Any tips on tracing Irish genealogy?

[Quasimodo]

I only started this genealogy business three months ago and at the time of starting I thought (due to the very few bits of information let go by my parents when they were living) that my ancestry was straightforward, half English and half Scottish.

Now I find after doing some research and tracing all of my ancestors back to their countries of origin that the real picture is half Southern Irish, one quarter Northern Irish, and one eighth each English and Scottish!

It is kind of a weird feeling as I have always thought of myself as genetically and culturally Australian/English. Now I find that while I may still be that culturally, genetically I am more Australian/Irish than anything else. It is strange to me that the family heritage could have been obliterated in just a few generations like that.

Anyway back to the matter at hand. I have found searching for Irish ancestors on Ancestry.com is a pretty fruitless exercise. Usually I get nothing at all and if I do get a hit it is dubious at best with the details (the few that there are!) not matching up with any degree of certainty.

Do most people give up when they get to this stage or are there some tricks of the trade that can carry people onward and backward so to speak?

[dublincat]

Hi Quasimodo,welcome to the joys of Irish research. What time frame are we looking at here please? The records available will vary according to the years in question. Best wishes.

[Quasimodo]

Hello dublincat. From 1810 to 1840 roughly speaking in the first instance.

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Anyway back to the matter at hand. I have found searching for Irish ancestors on Ancestry.com is a pretty fruitless exercise. Usually I get nothing at all and if I do get a hit it is dubious at best with the details (the few that there are!) not matching up with any degree of certainty.

Do most people give up when they get to this stage or are there some tricks of the trade that can carry people onward and backward so to speak?

Most of us NEVER give up, but Irish research pre the 1860's is notoriously difficult, for a variety of reasons (lack of civil registration to confirm familial links, lack of census to give precise details of parish of birth, surname spelling variations, parish register gaps/apparent non-existence to name a few.)

One tip is to search, very thoroughly, as many England/Scotland extended family members as you can find and to explore all possible Eng/Scot resources for them in the hope of finding additional clues to aid searches of Ireland records. After almost 30 years of nothing, I very recently came across a new online record set of burials for a Northumberland RC parish church. I found what I thought was the probable burial record of my gt-gt grandmother and consequently the civil registration of this death. The death certificate confirmed the link with her son (my great-grandfather) and joy of joys, named her deceased husband. A very small step forward, I know, but a mountainous leap for me! I can now try searching Irish parish registers again, looking for the bp of gt-gdad with the relevant parents.

I would also advise you to keep a very meticulous log of which Irish records you search - place, date and what is searched for, and to record whether or NOT you found any information. Otherwise you could well find yourself going over and over the same ground, especially the church records!

Welcome to the club and good luck.

Jay

[Geniguy]

I'm Irish and used OneFams genealogy research team. I had a free consultation and then got the basic package. Once they did the initial ground work, I was able to find more relatives myself. Irish genealogy is tricky as many of the records are contained in parish churches rather than huge database. I'd definitely recommend using a genealogist.

[Quasimodo]

Thanks Janet that is valuable advice coming from the voice of experience. I also read somewhere that the Irish Public Records Office was blown up in 1922 resulting in the loss of many records.

[Quasimodo]

Good to know that when all else fails you can call in the professionals Geniguy.

[Anne in Carlisle]

My ancestors married in Ireland about 1830 and came to Yorkshire before 1838. I found a little clue as to where they might be from by finding everyone connected on censuses. Mostly their birthplace was just recorded as 'Ireland' but in one instance, on the 1911 census their daughter had a place name as well!

I THINK I may have found the marriage in that place, but as Janet says, the spelling and writing on the recently available parish records is appalling! Still, I feel as if I made half a step forward after 20 years! Never give up hope!
Anne

[margaretmarch]

Thanks Janet that is valuable advice coming from the voice of experience. I also read somewhere that the Irish Public Records Office was blown up in 1922 resulting in the loss of many records.

