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Index to Methodist Ministers

1 May By

The Methodist Church in Ireland spread rapidly after separating from the Church of Ireland in 1817-18. Methodists called for the individual to experience Jesus personally. This radical message in essence bypassed the professional clergy in the Anglican parishes throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Tracing Ministers

Pivotal to spreading the Methodist message were ministers who would preach to all classes in societies making no distinction. For this reason, the common people would find the message appealing, as it provided hope in often desperate circumstances.

If you have a Methodist minister in your family, you will be interested in the “Index to Methodist Ministers” database hosted by The University of Manchester library. The database covers 1819-1968. The source is “Ministers and Probationers who Have Died in the Work” which appeared in the back of the 1968 edition of Ministers and Probationers of the Methodist Church, printed by the Methodist Publishing House in London. A link from Ancestry.com under the database “UK, Methodist Ministers Death Index, 1800-1963” sends you to the Manchester database.

This serial was published periodically with updated ministerial lists in each edition. The periodical ran from 1819 to 1968. The database acts as a finding aid to Methodist clergy in the United Kingdom and Ireland.  

The Codes Used in the Ministerial Database

The index is alphabetical and although it provides only basic information, it is enough to allow research to continue. The names in the index are coded as follows:  P (Primitive); U (United) and W (Wesleyan). Other codes include:  Est. (Clergymen of the Established Church); I (Ministers in the late Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Conference in Ireland before the Amalgamation in 1878); W1 (Died in the 1914-18 War); and WW2 (Died in the 1939-45 War).

This list is similar to the “Index of Methodist Ministers Who Served in Ireland” being compiled online by the Methodist Historical Society of Ireland. Their codes include: M (Methodist); MNC (Methodist New Connexion); P (English – Primitive); PW (Primitive Wesleyan); W (Wesleyan); WMA (Wesleyan Methodist Association); Est. (Clergymen of the Established Church); WW1 (Died in the 1914-18 War); and WW2 (Died in the 1939-45 War).

Using the Information from the Database

Once you have identified a minster contact the Methodist Historical Society of Ireland or The University of Manchester for more biographical information.

If you would like help with your genealogy please call 385-214-0925.

 

 

Calendar of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1920

9 Apr By

The FamilySearch website has a very useful and free of charge database for identifying probate material. “Ireland, Calendar of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1920” is an index to the published calendars. The original published books are alphabetized within each year. The database on FamilySearch means you can search for an extended amount of time, even when you only have sketchy information.

The published calendars cover all counties up through 1917. After that there are separate calendars. This index to calendars is also duplicated, and free of charge at the National Archives of Ireland website.

The Scope of the Search

Much like other websites, the database search capability does pose some difficulties. Searches tend to have standardized fields, most of which do not apply. For this reason you might want to put in the limited information; such as name, county of death and range of dates.

You may be surprised who left wills. For example, these calendars start in 1858, a decade after the massive deaths and immigrations due to the Potato Famine. The reduction in the population meant land and wealth was freed up for many who stayed. So although your ancestor may have immigrated, siblings may have stayed and took over family holdings.

If you know a townland where the family lived, then you should be able to determine relatives who stayed. However, do not rely on a townland name when using the database search fields. You still will need to go into the calendar itself, which is scanned as part of this database.

The Search Does Not Stop with the Index

Once you have found entries in the index that are of interest to you, then you will need to click onto the image. At that point, you are linked to the image of the book itself.  It will provide a basic abstract of the original will or administration.

From the abstract you will need to look at the microfilm of the original document. This will be a manuscript, which can be found at the Family History Library.  The originals are housed at the National Archives of Ireland. By referencing the manuscript, you will have all the information in the document. The exception is the Principle Registry, which records do not survive.

Reconstructing the Family History

The index can be used in conjunction with the Griffith’s revision books, church registers, and the 1901 and 1911 censuses. In short, a more complete picture of your family history can be reconstructed through this will database.

If you would like help with your genealogy please call 385-214-0925.

Militia Service Records, 1806-1915

30 Mar By

FamilySearch in cooperation with FindMyPast has scanned and indexed the militia records of the United Kingdom housed at The National Archives, Kew. This major collection is series War Office (WO) 96.

What was the Militia?

The militia was part of the military. The militiamen were drawn locally and generated their own records. The militia units would serve outside their home area when needed.  They were a supplement to the British Army.  

After the United Kingdom was created in 1801 the “Militia of the United Kingdom” became the reserve military forces.  By the 1820s compulsory enlistment was abandoned and the militia became a voluntary force. The men would receive basic training at an army depot, then return to civilian life, reporting back for periodic training.

