Place Names

1901 Townland Index Online

An important database has come online. It is the 1901 version of the “Index to Townlands,” sometimes referred to as the “Townland Index.” It is now available on The Irish Genealogical Research Society website. I cannot tell you how long I have waited for either the 1901 or 1871 editions to come online. The reason is that unlike the standard 1851 Townland Index, the later ones list an extra category for the Electoral Division.

What is a District Electoral Division?

The Electoral Divisions, more properly termed District Electoral Divisions (DED) is a grouping of townlands within the Poor Law Union. If you have used the Griffith’s revision books to any extent, you know that aside from the Poor Law Union, you have to know the DED to access the massive microfilm collections through the Family History Library. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland have placed their revision books online; with a place name index to townlands, erasing the need to know the DED. However, until these come online for the Republic of Ireland, the problem remains and you still need the DED.

Three Ways to Search the Database

This new database allows for three different searches:

General townland search

Townlands in specific Civil Parishes

Townlands in specific District Electoral Divisions

All three are invaluable. For example, if you are using Griffith’s or the revision books, the townland names are meaningless without a map in front of your. Even if you know your townland name, you will no doubt be interesting in other families by the same name or in-laws in the same area. These searches allow you to group the townland names by DED. This narrows your search to a particular section of a civil parish or Poor Law Union.

I will be using this database over and over again. So thank you to the compilers Perry McIntyre and Terry Eakin from Australia for a job well done. A special thanks to The Irish Genealogical Research Society for being the host.

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Determining if Derra Really is Dirraw

22 Mar By Dwight Leave a Comment

Historic Irish place names seem to be one of our major hurdles in our Irish research. Often we are stuck there because so many records depend on the correct geography. I was researching out families in Dirraw and neighboring Mullans townlands in Finvoy Parish, County Antrim. My target family was back and forth in both townlands.

I knew this was my area of concern because of what I had found in the Irish marriage registers, Griffith’s Primary Valuation and my United States research. None of this was in question. Online at Ballymoneyancestry I found a 1790 Election record for the family in Mullans. Great, I thought. There must be a lease agreement filed somewhere in the Registry of Deeds prior to 1790.

Registry of Deeds Lands Index

There was no difficulty finding deeds for Mullans Townland, however, the manuscript Lands Index (or County Indexes) for the period around 1790 was nothing short of a nightmare. I found almost nothing in my search for Dirraw. There in lay my problem.

Concerning Mullans, historically, it was divided into Long Mullans and Broad Mullans and sometimes I found it simply as Mullans. Dirraw was non-existent to the point it made me wonder.

Townlands in a Deed Grouped Geographically

I began to solve this deed problem by looking at all the transactions involving Mullans. Typical Irish deeds listed many townlands from various parts of Ireland in the same transaction However, multiple townlands were either grouped by parish or barony. There alongside the Mullans townlands was a Upper Derra or Dera and a Lower Derra or Dera. I had a modern road map showing townland names, so there was no question, the deeds grouped townlands geographically.

So in my search prior to 1840, my Dirraw was hiding under Derra or Dera. That’s what I needed to know. Now I can go back to the manuscript indexes under those spellings (Upper and Lower) to gather those transactions. However, as I suspect, I have by default already looked at most of them simply by the fact I already found the Mullans transactions.

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Sorting People by a Place Name

31 Jan By Dwight Leave a Comment

Names can be so common you don’t know if you have the right Patrick Murphy in the Irish christening records. This is true if you only have a minimum amount of details. I was working on just such a case, where I believed I had identified the correct Catholic parish in County Tipperary. However, a few doubts remained which needed to be addressed.

Creating an On the Spot Research Strategy

My solution was to think in terms of the strong and weak points of the case. The name Patrick Murphy was my weakest point, because it was common. My strong point was the parish registers listed “addresses” such as townlands and localized place names within the townlands. This meant I could easily sort Murphy families out by their address. What made this task even easier was the old registers had been recopied by hand during the 1930s and placed on printed fill in the blank pages.

The new register itself was both a strong and a weak point. Yes, it was easy to scan a page but the transcribers often had problems reading the original handwriting.

