different reasons for that. One of which is the loss of the Irish census. So Ireland kept census regularly from 1821 to 1911, but unfortunately the censuses from 1821 to 1891 all those censuses were destroyed, either by bureaucracy and they would have a policy of just destroying the records once they got the information out of them, or by the fire at the public records office in Dublin in 1922.

Jessica Morgan, AG (2m 32s):
And if a time traveler came to me and asked where in history I’d want to go, I would say 1922 and save all those records before they were destroyed. It was a great loss for Irish Research and for Irish resources. So yeah, all the censuses that we just currently enjoy in the United States when we’re doing our research are just non-existent over in Ireland, which is a huge shame. Another thing important thing to keep in mind is that as far back as the 18th century, most of the Irish population outside of Ulster or major cities like Belfast and Dublin, most of the Irish population were tenant farmers who rented their land from larger estates.

Jessica Morgan, AG (3m 17s):
By 1870, 97% of the land was rented out. And half of Ireland belonged to just 750 families, half of Ireland. So because the majority of the Irish population were farmers renting out their land there’s not a whole lot of records available for them beyond church records. And you’ll see a distressingly few number of documents for them outside of parish registers if they lived out in, in rural lands. And then also another important thing to note, of course, Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which happened in 1921.

Jessica Morgan, AG (4m 0s):
And so I think people have the assumption that, oh, if my ancestor came from Ulster and they were Scots Irish, or they came from Northern Ireland later, that I can only do research at repositories in Northern Ireland, but that’s actually not the case. Some of the largest repositories and websites available for Ireland are from the Republic of Ireland. And they cover everything up until that split. So if you have ancestors that are post 1921, then you need to research from archives and repositories that are in Northern Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland.

Jessica Morgan, AG (4m 42s):
But if they are from Ireland before that split, you can look at the major resources that are available that can be hosted by the Republic of Ireland, even if your ancestors from the north and you’ll still get the information that you’re looking for. So that’s really important too, to keep in mind.

Nicole (5m 2s):
Yes. That’s counterintuitive a little bit sometimes, but that’s really helpful to know. And it’s so sad about the fire and the destruction of the census. That just gets me every time.

Jessica Morgan, AG (5m 16s):
That’s tragic.

Diana (5m 18s):
I think every location has their record loss, but this one was so significant. There are some records though. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about because we have to work with what survives, let’s just start with the census. We know that everything was destroyed before a certain point, but what do we have and what can be useful?

Jessica Morgan, AG (5m 39s):
Yeah. So even though most of the census records were destroyed, there are still censuses available out. There’s particularly the 1901 and the 1911 censuses. They’re all intact and they cover the entire island and they are searchable for free on the National Archives of Ireland website. And they have a lot of good information if your ancestors were living in Ireland in 1901 through 1911, also there are fragments of the 1821 to 1851 censuses that also survive. They just only cover certain parts of certain Irish counties so I would just recommend, and Family Search and Ancestry, I believe both have databases covering those census fragments.

Jessica Morgan, AG (6m 27s):
So that’s always good to check and just see what counties they cover. And if they happen to cover your ancestor’s counties, then they’re worth taking a look. Absolutely. And there’s also on Family Search an 1851 census transcript as it were. And that was created from people who were applying for pensions for basically for retirement money later in life. And they needed to prove that they were a certain age at a certain point. So they would often refer to the 1851 census, which was available to them at that time when they were alive and government employees would go through the 1831 census and produce basically transcripts for that person.

Jessica Morgan, AG (7m 10s):
Who’s applying for a pension. And so we also have those available as well. And those are also available on Family Search. So not a lot, but there’s definitely information out there and it’s worth checking for your ancestor.

Diana (7m 24s):
That’s really exciting to know that there are some things that we can use. And as you were talking, it just reminded me of the importance of doing a locality guide. If you have discovered your county in Ireland, then how important it will be to do a locality guide for the things that have survived just for that specific area. And, you know, if we’re going to do reasonably exhaustive research, we’ve got to check out whether our family could be in one of those small little surviving collections. So just knowing about those as really beneficial, well, what about vital records? What do we have available in the way of birth marriage and death records?

Jessica Morgan, AG (8m 3s):
So for vital records, the general register’s office of Ireland was created and began taking birth marriage and death records basically creating them starting in the 1864. But although they did start recording some non-Catholic marriages as early as 1845, so if your family was Protestant living in Ireland around that time, it’s possible that the register’s office had recorded some information for your ancestors before 1864, the civil birth marriage and death records can be very helpful. They provide full names, residences, ages, occupations, and digital images of these civil vital records are available for free at IrishGenealogy.ie, which is fantastic.

