Townlands, Parishes, Baronies, Poor Law Unions
In Tuesday”s blog, we dealt with Civil Parishes – the ones you will need to be familiar with if researching Tithe Applotment Books or Griffiths Valuation.
If you are looking up Births, Deaths, Marriages through Irish Genealogy or the GRO (General Register Office) you will be dealing generally with the Roman Catholic or Church of Ireland Parishes.
Following the Great Famine and the loss of so much of the population, some Catholic parishes amalgamated, some erected new churches where there was population dispersal. It is these Catholic Parishes that you search for your ancestors. Records are available from the late 1700’s in some parishes and not until after 1820 in others and are recorded for Kerry on Genealogy.ie. These records end around 1900. They are generally the principal Parish Church of the area your family lived in. However, maybe your family lived in Asdee (where there is now a Catholic Church) but it would have been Ballylongford for earlier part of the nineteenth century.. So if you are coming up with a blank, always try the nearest large parish to your known family location.
This Irish Genealogy website changed or ‘improved’ in the past few months and I don’t find it as ‘user friendly’ as it was. I tend to go right into this page – and work from there. If you have any queries on this, just drop me an email, or comment here.
Church of Ireland Records
Church of Ireland Records are very comprehensive, start earlier than Catholic ones and record usually Births, Marriages and Burials. These are also recorded in exactly the same way on Irish Genealogy. There are a smaller number of Parishes and you will see them listed here.
From 1864 onwards, full Registration of Births/Marriages/Deaths took place. These are currently not online. You can get an index from FamilySearch.org free but you will then have to order a copy Cert from the GRO.
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