Land records, Rob Goodbody Featured
Land records, Rob Goodbody
There are several types of records relating to land that can be of use to the genealogist or the local historian. Two of the most useful, as they cover the whole country, are valuation records and deeds.
One source is the Tithe Applotment books, held in the National Archives, which arose from a new system of calculating the liability to tithes in the 1820s. These list agricultural holdings, with the names of the tenants.
Greater detail in relation to buildings can be found in the notebooks of a valuation that was carried out in the 1830s and 1840s. These books, known as the House Books, are held in the National Archives of Ireland and give the names of the occupiers of buildings, including houses, with the dimensions of the buildings.
A later, and better known, valuation carried out between 1848 and 1864, is known as Griffith's Valuation. This printed and published and volumes survive for each barony, including the names of the occupiers. These are available on line on the Ask About Ireland website. The maps on this site are useful, but are not the Griffith's Valuation maps, and they date from later in the 19th century.
Griffith's Valuation was continued in manuscript form and updated frequently and the resulting books can be seen in the Valuation Office in Abbey Street Lower, Dublin. These help the researcher to follow the occupants of a property, possibly through several generations of the same family.
A source that takes more effort to master, but which can be extremely rewarding, is the Registry of Deeds in Dublin. Copies of deeds held there go back as far as 1708. They are indexed by location and also by name. Unfortunately the name index only includes the name of the lessor, so the occupier who gets a lease from a landlord is not indexed. The deeds include leases, marriages, wills and various others and the various names included can frequently be extremely helpful in tracing the history of a family or of a property.
Rob Goodbody
There have been several periods in Irish history when significant numbers of towns were founded in a relatively short time scale, one being the so-called landlord towns of the 18th and 19th centuries. In essence, all towns were landlord towns, as all land was owned by someone, but the degree of involvement of the landlords in town development varied.
In some cases the town arose due to a major government investment in the area, such as the growth of Newbridge after a large army barracks was built, while the development of new towns adjacent to older villages at Dunleary and Dunmore East arose out of the construction of the harbours.
Other towns were built by landlords to house their tenants, but it was also fashionable to have a town, and many were built with picturesque building designs, such as Enniskerry, Castlebellingham and Ardagh. In other cases landlords used towns as a means to improve their estates and perhaps the most active in this line was the 3rd earl of Altamont. He developed the town of Westport in the 1780s and nearby the satellite town of Westport Quay, before going on to found Louisburgh to house refugees from northern Ireland.
Several were built as industrial towns, though in many cases, such as Prosperous, New Birmingham and Stratford-on-Slaney they never reached their founder's ambitions. In others, such as Portlaw and Bessbrook, the industries became extremely large and successful, before collapsing in a later generation.
A number of towns in the west benefited from government schemes to tackle poverty, particularly through programmes of road and pier building. Binghamstown showed an early promise before being overshadowed by Belmullet after roads reached that area in the 1820s. Roundstone was developed by Alexander Nimmo, the engineer responsible for the development of the western district, also in the 1820s.
The town of Ballydesmond, formerly King William's Town, on the Cork border with Kerry, was built by the crown as a model of how landlords might develop towns on their estates, and this also arose from the government scheme to improve road communications through the less developed regions.
A journey into Connemara is a journey into a landscape of spectacular scenery and ancient history. The natural backdrop of mountains, valleys, lakes and rivers in Connemara is the result of natural events that occurred over the last 600 million years since Connemara's rocks first began to form. Much of this history centres on the closure of a great ocean: the Iapetus Ocean. Over tens of millions of years, two continents (Laurentia and Avalonia) that lay on either side of the Iapetus Ocean slowly converged. The movement of the Earth's plates during the closure resulted in the creation of volcanic islands, folded mountain belts, and the injection of great volumes of magma into the Earth's crust. Evidence of these events is visible in the rocks throughout Connemara.