Jessica Morgan, AG (8m 56s):
And it’s not just transcripts. They are the copies of the original images themselves that you can search and then click on and download for yourself. And it’s all for free. So that’s a really fantastic resource. If your ancestor was in Ireland, post 1864, odds are they have a birth, a marriage or death certificate out there that you can search.

Diana (9m 19s):
You know, I am thinking that we can go back to the idea of the FAN club here. So if you had an ancestor that immigrated earlier than that, but then they had brothers or sisters that came later and had maybe a marriage record in Ireland that recorded family or parent names. I mean, that could be a really great way to use those vital records, to try to track down all the extended family and see what you can glean, even if yours came earlier. So how great that they’re available with the images for free. That’s amazing. That really,

Nicole (9m 53s):
Really is. I think we all wish that a little more of the records we wanted were freely available as images online.

Jessica Morgan, AG (9m 60s):
Yeah, absolutely. That would, that would be ideal.

Nicole (10m 3s):
Let’s talk about church records. I think of Irish church records as being one of the main things to look for. So can you tell us more about that?

Jessica Morgan, AG (10m 10s):
Yeah. So the great thing about church records is that they are your main source of research in Ireland in that they cover centuries of Irish history and of people that are living in Ireland. And as I mentioned in the previous episode, it’s really important to know what religion your ancestor followed. If they were Catholic, or if they were Protestant, ie church of England, they’re different, and they’re going to cover different things. It’s good to note the different websites that cover these church records, RootsIreland, that website and IrishGenealogy.ie they cover both Catholic and Protestant records.

Jessica Morgan, AG (10m 52s):
RootsIreland has them in transcript form, but they cover a wide range of parishes. So those are always good to check out, regardless of whether your ancestor was Catholic or Protestant. Another reason it’s important to know why they were Catholic or Protestant, is that while some Catholic parishes began keeping records in the 1700s, most of the Catholic parishes, especially in the rural areas, didn’t formally start keeping records until after the 1820s. Whereas the Protestants kept records, they started keeping them much earlier. So if you have Protestant ancestors back in the early 1800s, they’re more likely to have surviving records than a lot of Catholic parishes.

Jessica Morgan, AG (11m 35s):
But yeah, the church records, they don’t often give a whole lot of detailed information. A lot of times they will just give for a baptism, a person’s name and then the name of their parents and maybe the town land specifically that they were from. And that’s basically it. And for marriages, just the name of the bride and groom and the townland. And that’s it. So while it’s not a whole lot of good detailed information, the church records are so important because they cover those time periods that are not available for censuses and vital records. Church records can cover those gaps. So church records are absolutely essential to your research in Ireland.

Nicole (12m 19s):
Are there also Like family members listed like godparents and that kind of thing?

Jessica Morgan, AG (12m 24s):
It entirely depends on the parish. Really the parish records kind of vary drastically from parish to parish. Some will list the godparents and others won’t, they’ll just be the child’s name will just be crammed in a small line amidst so many other entries because there’s just so many other baptisms happening. So it really depends on the parish itself that your ancestor belonged in just kind of how detailed the records.

Diana (12m 51s):
Yeah. I know on one of the projects that I did in Ireland, it was really interesting to look at those christening or baptism records. And they really were crammed in there. It took some, some good work to figure out who was connected to who and I was so grateful. I could enlarge the record really large on my screen because of how it was written, but that one did have on that one, they called them the sponsors. And that one was a great record. I’m realizing, listening to you because it named the parents and where the parents were from and the sponsors gave me so much good information. So I’m glad you mentioned that they can be very different from parish to parish

Jessica Morgan, AG (13m 32s):
And actually on the subject of being able to widen the image and enlarge it and to get those lines, Ancestry.com has a big collection of the Catholic records and copies of the original pages as well. So if your ancestor was Catholic, that’s definitely a good resource to get those original pages and get an idea of what that parish was looking like and what sort of information they were taking down.

Diana (13m 58s):
Right. I think that’s probably what I was looking at when I did that research. Well, another record group that I use extensively on that Irish project was Griffiths evaluation, which was very interesting. I know in our Southern research, we use a lot of taxes, tax lists, and I was fascinated to see those types of records in Ireland as well.

Jessica Morgan, AG (14m 21s):
Yeah, whether you’re doing Southern research or Irish research tax records are really helpful again for covering those gaps where other resources just aren’t available. So Griffiths Primary Evaluation was a countrywide survey completed between 1848 and 1864 for the purpose of evaluating properties for taxes. It’s about the closest substitute as you can get for a mid 19th century census, it lists out the property and the names of the tenants who are renting and the names of the people who own the land and then the estimated value of the land.