Contents of a Militia Service Record

The hosting of these records through FamilySearch is free and can be searched by name, birthplace, birth year, and military service place. It is also searchable on the FindMyPast website. A typical record is a fill in the blank form. Important information that may not be indexed but could possibly be found includes:

  • Name
  • Parish/Town/County of Birth
  • Whether a British Subject
  • Parish/Town/County of Residence
  • Parish/Town/County of Residence in the Last 12 Months
  • Age in Years and Months
  • Marital Status
  • Physical Appearance and Health
  • Religious Denomination
  • Militia Unit
  • Service Record
  • Next-of-Kin
  • Date

The forms can be several pages long. This collection includes 555,558 indexed records from throughout the UK during the period. If you type in “Ireland” as a birthplace, for example, 71,225 records become available through the indexing. However, you can narrow a search by Irish county of birth. Be aware that number is greatly increased if you include men of Irish descent born in other parts of the Empire, such as India, but were living in the UK when they enlisted.

Importance of the Records

For young men in the nineteenth century, the militia would have been attractive as a supplement to their civil pay. For that reason, you may find information about your family, even if you have no knowledge of anyone serving in the larger British Army.

If you would like help with your genealogy s please call 385-214-0925.

Lessons From a Mixed-Up Parish

22 Jan By

St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Chatham, Northumberland County, New Brunswick, may be the most ethnically and religiously mixed-up parish I have ever researched for an Irish family. Known as “Chatham Parish,” its records (1838-1899) are indexed and digitized as part of the “Acadia, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1670-1946,” on Ancestry.com. The lessons I learned from a page-by-page search for my targeted Irish family both amazed and confused me.

Chatham drew varied ethnic groups, with the Irish and French Canadians being among the largest. It was tough to rely on the index as the originals were complex. There were smaller pieces of paper inserted in the binding to reflect dispensations to marry, notices signed by non-Catholic spouses concerning their children’s religious upbringing, and of people requesting proof of their baptism so they could be married elsewhere.

Then there were the records of people converting to Catholicism; the assumption being in preparation for marriage. In most cases, they were absolved from heresy and conditionally rebaptized. The exception seemed to be the Lutherans from Scandinavian countries. They were absolved from heresy and received on a profession of faith.

So what did I learn? Religion was not necessarily clear-cut in these areas of diverse immigration. Sometimes who was the Catholic party was not always clear-cut. The fluid nature of church membership was not confined to the Catholic parish. It also occurred in the Protestant denominations.

For example, my targeted husband and wife were listed as Catholic on their marriage. They were married by a Baptist minister, with the witnesses being Presbyterian. Depending on the censuses, the wife was listed as Catholic or Presbyterian. I finally proved she and her husband were at least from Catholic families, and they had one child christened by the Chatham Parish priest. The rest was up for grabs. Her second marriage was to an Anglican in the Anglican Parish. For the wife, the censuses revealed her father was born in England and her mother in Ireland. Perhaps another mixed-marriage!

My most important lesson was to be very careful with church records and always look at original registers rather than relying on an index. If I had only relied on the index, then I would have missed the entire context of what the Chatham Parish was all about.

If you would like professional help with your family history call us at: 385-214-0925.

 

Reconstructing the Membership of a Congregation

9 Jan By

Often we find the church records we need were destroyed, never kept, or begin late. There are ways around this difficulty, but you have to think in terms of documenting and reconstructing membership from other sources. It is not that much different than creating a “census substitute” for an area, knowing the first complete census was 1901.

I recently did this with a small congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) which met from 1850 to 1854 in Gorteen Townland, Geashill Civil Parish, County Offaly (King’s County). In 1854 they all emigrated. Here was my approach:

  • In early Mormonism, converts were expected to gather with the main body of the Saints to help build the Kingdom of God; known as Zion. From 1847 Zion was the Mormon colonies in the Rocky Mountain with Salt Lake City as its capitol. By understanding the historical context, this further opens up other records to help you. It also explains why all the Gorteen Townland Mormons were gone by 1854.
  • The Dublin Conference of the LDS British Mission has membership records 1850-57, and these provide the residence of the member; when they were baptized (adult baptism is practiced); removed elsewhere or emigrated. From these chronological records, I could identify all members from my targeted geographic area around Tullamore, County Offaly.
  •  I then utilized records at the Family History Library, Church History Library and the Daughters of Utah Pioneer Library, all within walking distance of the other in Salt Lake City. I looked for journals, histories, newspaper accounts and acquired originals from references I found online.

In the end, I could reconstruct the membership and what happened to them upon immigrating, crossing the Great Plains and what they found upon entering the Mormon Zion.

I have used similar approaches with the Plymouth Brethren (Christian Brethren) to reconstruct membership for particular congregations in Ulster. I utilized the 1901 and 1911 censuses as my foundation as these do ask religious affiliation. Then I could compare my reconstructed congregation with Brethren directories and other sources.

