Collections

Donegal County Archives

While there is much material for County Donegal on line and on microfilm, there’s a major repository for county records which should not be overlooked. This is the Donegal County Archives: http://www.donegalcoco.ie/services/communityculturalenterprise/ArchivesService/ It is part of the Donegal County Council.

Within its collections are a wide range of impressive record types, making it one of the largest county based collections in Ireland. Within its holding are the Poor Law Union archives which can be used to document the people in the workhouses. There are also Grand Jury records back to the mid-eighteenth century, school registers, estate records (landlord papers), private papers, court, legal deeds, Ordnance Survey maps and oral interviews. Out of all their collections, probably one of the most significant would certainly be the workhouse records from the local Poor Law Unions.

If you have Donegal ancestors the website inventorying the collections for the Donegal County Archives is worth consulting. They conduct research by mail, and the form isonline. You can also visit the archive by appointment. Information to arrange a visit is also on the website.

As any family historian with Donegal roots knows, the church registers tend to begin late. This reason alone makes the Donegal County Archives a major genealogical repository in the quest to document and extend your family lineage.

Don’t Hesitate to Question a Database

1 Dec By Dwight Leave a Comment

Recently I was faced with whether or not to question what a database said. Either way would have taken me down a different research avenue. I chose to question and hope my hunch was correct.

I had a reference from a Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) database quoting an administration index for an 1839 Armagh Diocese estate. It gave the name, year, and the townland of residence. So I knew this was for the family in question. Then came the quote at the bottom of the page which stated:

“The original documents referred to in this index do not exist. No further information, other than that recorded above, has survived.”

My first thought was “Not so fast!” I knew abstracts or second copies often survive. I reasoned if one existed, it may tell me more.

The PRONI database was technically correct, the originals were destroyed in the 1922 Four Courts Fire in Dublin, when the archive when up in smoke. I knew my year 1839 was important because it was included in the Inland Revenue records which were abstracts originally filed in London (not Dublin). They are on microfilm at the Family History Library: www.familysearch.org

I looked at the Inland Revenue index for 1839, and found my entry. The index alone told me the administrator’s name and the folio number, which was basically a page number. Based upon the index, I pulled the microfilm for the year and looked for the folio. Not only did the manuscript abstract tell me how much the estate was worth; it also told me the date the person died. In this case the administrator was an administratrix – his remarried widow. It said, widow, and also gave her maiden name.

The moral of this story is if I had believed the index without question, I would have missed some very important pieces of information. This extra information allowed me to find the second husband in Griffith’s Primary Valuation (1847-64) and learn what happened to the wife who was of course also ancestral.

Tasmania’s Heritage: Name Index

19 Nov By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office is indexing various record collections and making them available in searchable databases in the “Name Index”:

Some of the record collections have digitized images to go with the index search. However, for those not digitized, with the reference from the index, a copy can be ordered from the archive. The collections are naturally packed full of Irish who arrived as convicts or as free settlers. The databases include the following:

Arrivals: This includes passengers and ships arriving mainly in Hobart in the nineteenth century. The source for this is a card index. Currently, surnames A-K are part of the Arrivals index.

Census Index: Most of the censuses were not retained by the government. However, what has survived for 1837, 1838, 1842, 1843, 1848, 1851, 1857 has been digitized. A listing of the districts and parishes enumerated are part of this database.

Colonial Tasmanian Family Links Database: Containing 500,000 entries, this database was created from mainly birth, marriage, and death records, held in the Archives Office. The linkage was developed by family historians from the former National Heritage Foundation in the late 1990s. The information is not necessarily verified.

Convict Applications for Permission to Marry: An index and digitized images of records for convicts who applied to marry free people or other convicts from 1829 to 1857.

Convicts (Tasmanian): This is an index to all convicts transported to Tasmania or who were convicted locally in the colony. The collection covers 1804 through 1853 when transportation stopped. The locally convicted convicts extends the database information to 1893. There are about 76,000 entries.

Departures: This collection includes indexes and digitized images to what records are available for departures from Tasmanian ports from 1817 through 1867.

Divorces: An index to the divorces heard before the Tasmanian Supreme Court from 1861 to 1920.

General Index: The sources for this database come from a variety of records. The references are mainly to people’s names, but subjects are also included. Some of the records have been digitized.

Inquests: This is an index and digitized images concerning inquests into people’s deaths from about 1828 through about 1930. Inquests into fires are under the General Index database.

Naturalizations: This is an index and digitized images covering 1835 through 1905.

Wills: This database includes an index and digitized images of Wills and Letters of Administration from 1824 through 1989.

IGSI Estate Records Index

29 Oct By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Irish Genealogical Society International (IGSI): http://irishgenealogical.org is the major Irish genealogical society in the USA. One of their projects to make records more accessible is the “Estate Records Index” project.

Estate records are the landlord business papers of the estate and may include lease agreements and rent ledgers. These may document the average tenant farmer, and are an important, although underutilized resource. Prior to the advent of parish registers, the estate records are about the only record available to document the common family.