Jessica Morgan, AG (15m 3s):
And then also a description of what’s on the land basically are their houses. Is it just fields? What type of farm is it for livestock, et cetera, and Griffiths, while it only will list the main tenant farmer that is responsible for renting the land and the owner, so it doesn’t list family members or ages and things like that. If your ancestor was renting farmland out, it’s really handy for figuring out specifically what land your ancestor was on and what we’re going to be talking about. I think a bit later is how to find that land specifically, so you can go see it.

Jessica Morgan, AG (15m 45s):
And potentially there could even be a house there for your ancestor, which is really exciting. Another type of tax record, that’s really a good resource are the Tithe Apploments books. And those were compiled by the Church of England between 1823 and 1837. And it lists the occupiers of the land who would be eligible to pay tithes to the Church of England. And it’s interesting to note that it’s, regardless if they were Protestant or Catholic, whatever religion you were, you were kind of expected to pay these tithes. So that’s a great earlier resource of your ancestor. Wasn’t around in the 1850s or sixties, but they were in Ireland in the twenties and thirties.

Jessica Morgan, AG (16m 27s):
Then the Tithe Applotment Books could be a good resource to, to determine where specifically they were living and the type of land that they had. Another resource that’s a bit less known are the Estate Papers. Basically, as I mentioned before, half of Ireland was owned by just 750 families and each farmer that was renting their plot of land to farm that land belonged to a larger estate. And so if you can figure out the name of the estate owner, a lot of times the estate owner would have a whole bunch of papers about their tenants, about the land and have a lot of good details.

Jessica Morgan, AG (17m 7s):
And those can be found at the National Archives of Ireland, just the different various state papers. So that’s a lesser known resource that can be really helpful for getting a bigger idea in context of your ancestors land and as part of the larger estate itself, I’m guessing that those Estate Papers have to be researched on site. It depends. I believe that the National Archives in Ireland has some state papers that are available online. And I know that there are also universities in Ireland who have started projects for digitizing Etate papers. So I would recommend doing some digging first and see if those Estate papers for your ancestors area happens to be online otherwise yeah.

Jessica Morgan, AG (17m 56s):
a trip over there to check the papers out in person, maybe the thing to do, but, but definitely check because there have been progress in getting those things more and more available online.

Diana (18m 7s):
That’s really interesting that reminds me of the manuscript collections that we have in the United States, where people have these papers that are help the family and that they’ve just given to libraries archives and those manuscripts that are in one place and might have a clue. Wow,

Nicole (18m 25s):
Last episode, we talked about some newspapers and how those kinds of notices are helpful in the United States, but are there helpful newspapers in Ireland?

Jessica Morgan, AG (18m 36s):
Yes and no. The nice thing about American newspapers is that they can be so detailed and just really get into specific residents’ lives, especially people who are living out in smaller towns for Ireland, marriages, obituaries and funeral notices were not commonly published like they were in America. You’re not going to see the nice detailed obituary for someone in mid 1800s, Ireland, like you could over in the United States. However, that doesn’t mean that newspapers didn’t cover events that would happen in a specific town land. So a lot of times Irish newspapers would cover events, whether it was a crime or festivities or a social event, they would typically cover those sorts of things in the 1800s.

Jessica Morgan, AG (19m 27s):
And your ancestor may be referenced that participating in those events or even participating in a crime that happened in their hometown. So go in with the expectation that they’re not going to be as detailed as American newspapers, but they’re always worth checking just in case. And many Irish newspapers are available online at FindMyPast.ie. So that’s a great place to check for your ancestor and for the town land that they were in. There’s also a court records. I mentioned crime earlier. Ireland has a petty sessions court registers. That’s also available on FindMyPast.ie. And this collection covers most counties in Ireland from 1828 to 1912.

Jessica Morgan, AG (20m 9s):
And they’re really interesting because they cover a wide range of crimes and misdemeanors that took place in a given area in Ireland. So even if your ancestor, even if you’re pretty sure they weren’t involved in major crimes, it could be as small as trespassing or refusing to pay a fine or being drunk in public. There’s quite a few of those. So that’s always worth checking just to see it adds a lot of fun flavor and context for your ancestor’s life. If they’re mentioned in there, and again, this is just all on a FindMyPast.ie.

Nicole (20m 45s):
That reminds me of some research I did in newspapers in England for my fourth great grandfather. And he had been involved in some petty crimes stealing from a store and a drunken fight in the 1840s. So it was fascinating to learn about that. And it actually provided the name of his stepfather slash father-in-law, which ended up being his stepfather, but they just call them different things back then. But yeah, you never know what you’ll find in those newspapers. And now I need to check into some court registers too. So thanks for sharing about that.