The rule of thumb here is to not give up. When your records are scarce, be very creative and definitely “think outside the box.” You may be surprised what you discover!

If you would like professional help with your family history call us at: 385-214-0925.

 

 

Records So Bad You Laugh or Cry

30 Dec By

There are times in Irish research, where a record was kept so poorly that you either laugh or you cry. I had this happen recently when researching in the Catholic registers of Moylough & Mountbellew, County Galway. I had access to two different microfilming editions of the originals, and I utilized them both. Here is what I found out:

  • Several priests were serving the parish at the same time, each with his own record keeping style.
  • A common writing style in the christenings was to list the parents as Pat and Mrs. Sullivan. In this case, I could not trust whether the female godparent was listed by her maiden or married name.
  • Another common writing style was Pat and Mary Sullivan. In this case, I still could not assume the female godparent was listed by her married or maiden name. However, I had to wonder if whatever the surnames were of the godfather and godmother, if this could have been Mary’s maiden name.
  • Place names were commonly abbreviated. M. Bellew was obviously Mountbellew, but something like C. Bridge or B. Bridge required some thought. Perhaps, Carrickbridge and Ballybridge.
  • The writing was so poor that Pat Sullivan could just as easily have been Bat Sullivan for Bartholomew rather than Pat for Patrick. If the mother or godmother was listed with the first name of B. it was assumed this meant Bridget, K for Catherine; with M. being the mystery name of Mary or Margaret.

The bottom line is no index, not even one I could generate myself, could be used as the final word on what was preserved in this parish register. However, I knew what surname I was looking for and felt confident I could at least read that name accurately. So I could still research my targeted family. With my list of everybody by the surname in question documented, whether as a parent or godparent, then I could line up my findings and begin reconstructing various branches of the family.

The moral to this is even with access to an index online; I still had to go through them page by page. No index will be accurate for this parish as that is just not possible, and it’s no one’s fault.

If you would like professional help with your family history call us at: 385-214-0925.

Documenting Migration Patterns

17 Jul By Leave a Comment

I find that with so many databases rapidly coming online, that we are now able to conduct in-depth studies like never before. Between RootsIreland.ie, FamilySearch, Ancestry.com and FindMyPast.ie we can do what was unthinkable only a few short years ago. In this blog, I will take an example from a small rural cemetery in West Virginia, and demonstrate how you can literally document an entire community.

Identifying an Irish Immigrant Community

We know in all the immigrant countries, Irish Catholic tombstones often have birth places carved on them. This practice was not universal, but if you hit upon a cemetery which has many such stones, then you can develop a viable area of study concentrated upon that one community. This documentation process can help you make some sense out of settlement patterns within that community. One example would be the small Catholic community at Irish Mountain, West Virginia.

Irish Mountain is located above the New River in Raleigh County, West Virginia, and the Irish community dates back to 1855. The cemetery by the old chapel has an amazing amount of tombstones with Irish place names preserved on them. At just a glance, it becomes obvious; most of the people came from counties Clare and Kerry. There are other counties represented, but these are by far the majority. The assumption would be at least some of these families were interlocking in Ireland. If not in Ireland, then being surrounded by a sea of evangelical Protestant neighbors, they would have intermarried on Irish Mountain.

Documenting the Irish Immigrant Community

For so long the Catholic registers for County Clare and County Kerry were not online. Then indexes to County Kerry registers appeared on Irish Genealogy.ie and indexes to County Clare on RootsIreland.ie. For the first time, this provides us all with a chance to explore communities such as Irish Mountain, West Virginia. To use these amazing indexes, we have to ask appropriate questions:

  • Who married and had children in Ireland? These may be found in the databases.
  • Who married in West Virginia but perhaps has other relatives on Irish Mountain from Clare or Kerry? Parents and siblings may be found in the database.
  • Is there a pattern of parishes in Clare and Kerry these Irish Mountain immigrants came from?
  • Using Griffith’s Primary Valuation alongside the Catholic registers databases, is there a pattern of townlands these families came from?

The goal would be to see if immigration was random, for whatever reason, or if there was a systematic migration out of a few parishes specifically to Irish Mountain.

Conclusion

Irish Mountain is just one example. Other immigration patterns are already known or suspected around the world. With databases at our fingertips, we can now explore and flesh out targeted communities like never before.

If you would like help documenting the Irish in a particular community Click Here.

Writing Your Story

4 Jul By Leave a Comment

Whether you are planning on publishing your research in a book or online, it is important to first identify your audience. If you are writing a family history to interest your children and grandchildren, then pictures and stories are items which should be included. If your audience is limited to family members, then it is best to keep the story as engaging and simple as possible. Samples of old documents can help bring the narrative alive.

