The Brick Wall Part II

Many people of Irish descent in the USA and Canada have great difficulty in finding the places of origin in Ireland of their ancestors.  The reason for this situation is that the documents associated with their Irish immigrant ancestors list ‘Ireland’ or, if they are particularly lucky, the name of an Irish county, as the place of origin.  Without a more exact location to go on, such as a civil parish, it is not possible to make a start on ancestral research, because almost all Irish documents of genealogical importance are arranged, and therefore accessed, on the basis of geographical location.  This, the second article in the ‘Brick Wall’ series, suggests some procedures which may be of assistance to researchers who find themselves in this predicament.

The 1911 census is now available online and may be searched by surname.  Also, the yearly all-Ireland surname indexes of civil registrations of births, deaths and marriages from the year 1864, may be searched at the offices of the Registrar General in Dublin.  These sources can be used to carry out an all-Ireland trawl for an ancestor.  However, the 1911 census and the civil registration records are usually of too recent origin to be of value in finding the native place of an emigrant ancestor, most of whom would have left Ireland in the post-Famine period.  As yet, there is no all-Ireland index of church registers, which are more likely to contain information on mid-nineteenth emigrants.

The Matheson Report

If ‘Ireland’ is as specific as you can get as far as place of origin is concerned, you may be able to make an informed guess as to the county of origin by making use of the Special Report on Surnames in Ireland, by Robert E. Matheson.  The Special Report lists 2,500 of the most common surnames in Ireland.  It gives an indication of how numerous each surname is and also names the province and usually the county or counties in which the name is found in greatest concentrations. 

The Special Report was originally published in 1894 but has been republished several times since.  The most important parts of the report are to be found in Irish Genealogy: A Record Finder, which is widely available.  The report is also available for purchase on various internet sites.  Even though the research on which the Special Report is based was carried out in the 1890s, it is accepted that the surname spread which it profiles was similar in the preceding two centuries.

If the surname does not appear in the Special Report, you could try for it in The Surnames of Ireland by Edward MacLysaght.  This book lists more than 4,000 surnames in alphabetical order, with some information as to the counties in which they originated.

Two Surnames

If you are researching a baptism or a marriage, you will be dealing with two surnames: the surnames of the parents in the case of a baptism; the surnames of the bride and groom in the case of a marriage.  In the past, people did not travel very far to find a husband or wife.  Your research, therefore, should concentrate on finding the place or places where the two surnames are to be found in close proximity to one another.  Provided the birth or marriage took place in Ireland, the two surnames, plus a bit of luck, can help to establish the county in which the people lived.

Proceed by looking up the surnames in the Special Report.  Then check to see whether their places of origin have anything in common.  For example, if the surnames were Girvin and Atkinson, the Special Report tells us that the surname Atkinson is predominantly found in Counties Antrim, Armagh and Down; and the surname Girvin is almost exclusively located in Antrim.  Under these circumstances you would elect to start looking for your ancestors in County Antrim.  You should remember, though, that you are basing your opinion on guesswork only

However, if the surnames were Murphy and Kelly, Matheson has only bad news for us: they are the most common surnames in Ireland and are to be found in every county.  Clearly, this procedure works only in some cases.

Establishing the probable county of origin is useful.  However, a county is too large a unit for detailed genealogical research and it is worthwhile trying to narrow the focus within the county.  Griffith’s valuation was widely used in the past in trying to get a more exact fix on the civil parishes within a county in which two specific surnames are to be found.  Various printed and microfiche indexes were used for this purpose, and it was a rather tedious procedure.  Now however, with a free and searchable, on-line version of Griffith’s Valuation, available at: http://www.askaboutireland.ie the process is much easier.

Griffith’s Valuation

The askaboutireland website allows you to do a ‘Family Name’ search, which can encompass all of Ireland or be confined to a county, barony, poor law union or civil parish.  An all-Ireland search is generally too unwieldy unless you are researching a rare surname.  You can input each surname in turn and find out reasonably quickly the baronies in which they coexisted.  You can further refine your search by finding out the civil parish and later the townland in which the surnames coexisted.  The askaboutireland site also allows you to access maps so you can get a physical fix on the surnames and determine how far apart from one another the families who bore the names were.

The Next Move

Church registers are the most likely source of genealogical information concerning mid-nineteenth century emigrants.  If your research in Griffith’s valuation has turned up a likely civil parish as a place of origin of your ancestors, you should then check out Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Ireland.  This book lists and describes every civil parish in Ireland and, among other things, names the Catholic and Church of Ireland parish of which it forms part. 

The National Library of Ireland’s website lists the Catholic Church registers which it has available in microfilm format, and the date runs of baptisms and marriages.  The National Archives has similar lists of Church of Ireland registers.  The various county-based Irish Genealogical Project centres have computerised databases of parish records of the various denominations which they will search for a fee, saving the considerable time required for microfilm research.

Conclusion

You need a lot of luck to benefit from the above procedure.  You must remember that it is based on the assumption that the couple you are researching married before leaving Ireland, or were part of a kind of chain migration in which people from the same locality settled close to one another on arrival in the New World. It could happen that a man from Donegal and a woman from Cork, opposite sides of the country, met and married on board an emigrant ship.

Tony McCarthy