Jessica Morgan, AG (21m 20s):
Yeah, for sure.

Diana (21m 22s):
I’ve looked at some of those petty sessions, court registers, and I agree, they’re just kind of fascinating reading to see what was happening in the place and time to get a kind of an idea of what it might’ve been like for your ancestor in that area, whether they’re named or not. Well, we’ve talked about some fun records. Maybe we should talk now about some of the challenges that we’re going to run into.

Jessica Morgan, AG (21m 47s):
Absolutely. There are definitely some challenges to watch out for when you’re doing research in Ireland, that they’re really important to keep in mind. It can be quite common for your ancestors first name or last name or first name and last name to be different in Ireland than it is in America. A lot of times there are nicknames that the Irish would go by. That just kind of don’t really make a lot of sense to us. Like a famous nickname for Bridgette is Delia and a nickname for Jeremiah is Darby. And of course those things don’t sound anything like the original name, but that’s just something to keep in mind.

Jessica Morgan, AG (22m 30s):
So if your ancestor is Jeremiah in the states, they could be going by Darby in Ireland. And there’s actually on RootsIreland, that website, there’s a handy, comprehensive list of first name variations and just like a nice, good list of like common nicknames that you’ll run across. So that’s always good to just double check and consult. If you’ve got your ancestor’s name in America, check that list on RootsIreland and see what their name could possibly be in Irish records. Just so you have that kept in mind. And then for surnames, a lot of times surnames can change because they were originally Gaelic and they’re being translated into English or more often than not the challenges is that they’re just phonetically spelled differently based on how they sound.

Jessica Morgan, AG (23m 18s):
I remember I worked on a case for these Irish immigrants where their last name in America was Ayers A Y E R S. And then we searched for them in Ireland. And we finally found them under their surname Ears, E A R S. So it was just a vastly different spelling, but it sounds the same Ayers and Ears. So it’s very important to keep in mind that your ancestors first name could be different. And depending on spelling, the surname could be very different as well. Also, another important thing is Irish birth dates. As I mentioned before, a lot of Irish immigrants who came over were illiterate.

Jessica Morgan, AG (24m 2s):
And so they didn’t always provide a reliable birth year or a birth date for themselves in American records. Also a little tidbit about American records, if you find that your Irish immigrant ancestors said that they were born in March, take that with a grain of salt, because March is considered an especially important month to Irish people because of St. Patrick’s day. So a lot of people would say they were born in March when they actually were born in February or April or some other time. So if I see someone born in December, I usually will be like, okay, there, they were likely born in December, but if somebody says they’re born in March, I’m usually actually very cautious of that and whether they actually were born in March, but that’s an aside.

Jessica Morgan, AG (24m 48s):
But anyway, another important thing too, to really keep in mind with Irish birth dates is, especially with civil birth records that were recorded down at the general registers office, because the general register’s office in Ireland was reporting to the British government. The Catholic population was not a huge fan of reporting to the British government. So a lot of times they procrastinated reporting a child’s birth, let’s say so the British government started imposing a fine of, if you don’t report your child’s birth within I think three months, then you’ll be given a huge fine, but rather than actually report the child’s birth on time, a lot of Catholic Irish people would instead just give a fake birth date to their child to avoid the fines.

Jessica Morgan, AG (25m 40s):
So they’ll bring the child eventually whenever and just give a fake birth date when they’re reporting it so that it looks like it’s within the three months. So a lot of times I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been doing Irish Research and found a child’s birth date, and it’s just not right. And the way you can find out that it’s not right, is a lot of times their baptism record takes place seemingly two months before they were even born. And that’s because the Catholics were a lot more responsive of course, to their church. And they were baptizing their children within days of the birth. So the Catholic baptism is going to actually be a lot more accurate to when about the child was born, then the official birth record from the government.

Jessica Morgan, AG (26m 29s):
So if you find that it’s like, well, this baptism can’t be right. It’s like three months before they were officially born. Now that’s, that’s probably right. And they were just faking the child’s birthday. I did have one occasion where a child, their birth wasn’t reported until a year after they were born. And they were reported by their aunt across the border into another county. So they could avoid paying the fine and just like have that subterfuge. So don’t rely on exact dates on government records when it comes to the Catholic population, they’re going to be a lot more upfront with their church than with the government.