Yes, a lot of records were destroyed but those were mainly census details. There are still birth, death and marriage records to be found. Have a look at the Reference Library we have on the forum here https://www.familytreeforum.com/content.php/336-Ireland for sites to search.

I have relatives from Northern Ireland and have found quite a bit in the last few years from data that has been digitised and put on line for the whole of Ireland.

Margaret

[Janet in Yorkshire]

Yes, a lot of records were destroyed but those were mainly census details. There are still birth, death and marriage records to be found. Have a look at the Reference Library we have on the forum here https://www.familytreeforum.com/content.php/336-Ireland for sites to search.

Margaret

But if your ancestors lived in Ireland before c1864 (I forget the exact date) you won't find a birth or death registration because civil registration was introduced later in Ireland than in England and Wales, nor RC marriages.
You have to use parish registers instead and find baptism and burial substitutes. However some priests did also include birth and death dates, but they were not obliged to do so:(
That's when it gets difficult - I would never have guessed how many Michael McDonough (and variants) were born in a twenty year period in Co Galway and possibly Co Mayo (both McDonough strongholds) and that doesn't include parishes where the filmed and online records don't start early enough. If only I had some clue as to parish or townland to narrow things down a bit!

Jay

[Katarzyna]

The National Library of Ireland has Catholic baptisms and marriages going back to early 1800's. Unfortunately they are not indexed and difficult to read in many cases.

The search pages here

[Karamazov]

The National Library of Ireland has Catholic baptisms and marriages going back to early 1800's. Unfortunately they are not indexed and difficult to read in many cases.

The search pages here

These same records have been indexed by FMP and Ancestry (not perfect by any means - some seriously weird transcriptions, and bear in mind that first names may be Latinised so factor that into your searches eg James = Jacobus, Patrick = Patricius, Mary = Maria etc) but it certainly makes things easier Surnames are never Latinised, but you will come across lots of variant spellings! And yes, you do sometimes have to contend with some appalling handwriting!

The big bonus is they are free to access on FMP (but not on Ancestry) - http://www.findmypast.com/free
It really does help if you know the parish or even the diocese as you can then put that in the keywords part of the search page to narrow down results.
There is a helpful map option on the NLI page to determine dioceses - http://registers.nli.ie plus you can also see the years for which records are available for the particular parish.

Good luck!

Christine

[Elwyn]

Quasimodo,


Regarding your general comments in your first post, about your possible ethnic origins, remember that the British Isles are very small. The inhabitants are not separate races, any more than the people who live in Melbourne and Tasmania are separate races (440 km apart if I am correct?). At the closest point, Ireland to Scotland is 20km. And Ireland to Wales is 80km. Separate nations? I don’t think so. People have been rattling about the British Isles for hundred of thousands of years, invading, intermarrying, moving for economic reasons, and so on. Though naturally when it comes to rugby and cricket they are fiercely proud of their origins and see themselves as a separate national groups, the reality is that they nearly all share the same broad origins. I wouldn’t get too hung up on whether your ancestors were Irish, English, Welsh or Scots etc. The answer is probably a mix of all of those.

The majority of people in Ireland, Scotland and England today are descendants of Brythonic tribes who moved north from Africa and through Europe as the last ice age receded. Southern England has been inhabited for nearly 400,000 years (at which time there was still a land bridge to Europe). Ireland has only been inhabited for about 8000 years and, according to most scientific research, many of its original inhabitants came from England. (Keep very quiet about that though for obvious reasons). Some came from Spain, France and Portugal but the majority appear to have come from England. Of course they all came from Africa originally.

I’ll leave you with the observations of Daniel O’Connell, the famous Irish political leader. In a speech in October 1843, he commented on the suggestion that the Duke of Wellington (British Prime Minister, born near Dublin in 1769) was Irish, he responded by saying: “No, he is not an Irishman. He was born in Ireland; but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.”