A Family History for Family Members Only

If your audience is limited to family members, then footnotes may not be the best way to go. Now saying this, a list of sources is always good. However, if your work is too academic, then you risk that nobody in the family will ever read it. If your goal is to interest the family in genealogy, then you must write with that specific goal in mind.

A Family History for a Wide Audience

Therefore, it may be wise to create a second, more academic version of your family history, complete with footnotes and bibliography. This can be done in a book or online. By compiling a second version, you can reach people whom you don’t even know exist. This is especially true with an Internet version. In this setting, you will need to back up your research with footnotes, as other people may not see things the way you do. People searching online are already interested and engaged in the research process. You are not trying to create the interest. This audience will need access to your research, thus the need for footnotes, so they can continue their own efforts.

Privacy Issue in Writing Your Family History

The Internet is also a wonderful way to share family pictures and stories. However, be aware that due to privacy issues, you need to be very careful what you put on the Internet about living people. If you are using a database such as FamilySearch or Ancestry, they already have privacy policies in place. If you are developing a personal website, then you will need to be extra careful.

Privacy issues are less important in printed books as those are limited in their distribution and someone will have to go to a particular library to get the information. Even if your book is digitized, as FamilySearch is now doing, then someone would still have to find that particular book and that particular page to obtain personal information on living people.

I suggest that you develop two versions of your written family history side by side. The first for family eyes only; making it simple and engaging. Then a second more academic footnoted version too share with everybody else.

If you would like help developing a family history for publication Contact Us.

Correlating City Directories with Censuses

26 Jun By Leave a Comment

In urban Irish immigrant research, it is common too not identify common names in the city directories. All you usually have is a name, occupation, and home address. If you already know this information then that is the key into this valuable source. However, you may have Patrick Sullivan who was a laborer, and you cannot find him in the census indexes? So what do you do?

Steps to Correlate City Directories with Censuses

The way I approach these issues is to try and eliminate individuals by correlating the city directory information with census information. My approach, which works well in large urban jungles such as Boston, Chicago, New York City and San Francisco is as follows:

Step 1: Find an online database of the city directory nearest the census year you want to concentrate upon. This could include one year either way of 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880, for example.

Step 2: Then instead of using that database just for names, use the search feature for the address. If your subject from the directories was on 34 Ambassador Street, then you want to know who else was residing around 34 Ambassador Street when your targeted Patrick Sullivan was living there.

Step 3: Once you have a neighborhood identified, then you take all the names, regardless of who they are, and see if you can find them in the index for that census year.

Step 4: The goal is to find the family of that Patrick Sullivan in that neighborhood. This will help you to know who was at that address in the city directory. This approach works especially well if you cannot find your ancestor in a particular census. I usually assume the surname was not indexed correctly. This happens often when a German census taker is writing down Irish names, and then an indexer tries to make further sense out of the entry.

Successful Research Methods

I have solved many problems by using this simple strategy. This method works for sorting through common names or trying to determine if your ancestor was actually listed in the census enumeration. If you can reconstruct the people living around a particular address, then you have an extra tool in your tool box from which to continue your research.

If you have lost your Irish immigrant ancestors in the urban jungles then Click Here.

Documenting Your Story

20 Jun By Leave a Comment

We all have stories and they can be amazing teaching tools. However, at another level, these stories need to be documented. Irish culture is well-known for its storytelling as an art form. However, there comes a point where documenting stories develops the narrative itself into a workable framework where in each piece the story can be placed in a historical context. At that point, moral lessons can be preserved, based upon historical facts. This takes the story beyond storytelling, and serves a different purpose. So why do this?

Lies, Truth and Agendas in Stories

When storytelling is not understood as myth, the “facts” presented can often lead to erroneous and harmful conclusions. This is where lies are passed off as truths. While almost everyone accepts that institutions and governments do this on a regular basis; we sometimes forget families also have agendas. Erroneous stories are passed off to justify prejudice, hatred, social status, repression, religious and political agendas, or simply to keep a family member in check. To say erroneous facts can be dangerous is an understatement. Just think of the harm nineteenth century stereotypes about the Irish caused our ancestors.

Family agendas often cover up a wide range of sins. By doing so the status quo is kept intact, reputations preserved and healing never occurs. The paper trail releases the secrecy and allows the flow of what really happened to be unveiled.

Documentation Brings Context to a Story

It is important to take your stories and piece by piece document them. That will not only provide the truth of your family history, but it will also open up new lessons at deeper levels to pass down. For the difference between storytelling and documenting your story, please see my blog “Storytelling as an Art.”

If you would like to document your stories Contact Us.

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