Diana (27m 12s):
Well, that’s really a fascinating fact. I had no idea that that was taking place, but it makes sense anytime that there is money involved and the government involved, you can see why they would maybe give a little bit different birth. So that just kind of helps us to realize that we do have to resolve these conflicts when we find things like a baptism before a birth and understanding the context makes such a difference. So I’m really glad you talked about that because I wasn’t aware of that common practice.

Jessica Morgan, AG (27m 45s):
Yeah. It’s an interesting bit of flavorful contexts, but can be really important in the research to know.

Nicole (27m 51s):
All right. So we’ve talked a little bit about the parishes within Ireland and also the counties. What other jurisdictions do we need to know as we’re doing our Irish Research?

Jessica Morgan, AG (28m 4s):
Yeah, so it is really important to know the different jurisdictions in Ireland, because that is where a lot of records are going to be categorized under. There’s a lot of different levels of jurisdictions, but the important ones to know when you’re doing research for your own ancestor are Poor Law Unions, parishes, and town lands. And so I’ll break those down, so Poor Law Unions were originally established to provide relief for the poor, and there are some of the largest government established jurisdictions in Ireland. They’re the largest just under the county and usually a given county will have maybe half a dozen to a dozen Poor Law Unions within its borders and a great resource for figuring out which Poor Law Union your ancestor would have belonged to is Brian Mitchell’s new Genealogical Atlas of Ireland.

Jessica Morgan, AG (28m 59s):
That is a very good book for mapping out Ireland and getting an idea of the different jurisdictions. And they have a great map of Poor Law Unions for each county. So that’s, that’s a great way to figure out if you’re aware of what area in Ireland or what area in the county that your ancestor came from, then you can consult those maps for which Poor Law Union they were under. And it’s important to know the Poor Law Union, because that’s what the vital records are categorized under. So the civil birth marriage and deaths by the reported by the government are categorized under Poor Law Unions. So the jurisdiction below that there are the Civil Parishes.

Jessica Morgan, AG (29m 42s):
I just wanted to go into Parishes in general. So there’s two types of Parishes in, in Ireland. So there’s the religious Parishes, whether they’re Catholic or Protestant. And then there are Civil Parishes, the boundaries of which are established by the government, the Protestant Parishes and Civil Parishes typically followed around the same boundary lines and size. They typically were synonymous with each other, but Catholic Parish boundaries and Civil Parish boundaries are very different. And I think I have an example in one of my blog posts, there’s a map of a county with all of the Catholic Parish boundaries outlined, and then the same map, but with the Civil Parishes outlined, and you can tell they are vastly different.

Jessica Morgan, AG (30m 29s):
They do not follow each other at all. So knowing the Civil Parish is really important because established by the government and they oftentimes, they were not following the Catholic boundaries. So while you want to search for religious Parishes for your ancestors, baptism, and marriage and burial, Civil Parishes are very relevant to vital records to censuses tax court records. Basically any government records you’re going to want to know what Civil Parish your ancestor belonged to.

Nicole (30m 60s):
That is so helpful because we’re not familiar with that here in the US. We don’t have Parishes for civil records. So it’s really good to know.

Jessica Morgan, AG (31m 10s):
Yeah. And I think because the British government was for so long, so intrinsically tied with the Church of England and same for the government over in Ireland with the Church of Ireland, that you’re going to get that Parish boundary involvement. But I think it is very interesting that the Civil Parish boundaries, a lot of times have nothing to do with the Catholic boundaries that they just were definitely not in sync with that, or, or really wanted to be in sync per se. And then the jurisdiction below Parishes are the Town Lands. The Town Land is going to be the most specific area to your ancestor. Short of an individual plot of land, Town Lands are located within a Civil Parish and it’s the equivalent to towns or townships in America, but they are referred to as Town Lands in Ireland.

Jessica Morgan, AG (32m 3s):
And this is really the ultimate prize in Irish Research is determining the Town Land that your ancestor came from. There can be mentioned of an Ancestors Town Land in American records. And if you get that, that is the ultimate prize, because that will give you that very specific place in Ireland that you can go visit or helps you pinpoint your ancestor. As I mentioned before in the Catholic and Protestant church records, they’ll give an entry and then the Town Land that they were in. So that could be a descriptor for your ancestor. And also in newspapers, if they mention your ancestor, they will typically say so-and-so of this Town Land.

Jessica Morgan, AG (32m 43s):
That can be a way that you know that, oh, this is they’re talking about my ancestor.

Diana (32m 48s):
Well, I know on one of the projects that I did, I was able to pinpoint the Town Land and I believe it was from the Griffiths Valuation. I was able to get a really specific location and looked it up on Google earth. And it was so fun to see that it was still green fields and just a few little houses. It was fascinating. So I really liked the fact that we have some online maps that really help us to pinpoint those Town Lands now.