Identifying my Strongest Point

My strongest point was the family in question was found in a small, localized place called The Rock. I documented all Murphy families from The Rock to see if any immigrated to the Ontario city where the targeted family lived. Could I establish any common patterns?

Now if the Murphy pattern couldn’t be worked on the Ontario side, I could expand my strategy by studying ALL families, regardless of surname, hailing from The Rock. Then return to my Ontario research and see if common migration patterns emerged.

Often creating on the spot strategies are the only way to solve research problems. You simply cannot go to a database with minimum information and know which Patrick Murphy is the man you are seeking.

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A Townland Name as a Regional Description

24 Jan By Dwight Leave a Comment

I was researching a family in Doocastle, Kilturra Parish, County Mayo recently. The Tithe Applotment (1834) listed who I thought was the family in Eskreagh & Lugadoon. Doocastle itself was not listed. The Tithe book crossed the border into County Sligo, with the manuscript separating out the townlands by county. While Eskreagh & Lugadoon was suppose too have been on the Mayo side, I couldn’t find that it became an official townland name a few years later, when the Ordnance Survey teams standardized names, spellings and boundaries.

I had noticed online other researchers were asking the same questions I was. My only solution was to think up a strategy right on the spot.

Comparing the Tithe and Griffith’s Valuation Informaion

I took the seventeen households listed in the Tithe and tried to identify them in Griffith’s Primary Valuation on Kilturra Parish, Mayo (1856) and Sligo (1858). I found some of the exact names in Griffith’s living in Doocastle. I also found the other Tithe surnames limited right across the border on the Sligo side. At this point, I took a map of this area and marked each Griffith’s townland where the Tithe entry appeared. The results were fascinating.

All surnames and exact given and surnames were limited within a short distance of Doocastle, County Mayo. I surmised that Eskreagh & Lugadoon must have been a regional name for this area of Kilturra Parish in both counties. When the Ordnance Survey teams completed their job in 1837; this localized area simply disappeared.

The Tithe was Generated Using Localized Place Names

I also reasoned the Tithe Applotment was generated using local knowledge of farms and townland names. Thus, the people of the community were tithed and funds went to support the Protestant Parish.

I was satisfied the man I found in Eskreagh & Lugadoon was the man I was seeking in Doocastle. If I had simply thrown up my hands and quit, I would not have confirmation to continue building this case.

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Lists of Townlands in Poor Law Unions (1885)

1 Sep By Dwight Leave a Comment

Often I encounter a townland name in Irish Civil Registration that the spelling is so mutilated that none of the databases help me. If on a birth, marriage or death certificate you encounter this, then there’s help on the horizon. Civil Registration was compiled by Poor Law Union, which is the same as the Superintendent Registrars’ District in civil registration.

To keep track of all this, in 1885 the government produced a series of pamphlets for 63 Poor Law Unions listing the Registrars’ District, the Electoral Division within the Registrar’s District, and then a list of townlands within each Electoral Division. Where more than one civil parish is involved the townlands within the Electoral Division are divided accordingly.

This really isn’t as confusing as it sounds. The pamphlets created a reference work the officials could utilize in completing the civil registration forms. It’s all laid out on paper with the correct government recognized spellings. Yet, how often the officials ignored this reference work is anybody’s guess.

How I use this work is if I cannot read a place name, then I go to this 1885 work, reference the pamphlet on the Poor Law Union I’m interested. Then I reference the Registrars’ District and start looking for anything familiar. The main categories are on the certificate anyway, so referencing the correct pamphlet is not a problem. Then I see what my options are supposed to be according to the government for recognized townland names. This is how I find what I’m looking for as some townland in my options will look like what I’m seeing on the certificate.

These pamphlets have been brought together and published by George B. Handran, C.G. as Townlands in Poor Law Unions (Salem, Massachusetts: Higginson Book Co., 1997). This excellent reference tool is available on CD.

