Genealogy Basics Myth, Irish Catholic Parish Records were Lost

Genealogy Basics Myth, Irish Catholic Parish Records were Lost INTRODUCTION: By Joe Petrie A few Irish Catholic Parish Registers were lost. The estimate is that about six percent are missing. The focus of this article is to show how to search the Irish Catholic Parish registers and records that were not lost. I ll start with a brief history of the Family History Library (FHL) reels of tapes that I used which were available to the public years ago. Then, I ll cover the records in FamilySearch.org which are interpreted as birth and marriage records. Next, I ll focus on searching on-line resources and records in IrishGenealogy.ie, a small database which covers some protestant records. Finally, I ll cover the Catholic Parish Registers in the National Library of Ireland database (NLI.ie), in Ancestry Library (a free resource) and in subscription resources, Ancestry and Find My Past. Some are tools in my current genealogy toolkit! Twice in one week in May 2016, I was told by individual consultation clients at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood MA and at the Irish Cultural Centre of New England in Canton MA that Irish Catholic Parish registers and records were lost. My tongue in cheek reply is always that if the client believed that I d give the client a bridge for a dollar. Then I promise to show the client how to search the Registers records. I do not guarantee a successful search. I searched for a dozen of my Irish ancestors without success. This article identifies genealogy web sites with Irish Catholic parish baptism and marriage registers. I have been told that there are death records but I have not searched for a death record in parish registers yet. I plan to search especially for my wife s ancestors in Cork, Galway and Waterford Counties. Some of the covered web sites are free. The following sites are covered in historical sequence: FamilySearch; Irish Genealogy, National Library of Ireland; Find My Past and Ancestry Library. Find My Past is covered because it is a subscription service that Friends of Irish Research (FIR) has access to. The article has some screen prints, record transcripts, and images. For most of my Irish ancestors, Irish Catholic parish register records are not available because I believe that they came to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the late 1700s, A few may have come in as late as the early 1800s. For some Irish ancestors, I do not know a year of birth, or County or Parish. I plan to use the software with the fewest required fields. Ancestry Library for example can be searched using given name and surname. I ll admit that I have a lot of work to do for my Casey, Cummings, Dooley, Hogan, Keefe, Laffan, Mackey, Maher, O Brien, Ormond, Petrie and Tobin ancestors. For this article, the only Irish ancestor that I search for is John Cummings. According to the Census of Canada in 1901, John was born on 24 May 1820 in Thurles, Tipperary, Ireland. He married Johanna Maher on 13 November 1839 in what is now St. John's Basilica, St. John's, Newfoundland. Please note that the priest noted on the St John s parish register that John was from Thurles. (I read a copy of the register in St. John s at the Colonial Building.) John and Johanna moved their family to Lingan, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. John died before the Census of Canada of 1911. Johanna Maher was born in Newfoundland. She died in Lingan in 1881. Please note that Maher was a sept in Thurles - so I hope that Johanna s father was also from Thurles. BACKGROUND: I volunteer to consult for two hours with clients of two local organizations. For the Friends of Irish Research (FIR), I volunteer at the Irish Cultural Centre of New England (ICCNE) in Canton MA on Friday evenings from April until January. Use friendsofirishresearch@gmail.com to request a reservation.

For the Adult Programs at the Morrill Memorial Library in Norwood MA, I volunteer for two hours, two or three times a week in the months of May and October. To request a reservation or to be added to the waiting list, please call 781-769-0200 extension 110. Also, I conduct seminars for FIR, for the FIR School of Genealogy, for ICCNE and for the Morrill Memorial Library. FAMILY HISTORY LIBRARY REELS OF TAPE Years ago, while viewing Cape Breton reels at the Family History Library (FHL) in Franklin MA, I learned that Irish parish registers on microfilm reels were available. Specifically, the reel for my wife s Galway family parish, Immaculate Conception, Oughterard, Kilcummin Parish was on-site for another user. I ordered a second copy. Ordinarily, I went to the FHL library alone. After the library received the second copy, my wife accompanied me to the library where we gathered records from the two microfilmed reels. Sometime later, I discovered that the FHL in Franklin had new equipment installed that I could use to save images of parish register images to a flash drive. That day, I saved 80 images from the Immaculate Conception, Oughterard, Kilcummin Parish register for baptisms. I went back periodically to get more images. (I wonder if the reels are still there.) What follows is a description of the progression to the various web sites in my genealogy toolkit. FAMILYSEARCH FamilySearch.org was the first on-line genealogy resource that I used for Irish vitals. Soon after the reels of tape experience, FamilySearch.org added on-line Irish birth, marriage, death, civil registration and other records. Initially, some were not transcribed and indexed. The user could browse the images until FamilySearch added the indexed records. The screen print of the databases that are currently available on FamilySearch.org for Ireland is shown below. The URL is familysearch.org/search/collection/list. To search only for Ireland databases, I entered Ireland in the Filter by Collection Name block. That block is just above Place in the left column of the screen.