I would advise you to post details of the ancestors whose ancestry in Ireland you would like us to help you with. With specific names, ages and denominations, let’s see where we can go with it. There are gaps in Irish records but that doesn’t mean we can’t find any information for you.

[kylejustin]

Australian records can be really informative for places of origin. If you're ancestors were from victoria, get all the births, deaths, and marriages for them. Births record marriage and birth details and age for the parents. deaths record (where known) parents names and occupations, marriage details, birthplace, burial info (think headstones) and all children plus ages. Marriages record birthplace and parents names.the downside to this, is it may just state "ireland" or "cork, ireland." sometimes, different detail was recorded on different records. Ie, get all births for the children of the generation who left ireland, as one or two might actually record the town name. Or get all the deaths for the children who left ireland, as they might record more detail. Finally, if you're lucky, you can find shipping details which can help with familial relationships and origins. Then again, some of yours could also have been convicts, which are detailed records. Bear in mind though, your australian records or the info recorded might predate the existing irish records. Most catholic registers seem to exist from the 1820's-30's, and the irish, like the scots, don't really record burials. Census doesn't exist prior to 1901, and civil registration began in 1864. 1855 in scotland and victoria and 1837 in england and wales.

[Quasimodo]

Thank you all for your very helpful replies! First I think I should consolidate everything I have compiled onto Ancestry.com.au. The BD&M records, Immigration, Inquests, Historical references and my hand written notes are more or less unorganized at the moment. Once I have them all collected and ordered in one convenient place I will be in a better position to start methodically tracing my Irish, Scottish and English ancestors.

[Olde Crone Holden]

I completely agree with what Elwyn says regarding ethnicity. Unless you know by paper based research that your ancestors came from Ireland, do not be misled by ancestry DNA "evidence" that you are Irish.

Ancestry DNA does not distinguish between Scotland and Ireland. Whilst it is true that the two come from more or less the same original stock it is misleading. My brother recently had a DNA test which showed his ethnicity as 45% Irish. We do not have a single identifiable Irish ancestor but our mother was Scots, from Scotland and we have traced the Scottish side back to the 1600s in most cases, not a whiff of any Irish. There has never been any doubt about my parents' legitimacy either, lol, so "Irish" is a complete waste of time from a research point of view.

OC

[Anne in Carlisle]

To be fair, Quasimodo didn't mention DNA, just that he/she had traced the ancestors back to their country of origin. I was presuming on paper but maybe I have assumed too much?
Anne

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, sorry, Quasimodo didn't mention DNA evidence, that was me dancing to a different tune as usual, lol.

I meant it more as a general guide really as to where your evidence for ethnicity comes from. Ethnicity isn't much use for genealogical research in my opinion. Where your ancestors come from isn't the same thing as your ethnicity necessarily.

OC

[Quasimodo]

Anne, it seems there are a few people knowledgeable in genetics here giving me some words to the wise. I am no expert in the field and I roughly know that most of the people going back 200 years in Britain and Ireland were what I would call Anglo/Celtic so their DNA will all be pretty similar. What I commented on was feeling weird because I was no longer from the background that I thought I was, and I still feel that way. But I imagine it will pass.

As it happens I did order a DNA test from Ancestry.com.au but that was when I thought that Mary Morrison may have been half Native Canadian and I was all giddy with the "discovery". And then she later turned out not to be. Oh well...

[Anne in Carlisle]

Thanks for the update, Quasimodo!
As it happens I tend to agree with OC about the value of DNA testing at the moment. On the other hand I do know people who have been matched with others who have tested who (as it happens) already KNEW they were distant cousins. In my mind if that works then you must have a chance of finding other cousins who you do not know about yet IF they happen to have tested. I think the usefulness of the current DNA testing lies in these possible contacts (who may have different angles of research on the same family) and NOT in the % possibility of ethnic origin.
Anne