Jessica Morgan, AG (33m 16s):
Yeah, for sure. And while you can Google earth a townland, you can also Google earth, your ancestors specific plot of land, or maybe even their house. And the way to do that is if you use Griffith’s primary valuation, as you mentioned. An example of someone I did research on was his name was Lawrence Footmen, and he was renting a house and land from an owner named Bridget Welton. And right there in Griffiths, it describes the land is having a house and farm. And from Griffith primary valuation, the land was described. It’s given a number.

Jessica Morgan, AG (33m 56s):
Usually I think it was like two acres and it was located in a specific Town Land in Rathbarry, Civil Parish and Conahilti Poor Law Union. So from there, I went onto this website called Ask About Ireland, and there’s a subheading on that website called Griffiths places. And basically ask about Ireland provides a large, like comprehensive map dating from the early 1900s that outlines the different property lines for any given location. So if you type in an ancestors Town Land, Civil Parish and the Poor Law Union, then it will bring you up that area of the map and the different plots of land that are delineated within that Town Land, which is amazing.

Jessica Morgan, AG (34m 48s):
And it’ll usually be a kind of larger maps. You have to zoom in a bit, to get the right Town Land. And then within that Town Land to find your square of land and for Lawrence Footmen, I knew it was plot two a or it could be any given number that you get from Griffiths valuation. Once I had that number and just zooming in, and then I could find that plot of land specifically. And the really cool thing is if you jump over to Google earth and zoom in on that same area, you’ll find that a lot of those lines, whether they’re from hedges or fences or just trenches from long periods of time, they will have the same or very similar shapes that you can see an aerial view of on Google earth that pretty much matched these maps.

Jessica Morgan, AG (35m 42s):
So you can match the shape of your plot of land, to the one that’s on Google earth. And if there’s a house on that square of land, there’s a good chance that that house was the house that your ancestor lived in, which is incredible. And then you have a place that you can go check out specifically for your ancestor when you make that trip over to Ireland. So it definitely takes a lot of practice, but, but with some practice you could be able to pinpoint it. And it’s just incredibly rewarding when you find that specific area that you know, that your aunt, where your ancestor lived and worked on the fields. So it’s, it’s incredible.

Diana (36m 21s):
Yeah, that would be like you were saying, it’s, it’s a prize, but that would be your final, big reward from all your hard work to find that place. And then you could go travel and go visit the actual exact piece of land that you discovered. So that’s neat. Well, thank you so much. And for anyone listening, Jessica’s blog post on this does show those two images and gives more details about how you can find the land. So you have a lot of resources and a lot of work to do. It sounds like.

Nicole (36m 52s):
So kind of to wrap things up, let’s talk last about the power of local history and learning more about the local sense of community.

Jessica Morgan, AG (37m 5s):
Yeah, absolutely. So in my final blog post in the series that I wrote, I talked about local history and getting the local context for your ancestor’s life in Ireland. And I think that because there’s such an emphasis on finding the Town Land or finding the specific location your ancestor came from, so you can make that trip and you can go and visit it. That, that it’s easy to just kind of close the book on research when you find that location and be like, okay, I’m done, I met my ultimate goal. And while it is definitely the ultimate goal, it’s not the end of your research per se, because there is so much more that you can learn about your ancestor through the power of local history and many Town Lands, especially the more rural ones, have centuries of history and a really strong sense of community.

Jessica Morgan, AG (38m 3s):
And there are a lot of local traditions attached to those Town Lands and also nationwide traumas like the potato famine. And they can paint a very vivid picture of your ancestors life there that you may not get in ordinary records. There can even be residents in that Town Land who are familiar with your ancestral family or familiar with the stories associated with that Town Land. And I think an excellent example to illustrate this is for time I worked on NBC’s, Who Do You Think You Are? and I had the opportunity to work closely with researchers on the episode for comedian Molly Shannon. And I think that was season 10, episode five.

Jessica Morgan, AG (38m 46s):
It was a fantastic opportunity. And my task on the team was to organize the findings of researchers, both in the US and Ireland. So we had researchers on the ground in Ireland and in the US just collecting everything that they could find. And my job was to sift through it, organize it so we could be as comprehensive as possible. And it was clear as they were gathering censuses, vital records and church records that we needed to go through every line of every record to make sure that it was carefully read and analyzed. Not a lot of people know that for a given episode in Who Do You Think You Are? there are easily a thousand hours worth of research. We do a very thorough job to make sure that we bring out the most interesting vivid stories that can really resonate with the people who are on the episode.