The difficulty with these types of records is they are scattered at different archives, no index, and often of little genealogically valuable; as not all estate records lists tenants. To find records, you have to know the townland or parish your ancestor lived in, and the landlord’s name. This is where the IGSI “Estate Records Index” is a major contribution.

IGSI has funded a prominent Irish genealogist to go through the estate records housed at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin, and inventory the valuable ones. Most of the volumes are by county and then by civil parish and by landlord/estate. Counties include: Armagh, Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Leitrim, Limerick, Mayo, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Waterford, Westmeath and Wicklow. Individual estates include: “Lismore – Cork (Bandon Area), Tipperary; and the Inchiquin Peninsula – Clare, Limerick, Tipperary.” The prices are reasonable at between $7-$25 USD. They can be ordered from the IGSI Bookstore link on the website.

I personally use these inventories. Once I have found an estate of interest, then I contact an agent working out of the National Library of Ireland: http://www.nli.ie

The “Estate Records Index” series is worth investing in for your particular county research needs. For any library with an Irish collection, the entire series is worth purchasing.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

24 Jun By Dwight Leave a Comment

The society library houses books, newspapers, microfilm, periodicals and some 20 million manuscripts. They are one of the nation’s largest non-governmental repositories of documentary materials. Within their collections are church registers, censuses, vital records, taxes and genealogical files.

Several major additions to the HSP increased its collections to become nothing short of amazing. In 2002 the records of the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies and in 2006 the records of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania merged into the HSP. This enhanced the HSP to become a major repository of ethnic and immigration studies. Part of the Balch Institute collections were the records of the Scotch Irish Foundation to which the HSP has a special 16 page finding aid describing and inventorying: http://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/findingaid3093scotchirish.pdfThis particular archive of records includes 37 boxes, 11 volumes from 1889 through 2001, with the majority dating from 1940 through 1995. They include membership files, family registrations and genealogies. Another collection is many transfer certificates from the Loyal Orange Institution of the United States of America 1883-1974. There is also a finding aid to this archive of records: www2.hsp.org/collections/Balch%20manuscript_guide/html/loi.html

The HSP publishes the respected journal, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. This magazine has been published since 1877. The HSP should not be neglected, especially for Pennsylvania, Delaware and northern New Jersey research. However, their collections reach far beyond this core area.

Southern Claims Commission

15 Jun By Dwight Leave a Comment

A little known source in genealogy is the Southern Claims Commission records which cover the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.

The Southern Claims Commission was established in 1871 and was dissolved in 1880. Its purpose was to review property loss claims by Southerners who remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Of the 22,298 claims received, only 7,092 were approved. While most of the claims (accepted and rejected) were for white citizens, there were a significant number of black claimants. What is important is that the claims listed witnesses, usually family members found in these records. There are some 222,000 witnesses with their personal information.

The documents consist of pages of some 80 questions which had to be answered, and the witnesses also had to answer the questions. This provides a treasure trove of insight into families.

The Southern Claims Commission records (1871-1880) are now scanned and indexed on Ancestry.com in three indexes: a Master Index (accepted and rejected); Disallowed and Barred Claims; and Allowed Claims. Make sure you search all three. Plus, I find that sometimes it helps to not put in a name in the search, but only the county. Then I can see who else was filing a claim from the county. It also helps me get around the problem of often marginally literate people trying to maneuver through the government paperwork and dealing with government officials. With seeing who else filed claims, I can get around some of the most horrid spelling errors of surnames imaginable!

Do not ignore this as a major resource for the Reconstruction Era, and for personal details.

Church of Ireland Prerogative Court of Armagh Marriage Bonds

28 May By Dwight Leave a Comment

The Prerogative Court of Armagh covered all of Ireland. The moneyed segment of mainly Protestant society had their marriages recorded through this court. These Marriage License Bonds (1710-1849) are on microfilm at the Family History Library (FHL #100876). The original records were destroyed in 1922, but several Irish genealogists had worked with the original records prior to their destruction. The resulting works list only the groom, the bride and the year.

Two collections provide details missing from the indexes, such as the residence of the groom and the bride. “Betham’s Genealogical Abstracts from Prerogative Marriage Licenses, 1629-1810” (FHL #100874-75), abstracted by Sir William Betham is at the National Archives of Ireland: www.nationalarchives.ie Important details about this collection can be found in David E. Rencher’s three part article “Sir William Betham Collection” published in The Septs in 2010 and 2011. This is the journal of The Irish Genealogical Society International: www.irishgenealogical.org The second, “Abstracts of Prerogative Marriage Licenses of Ireland, 1629-1858” (FHL #100167-68), extracted by Denis O’Callaghan Fischer, is at the Genealogical Office: www.nli.ie/en/intro/heraldry-introduction.aspx The Fischer Collection does have its own bride’s index (1629-1820) at the end of the Genealogical Office’s MS 421 (FHL #100167 item 1).

These Prerogative Court marriage record abstracts may not be as informative as you would like. However, they do open up other sources such as the Registry of Deeds, surviving wills and other records from which the upper classes can be documented within.

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