Please note that I have periodically compared the Ireland Births and Baptisms records and the Ireland Civil Registration Births Index records. From my perspective, the Births and Baptisms were exactly the same as the Civil Registration. The source seems to be Civil Registration. I suspect that the Marriages and Deaths had the same source. The birth registrations historically were after the actual birth and baptism events, sometimes long after. Nonetheless, I used the records until July 8. 2015. I recorded the dates of birth from the records. Currently, I am now deleting the Birth date and place whenever I find a Baptism record in Ancestry Library. I record the Baptism date and place in the Christening fields. I leave the birth place and date blank unless the priest recorded it. I record the Civil Registration information in the software s note section. IRISHGENEALOGY About 5 years ago, Irishgenealogy.ie became a permanent part of my genealogy toolkit because of the non-catholic records. I was introduced to and educated about Irishgenealogy.ie at ICCNE by Bernie and Judy, two peer volunteer genealogists at the ICCNE library. Both are: Past Presidents of The Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA); lifetime members of ICCNE: founding members of FIR; and very generous with their free time which I took advantage of. Both conduct seminars and individual consultations etc. (They taught me all I know about Irish genealogy!) The following is from the irishgenealogy.ie web site. Please note items 2, 4, 5 and 7. WHAT CHURCH RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE? On this site: 1. Transcripts of the baptism and marriage records of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kerry to c. 1900 - this diocese includes parishes in western and north-western areas of Co. Cork. 2. Transcripts with record-images for all surviving nineteenth-century Church of Ireland marriage, baptism and burial records in Co. Kerry. 3. All Roman Catholic baptism, marriage and burial registers for Dublin City, some parishes in transcript only (to c. 1900), some transcripts with record-image (to c. 1880). The records of St. Paul's, Arran Quay, are not included. A transcript of its records can be found at http://dublinnorth.rootsireland.ie. 4. All surviving Church of Ireland baptism, marriage and burial registers for Dublin City, most of them transcripts with record-images to c. 1900. 5. All surviving Church of Ireland baptism, marriage and burial registers for Co. Carlow, transcripts with record-images to c. 1900. 6. All Roman Catholic baptism, marriage and burial registers (transcripts with record-images to c.1880) for the diocese of Cork and Ross, which covers the south and west of the county and Cork city. Some of the records of Cork city (for the parishes of St. Mary & St. Anne, St, Patrick's and Blackrock) are not online. 7. A small number of Presbyterian records relating to a congregation in Lucan, Co. Dublin (transcript only).

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF IRELAND (NLI) On July 8, 2015, the Catholic Parish Registers were made available in the NLI.ie web site. Users could browse the images. Each image corresponded to a page or two-pages of a Register. For years, the Catholic Parish Registers were available on microfilm reels at the National Library of Ireland (NLI). As I indicated earlier, some were available at the Family History Library (FHL) in Franklin MA. (I never asked about the availability of others.) My microfilm reel collection at the Franklin FHL included at least one reel for my wife s Oughterard, Kilcummin, Galway ancestors baptisms and marriages. The Kilcummin Parish records started in the early 1800s. The NLI Registers were digitized by a contractor, AEL Data, who converted 550 microfilm reels containing over 3500 registers into approximately 373,000 digital images. The NLI software starts with a record selection screen that required a user to enter a parish name. Next, the user was required to select the Register (Baptism etc.). Year and month filters are optional. For my wife s family, I knew the parishes: O Brien in Cork Youghal; Connolly (Connelly and Conneely) in Galway Immaculate Conception, Oughterard, Kilcummin; and McGrath in Waterford Aglish and Knockanore. For dates, I sometimes had only a year which required me to review all the images for a year. I wrote an article on my use of the NLI.ie software entitled: Genealogy Basics - How to Find Irish Vitals in the National Irish Library Web Site.The article is hyperlinked to the www.friendsofirishresearch.org/publications tab. Please note that I can t link the NLI.ie record in the article for John Cummings to my Cummings family. In fact, because of the Irish naming patterns, it is likely that I will not be able to link the record. Also, please note that the John Cummings record about the National Library web site is not in Find My Past s or in Ancestry Library s Irish Catholic Parish registers. There is a different John Cummings record in both that may in fact be my Cummings ancestor s baptism record. I ll cover this later. Finally, please note that I have also used and book-marked the free NLI web site (http://registers.nli.ie). I even used it last week with a client that had a certified copy of a Civil Registration Birth Index record for her grandmother from the Civil Registration in Cloanakilty, Cork County. Also, I ll cover this later.