Jessica Morgan, AG (39m 36s):
And in this case is Molly Shannon’s ancestors came from this island called Achill. That was off the coast of county Mayo and her second great grandparents, Hugh Catagen, and his wife, Bridget, we knew they were Catholic, but despite being Catholic, we found their, their marriage record that they were married under the rights of the Church of Ireland. So they were Catholics being married in a Protestant ceremony, and that threw up a red flag for us because that usually did not happen. And that’s why it’s important to really get local contextual history because the record itself didn’t tell us why they were Catholics marrying in a Protestant ceremony.

Jessica Morgan, AG (40m 24s):
It just said that they did. And none of the other official records like censuses or vital records were going to give us that answer either. So the way we found the answer for why this was the case was diving into the contextual history of Achill, specifically into the man who married the couple whose name was Reverend Edward Nangle. Basically we poured through newspapers over in Ireland and biographies and local histories, and discovered that Edward Nangle was a Reverend for the Church of Ireland, who set up a mission on the island of Achill and basically had a lot of resources and when the potato famine hit, the Catholic community was really between a rock and a hard place.

Jessica Morgan, AG (41m 15s):
And they were suffering, and Edward Nangle had the resources to feed them, but on the condition that they would convert from Catholicism to Protestantism. And that was the only way he was going to allow an offer help. So what looks like this strange occurrence on this marriage record for Hugh Catagen and his wife, Bridget, it actually meant that they had to choose between conversion or starvation. Basically the island was starving and it was described as there was a great silence on the island because people were so hungry. They had to make a really difficult choice in order to survive.

Jessica Morgan, AG (41m 58s):
So they chose to be married in that Protestant ceremony so that they could eat. And just knowing that just puts things into such a different perspective. And it’s just so incredibly insightful into the desperate situation that this couple lived in. And that’s again, that’s not something you’re going to get on to stay normal average like census record or, or a vital record. That’s something that’s all a part of a local history. And if we didn’t look into Edward Nangle, we would know about that difficult choice that Molly Shannon’s great-great-grandparents had to face.

Jessica Morgan, AG (42m 38s):
So that’s why it’s incredibly important to look at the context of your ancestors Town Land, what they were experiencing, and especially what they experienced during the potato famine, because that was such a universal experience. There wasn’t a single county in Ireland that wasn’t affected in some way by the potato famine. So if you have ancestors who lived during that, I think it’s your obligation to kind of know the story of what happened and what they experienced. And that’s really paying tribute to your ancestor by knowing that story, by understanding the circumstances in which they came over to America and left their home and family behind for many, many Irish immigrants, that was not an easy choice.

Jessica Morgan, AG (43m 23s):
That was probably one of the most difficult choices that they ever would have to make. So knowing why is really paying tribute to your family and to the people who made the sacrifices to come over.

Nicole (43m 36s):
Wow, that’s such a good story. I think it’s really interesting that you say it’s, you know, something that we can do to honor our ancestors to learn about that context and that history. And it doesn’t only just help us to, you know, understand them, but it actually, in this case provided a resolution to the conflict that you had seen in the record. So it was helpful for both, you know, establishing proof that these are the right people. And there wasn’t a mistake here, but also understanding them.

Jessica Morgan, AG (44m 6s):
Absolutely.

Diana (44m 7s):
Well, you talked a lot about contextual history and we’ve actually discussed so many records and these two episodes about Irish Research that give us that newspapers and the petty court records and histories, are there some things that are unique to Ireland for finding the context?

Jessica Morgan, AG (44m 27s):
Yeah. So there are, there are multiple ways you can glean contextual history for your ancestors talent or area. One of which is I mentioned earlier our newspapers, and again, you can find those on find my past. I E even if your ancestor specifically, wasn’t named in the newspaper, just searching your ancestors talent in newspapers can give you an idea of the history of the town land and things that were going on. Also petty court records that I talked about earlier, just searching for your talent in a court records, could give you an idea of the comings and goings, which can give you some really interesting context.

Jessica Morgan, AG (45m 8s):
I was researching a specific Town Land in court records, and I noticed that the most common crime there was people’s donkeys kept getting into other people’s property and just eating their crops and shrubs and things. And, it just added some really interesting flavor. Apparently a lot of people in that Town Land had donkeys that just kept getting into things that can really add some really great color. And if your ancestor was from a more urban area like Belfast or Dublin, there’s a lot of histories available either online or at libraries, they can provide really good insight into the kind of social climate that your ancestor was living in at the time.