The mountains of the Twelve Bens and Maumturks are the roots of a great mountain belt of Himalayan magnitude that formed during the closure of the Iapetus Ocean. The remnants of this mountain belt can be traced from eastern USA, through Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, and to Scandinavia. Over time, Connemara's mountains have been worn down to the 700m high peaks we see today. These mountains are made of metamorphic marine rocks called the Connemara Dalradian rocks. Clifden is situated on these rocks, as is much of the N59 (and the old MGWR railway line) from Oughterard to Clifden. The 470 million years old rocks of Roundstone Bog and Errisbeg originated as igneous basalts, and were later metamorphosed due to high pressures and temperatures. The granites of Roundstone, Omey, Carna, and the entire northern side of Galway Bay formed around 400 million years ago, again due to the ocean closure event.
This active landscape finally quietened down by Carboniferous times, some 350 million years ago. During this time the fossiliferous limestones of Oughterard and Lough Corrib were laid down in a shallow, warm tropical sea. Finally, during the successive ice ages that occurred in the past 2 million years, the Connemara landscape was moulded and shaped into the physical landscape that greeted the first settlers to arrive in Connemara. The 'look' of the land may have changed since the time of the first settlers, with the introduction of fields, bogs, roads, railways and towns. However, just as much of Clifden town would be recognisable to its first inhabitants, the first settlers in Connemara would today recognise the same mountains, valleys, lakes and rivers. With them, and all who will come after us, we all share Connemara's geological heritage in this spectacular and ancient landscape.
The lecture aimed to give the audience an appreciation of the wide variety of records held by the National Archives containing genealogical information. The great loss of Irish genealogical records sustained by the burning of the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922 and other "record-destructive" events was fully acknowledged but a greater emphasis was placed on the research potential of records which escaped destruction through good fortune, being in a different and safe storage location, or by not being the subject of official orders permitting the disposal of particular classes of documents.
A surprising amount of " name-heavy" administrative and legal records of the 16th and 17th century are still extant such as Chancery Court Pleadings and grants by the Tudor and Stuart monarchs of lands, pardons for offences, custody of minors, properties –such as castles, towns and monasteries and natural resources. Two examples of such grants ("Fiants") from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I were shown.
The wealth of genealogical information to be gleaned from the Household Returns of the 1901 and 1911 Censuses and the great advance in "unlocking" this information afforded by the digitization and placing online of these Returns was illustrated with examples showing the 1901 Return of a Galway household with an allegedly 122-year old "Head", 1901 and 1911 returns of an elderly lady living with other family members and several servants and a listing of pupils in a Boarding School.
There are a number of record collections which serve as at least a partial substitute for the destroyed material among which the Landed Estate Court Rentals, Valuation Office Notebooks, Application Forms for searches in the 1841 and/or 1851 Census and abstracts of Public Records made before 1922 by professional genealogists were referred to and illustrated by examples. The genealogical importance of records formerly held in the State Paper Office in Dublin Castle was underlined with examples from the 1798/03 Rebellion Papers, Convict clemency Petition Files and "Census-type" information collected as part of the official effort to relieve distress in the West of Ireland in 1891. Also very important genealogically are surviving or substitute legal records such as Wills, Registers of cases heard at District (Petty Sessions) Courts from the mid-19th century and ,occasionally, earlier and Property and Inheritance cases heard at Circuit (Quarter Sessions) and High Court (Assize) levels of which illustrated examples were given. Finally, records held by the National Archives relating to classes of State employee such as Teachers, Police (RIC & DMP) and Soldiers (the Royal Hospital Kilmainham Collection) were highlighted.
Gregory O'Connor
Tracing ancestors who served in the British armed forces.
Tens of thousands of Irish men (and a few women) have served in the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force over the centuries.
Fortunately it's fairly easy to trace them. Most records are online through one of the commercial data providers.