The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (1844)

25 Aug By Dwight Leave a Comment

If you are writing a pre-famine family history, or simply wanting to know what life was like in a particular area, then The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (1844) may be what you are looking for. This is a ten volume set arranged alphabetically. This work is found several places online, so it is best to Google the title of the book and see which database you want to consult.

This work is similar in scope to the two volume Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837): www.libraryireland.com/topog/index.php by Samuel Lewis, which I have already blogged about. The two sources together provide you with an excellent pre-Famine view of Ireland.

The gazetteer is written from the government point of view, so a parish entry will mean civil parish. However, Roman Catholic history and statistics will be listed under the civil parish. There are entries for counties, parishes, islands, towns and considerable villages, baronies, principal mountains, bays, all fishing harbors, all rivers, principal lakes, chief mines and mineral districts, on all villages which contain at least twenty houses, and hundreds of others which contain fewer, and principal rural antiquities to name some of the topics covered. This remains a true encyclopedia of pre-Famine Ireland. What is not listed are histories on individual townlands.

The entries all sorts of statistics taken from the 1831 and 1841 censuses. This in itself can provide you with hard to find information from which to develop your narrative, if you are writing a family history or conducting historical research.

A breakdown of the volumes are as follows: Volume 1 (A-Arm), Volume 2 (Arm-Car), Volume 3 (Car-Cus), Volume 4 (Dal-Gal), Volume 5 (Gal-Kil), Volume 6 (Kil-Mag), Volume 7 (Mag-Rap), Volume 8 (Rap-Tib), Volume 9 (Tib-You), Volume 10 (You-Z and Index).

What the Heck is a Townland?

13 Apr By Dwight Leave a Comment

What exactly is a townland? A townland is the smallest surveyed unit of ground in Ireland. It is basically the address of most people in rural Ireland. It is not a village, although there may be one within a townland. I like to think of them as a cow or sheep pasture with boundaries. They may or may not have houses.

Townland names will be seen in church registers, deeds transactions, birth, marriage, death certificates, directories and in newspaper accounts. While the concept of a townland goes back into antiquity, the boundaries, and often their names do not. It was the Ordnance Survey teams who by the early 1830s had set boundaries, names and switched Ireland from Irish Acres to English Acres (1 Irish Acre = 1.6 English Acres).

A quirk you will encounter is that what the Ordnance Survey teams designated as a townland, may not be what the local people used in the records. This is found commonly in Roman Catholic records, and even civil registration, although the government records were supposed to use the standardized names.

The typical townland ranges from a few hundred acres to maybe a couple of thousand.

Either way, they are small by American and Canadian standards! They are not square, but follow roads and geographic features. A typical road map may list townland names, but not townland boundaries. The more detailed maps will show townland boundaries, especially the 6 inches to the mile maps drafted in the 1840s. One important site with maps is www.askaboutireland.ie

Those Gaelic Words in Irish Place Names

1 Apr By Dwight Leave a Comment

It doesn’t take long to realize that place names in Ireland are a mixture of Gaelic and English. From my own experience of going to Ireland and Northern Ireland since 1990, I’ve come to realize that I’ll never pronounce the really long Gaelic names correctly. So I do my best, wait for the locals to correct me, and then we all smile politely.

There are a few common words you will see all the time in place names. From my years in the records, let me share with you the ones I come across the most. I’m drawing from the website www.dublin1850.com/general/placenames.html which is one of many. Keep in mind many of these are Anglicized Irish words.

ard: hill or height

bally: town or townland

bun: bottom, mouth of a river

carn: Cain, heap of stones

carraig: Also seen as Carrick, meaning a rock

clon: meadow

cool/col: corner or nook

cull: back

derry: oak wood or grove

drum/drom: ridge or hillock

dun: fort or palace

glas: small river or stream

gort: tilled field

kil: a wood

kill/killy: church

knock: hill

letter: hillside

lis: ring fort

lough: lake

magher: a plain

mullin: a mill

rath: circular fort, earth mound

shan: old

termon: church lands

tul/tulla/tully: hillock, mound

While knowing these words may not help you find your ancestors, they do place your ancestors in a historical context. After all, in rural Ireland the tenants were tied to their historic lands.

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