Jessica Morgan, AG (45m 51s):
Or if you know your ancestors occupation, there are lots of great histories for those occupations, whether it’s like the dockyards of Belfast or factories in Dublin, there’s a lot of really great contextual histories that have already been written about. It’s also really good if your ancestor lived in one of those cities to kind of, to get an idea of the quarter of the city that your ancestor lived in, because it could have been rife with religious tension, or it could have been in a poor area that had a lot of hardships or could have been in a nicer area just to fill in those gaps and get better information.

Jessica Morgan, AG (46m 31s):
Another resource that are probably less known are people called Seanchaí and Seanchaís are local storytellers in a given townland who are fluent in the local history of the area and in the families and in the Molly Shannon episode, she’s greeted by the Seanchaí for the island of Achill, who then tells her more detailed stories about her family and about the Island’s history that she wouldn’t have known otherwise. But I will add the caveat that Seanchaís, there’s not a Seanchaí per Town Land, per se. You’re not going to find a Seanchaí in every single Town Land. And they can also be a little difficult to find. I remember just the hours of phone calls that we made in order to track down and find the Seanchaí for Molly Shannon to talk to.

Jessica Morgan, AG (47m 11s):
But that doesn’t mean that they’re not out there. And if you can find or determine if your talent has a key that could provide amazing context and insight into your family or into that talent’s history and where there’s not a shot, a key there’s often residents who have lived in that town land for decades and decades, and who are very familiar with the area’s history. And sometimes it just takes traveling to that Town Land and talking with the residents, and they can point you in the right direction of people who really familiar with the history of the Town Land or the history of the families there. And if you can’t, you know, fly over to that Town Land and go knock on doors, which, you know, is the ideal situation. We all wish we could just hop on a plane and go to our ancestors Town Land.

Jessica Morgan, AG (48m 6s):
But if you can’t do that, each county in Ireland has heritage centers that are dedicated to collecting records for the county and contextual history. And so you can look up the heritage center that’s relevant to the county, your ancestor was in or to the region and staff at the heritage center can often point you in the right direction for finding more contextual history for your ancestors’ Town Land or give an area, or they might have records that aren’t available elsewhere, or just really specific, interesting nuggets of information.

Jessica Morgan, AG (48m 48s):
So they’re always worth contacting and you can call them or send them an email. And they’re pretty easy to search for online as well. So there’s a lot of good resources for gleaning that contextual history for your ancestor.

Diana (49m 4s):
I really liked that you pointed out all those specific things to Ireland because the United States, you know, we kind of know about newspapers and county histories and the museums and different archives, but I had never heard of the Seanchaís and the heritage centers sound fascinating. So how exciting to think of all these different resources to find out more about the context? I think sometimes we’re just too broad and we just say, okay, well, they came over during the potato famine, but we don’t take deeper. So I, I love all those examples you gave us. And thank you for sharing your example about Molly Shannon and how much work goes into those episodes. I think that’s something that all of us wonder is how much manpower did it take to discover this story.

Diana (49m 48s):
So that’s kind of fun for the behind the scenes look.

Jessica Morgan, AG (49m 53s):
We, as researchers watching the, Who Do You Think You Are episodes later we’ll often times get a good chuckle when the celebrity goes to the archive and someone has the book open for them on the right page, like with the right line highlighted. And they’re like, oh, wow, I’m doing research, look here, it is. And they don’t really know how long it took to find that book for them. But yeah, it’s, that’s a lot of work that’s put into it, but it’s absolutely worth it because of the amazing stories that come out of it, the stories and the legacy that you find at that, that will always last forever, however much time it takes to find it. It’s always going to be worth.

Diana (50m 35s):
Sometimes I wish there’d be a second episode to showing the research how much work it took, but I realized that that’s not maybe as interesting to everyone as that would be to a genealogist. So, well, thank you, Jessica. This has been so great discussing all of the ways we can make more progress on our Irish Research. I think you’ve given us a lot of food for thought and a lot of techniques to use. So thank you for your time for writing the posts and then for coming on and talking about the Irish Research.

Jessica Morgan, AG (51m 5s):
Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to talk about it and to just go into the different avenues. And I think that’s just a really great takeaway is that there’s always different avenues to explore. There’s always different options. So just keep plugging away and you will find your answers. That’s just something that’s really rewarding about Irish Research is that when you do find the answers, it’s just incredibly heartwarming.

Nicole (51m 31s):
Well, thank you so much, Jessica, everyone listening. We hope you have a great week and we’ll talk to you again next week for bye. Bye.

Diana (52m 10s):
Bye. Bye everyone.

Nicole (52m 10s):
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