But before you start you need to be certain
• The service they were in
• Roughly when they served, and
• Whether they survived to get a pension
The British Army was a draw for many young Irishmen. For many it was one way out of grinding poverty. Even during the Emergency 100,000 men crossed the Irish Sea to join the Army.
Pre-1913 service records for soldiers are online through Findmypast www.findmypast.co.uk . However they are only for men who survived to receive a pension.
Other records are at the UK National Archives (TNA) in London. Indeed they have all the surviving service records up to the early 1920s, including ones for officers, as well as operational records for WW2.
The TNA website www.nationalarchives.gov.uk includes lots of guidance for people researching their military ancestors.
For the First World War, soldiers' records are available through Ancestry www.ancestry.co.uk . Only a third survive.
If your grandfather's records do not exist (or even if they do) check out the Medal Index Cards as they contain basic information about a man's service. These too are on Ancestry.
If you are researching somebody who died in one of the world wars then you need to visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website www.cwgc.org where you can find when they died and where they are buried.
You can download service records for men in the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force from TNA's website www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/our-online-records.htm
Records for men who served after 1920 are still with the UK Ministry of Defence. Details of how to find them are at www.veterans-uk.info
Simon Fowler
'In Search of a Better Way of Life': Emigration from Connemara in the late Nineteenth Century.
While an estimated eight million people emigrated from Ireland in the nineteenth century there were great regional variations and patterns to the exodus. Connemara society retained many of the pre-Famine features up until the subsistence crisis of 1879-82: an increasing population, the subdivision of holdings and early marriages. The crisis of the late 1870s resulted in a new approach to the perennial problems of poverty and overpopulation and assisted emigration was advocated as a solution by the philanthropists, Fr James Nugent of Liverpool and the Quaker, James Hack Tuke, who visited the region in the Spring of 1880. Both realised the region's resources were not capable of sustaining a large population and by removing families it would have the dual advantage of consolidating farms into economic units for those who remained, while improving the lives of those who were sent to North America. Both men identified the mid-western states of North America as the most suitable region for settlement because land and employment opportunities were available as the region was being opened up by the railways. In June 1880 Nugent with the co-operation of local Catholic priests sent 329 people to Graceville, Minnesota where land was provided by Bishop John Ireland of St Paul. Their passage fares were paid by the Duchess of Marlborough Relief Committee and private subscriptions. At the same time Tuke advocated the emigration of families from the region and it resulted in the establishment of the 'Tuke Committee' in London in March 1882. Its emigration efforts were concentrated on the Clifden area because the local board of guardians were prepared to take out a £2,000 for emigration purposes. The demand for assistance was greater than the resources which the 'Tuke Committee' had and while nearly 1,300 were assisted between April-June 1882 many were left behind. Tuke called on the government to provide the funding for a large-scale emigration scheme and £150,000 was allocated in 1883 and 1884 with the 'Tuke Committee' administering the schemes in Connemara. Over 6,000 people had their passage paid to North America in the early 1880s representing about 12% of Connemara's population. Families were mainly assisted with at least one member having English and a high number of bread winners in each group. Only those with friends and relations in the United States were assisted to that jurisdiction, the rest being sent to Canada where the colonial authorities were prepared to provide help when they arrived at their ports. While the assisted emigration schemes ended in 1884 due to opposition from Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary and the Catholic bishops of the west, it initiated a chain migration process with at least another 500 emigrating by the end of the decade, their passage being paid by the Tuke emigrants. Remittances were also sent back by the emigrants: by 1890 £8,000 was sent back to the Clifden area which was used to supplement local incomes. The assisted emigration schemes initiated a migration process which continued into the twentieth century.
Dr Gerard Moran
Dept of History,
NUI Maynooth
Further Reading:
Gerard Moran, Sending Out Ireland's Poor: Assisted Emigration to North America in the Nineteenth Century (Dublin, 2004),
Gerard Moran, 'From Connacht to North America: State-aide emigration from Galway to North America in the 1880s' in Gerard Moran (ed), Galway: History and Society (Dublin, 1996)
Connemara
In 1756 it was noted of Connemara and the Joyce country that 'wheeled carriages are not much used in this country'. In 1783, Karl Kuttner, a German visitor, avoided Connemara because he heard that it was 'inhabited by a kind of savage'. In 1798, Lord Altamont in Westport House urged the government to attend quickly to Erris and Connemara:
Erris is at present inaccessible from the mountain floods and the wretched roads are scarcely fit to be called footpaths. It would be a material object to the peace and security of these parts if Erris and Connemara were opened. They are at present asylums for all the deserters, outlaws, robbers and murderers of the kingdom.
Maria Edgeworth had first experience of the difficult road to Ballynahinch in Connemara; her heavy carriage got stuck in the 'sloughs' and she had to be pulled out with the help of the natives, who followed the carriage in the hope of earning more money at the next slough.
These long-standing difficulties eventually encouraged the creation of new roads, whose tentacles began to reach into hitherto inaccessible areas. Engineers like Alexander Nimmo (1783-1832), Richard Griffith (1784-1878) and William Bald (1789-1857) added hundreds of miles to the existing road network, and villages sprang up where the new roads met the coast. The roads from Westport to Leenaun through the Partry mountains, from Oughterard to Clifden by Maam Cross, and the criss-cross routes through the Sliabh Luachra area of west Munster all offer good illustrations of this process. These developments reverberated to the furthest reaches of the west of Ireland - expressed by the establishment of new settlements at western road heads, as the market economy spread along the inviting new roads.
Clifden (1815) is a prime example, and it belongs to a generation of new towns including Kenmare, Knightstown, Cahirsiveen (1822), Belmullet (1825), Binghamstown, Belderg, Roundstone (1822), Letterfrack and Bunbeg. Through facilitating the easier transfer of lime and seaweed, and therefore encouraging reclamation, these new roads allowed settlement to spread quickly from the previously more accessible coast into the mountainous interior of the west of Ireland. In the process, these land-based developments dealt a fatal blow to the older seaborne trade of the west and its multifarious flotilla of small crafts - hookers, púcáns and gleóiteogí. James Darcy of Clifden, was asked in 1844: 'Is all the corn grown in the district exported at Clifden'? He answered: 'Yes, mostly: some is sent to Westport from the Ballinakill district. They used to put it into boats formerly, and would up to this time if there were not roads. Every day they are bringing more into Clifden, as the roads are open they are putting it on cars'.
Clifden inspired high hopes: George Petrie said in the 1830s: 'This is likely to eclipse in importance both Galway and Westport'. Heinrich Brockhaus noted in 1836: 'It was a strange sight to glimpse this little town, which had only sprung up twenty years ago, and although still insignificant it seems to me to combine everything necessary for later importance. The town lies at Ireland's most western point on an excellent bay with no further towns and forms the best possible point of exit for commodities that could and certainly soon will, be produced here. I have seen the town in its infancy and may hear some day of its deeds when fully grown'.
By 1873, an American visitor, J. l. Cloud lauded its location but noted the post-Famine downturn:
One does not often find a more beautifully situated town than Clifden. It seems to have been placed by a poet whose sole consideration was setting a picturesque village in a situation where it both adorns and is adorned by mountains and sea. As we approached it I was fascinated by its beauty, and promised myself a repose of some days in this charming spot. This anticipation, however, was doomed to a bitter disappointment. As a reverse to the beautiful picture presented by the town from a distance, I found houses and people, on a near inspection, the most insipid common, and utterly uninteresting I had ever seen. The buildings, comparatively new, for the most part unpainted, had a pitiable look of cheap respectability. Indeed, it had the appearance of a town built by contract, but which the absconding contractor had heartlessly abandoned before completion, so that houses and streets seemed to be hopelessly waiting for their finishing touches.
Clifden 2012 Facebook Stream