FIND MY PAST Findmypast.ie appears to have been the first to make the NLI.ie Irish Catholic Parish registers available for surname searches. The following transcription is from Findmypast.ie note that the image is available. Also please note that findmypast.ie is in my genealogy toolkit. First name(s) John Last name Cummings Birth year - Baptism year 1821 Baptism date 04 Jun 1821 Parish Thurles Diocese Cashel and Emly County Tipperary Country Ireland Father's first name(s) John Father's last name Cummings Mother's first name(s) Margret Mother's last name Callanan Repository National Library of Ireland National Library of Ireland link http://registers.nli.ie//registers/vtls000632767#page/1/mode/1up Register Baptism Record set Ireland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms Category Birth, Marriage & Death (Parish Registers) Subcategory Births & baptisms Collections from Ireland copyright Findmypast 2015 ANCESTRY LIBRARY Currently, it is the first free web site in my genealogy toolkit that I use to start ancestor searches. Ancestry Library (henceforth Ancestry) indicates that the Ireland, Catholic Parish Register database contains indexed records of the National Library of Ireland s Roman Catholic Records. As I stated earlier, on July 8, 2015, the records images were made public for browsing on the NLI.ie web site. Ancestry estimates that 94% of the Catholic Parish Registers are in the collection without explaining the missing images. Maybe the Myth is correct for the other 6%! I found that some of the pages in my wife s Catholic Parish Registers for Immaculate Conception in Oughterard, Galway were unreadable. Maybe those pages are in the 6%. A comment about Ancestry is appropriate. I was surprised that the over 373,000 images in the National Library of Ireland s database became 25,631,162 indexed records in Ancestry.

The following paragraphs are from Ancestry. Original data: Catholic Parish Registers, National Library of Ireland, Ireland. Published under the National Library of Ireland's Terms of Use of Material made available on registers.nli.ie. About Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915: The Ireland Catholic Parish Registers is the single most important collection needed to trace your Roman Catholic ancestors in Ireland in the 1800 s. According to the 1861 census, almost 78 percent of the population was Catholic; by 1891, this had risen to 89 percent. This collection is made up of baptism, marriage and death records from over 1,000 Catholic parishes across the whole of the island of Ireland - both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as it is known as today. While baptism and marriage records make up the majority of the collection, death records can be found primarily for parishes in the northern regions. Approximately 94 percent of Catholic parishes are included in this collection, though not all registers from these parishes are available. For more information, visit the National Library of Ireland website at registers.nli.ie. It is worth noting that, while the Church of Ireland was the established state church from 1536 to 1870, an overwhelming amount of the Irish population remained Roman Catholic throughout this period. Irish Catholic Emancipation was secured under the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829, lifting legal restrictions that were previously in place against all Catholics. By this time, Penal Laws were also lifted, which had forbidden the Catholic Church to maintain parish registers. Catholic Emancipation brought more freedom to record vital events within the Catholic Church. As such, the bulk of the records in this collection date from the late 1820 s onwards. Where some earlier registers exist back to the 1650 s, they are known to cover the more prosperous and anglicised eastern counties of Ireland. The records are written in either English or Latin. For help understanding the Latin entries please see our helpful glossary of common terms. The indexes to this collection have been created from approximately 367,000 digital images made available for free by The National Library of Ireland. In keeping with the ethos of The National Library of Ireland efforts, the images in this collection are also available for free on this website. The index has been created and the images published by Ancestry under the National Library of Ireland's Terms of Use of Material. Tips for Using Irish Parish Records It s helpful to know family structure and important to know at least a county of origin in Ireland to correctly identify your ancestors in this collection. See our guide on finding ethnic origins here. Try searching for just a last name and parents names to see all of the children born to a couple.

MY APPROACH In Ancestry, I use the New Collections Selection to open and search the Irish Catholic Parish Registers. Why? I do not want to be distracted by civil registration records etc. The starting point is the Ancestry Home Page that is shown below. To search the Irish Catholic Parish Registers, I click on the New Collections tab (on the far right of the black box). Technically, the New Collection tab is a misnomer. The real name should reflect exactly what it accesses. It lists all collections. Only one collection can be accessed. Please note that when I want to search all records in Ancestry, I click on the green Begin Searching Button under the photo/image on the Ancestry Home Page. Also, please note that when I want to search only for Birth, Marriage and Death records, I select Search the Search Tab and Births, Marriages and Deaths in the Search drop down list. Unfortunately for Ireland, the retrieved records include the Civil Registration Index records. As you know, the Index records typically do not contain the actual Birth, Baptism, Marriage and Death dates.

The following screen shows the results from entering Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers in the resulting New Collections screen. I entered: Ireland, Irish Catholic Parish Registers in the Title Block, There are two databases that meet the search criteria. I selected the first one. The following screen shows a portion of the fields that can be searched. I entered: John, Cummings, 1816, Thurles, Tipperary, Ireland. Then, I pressed the orange Search button.

For this article, earlier I indicated that I searched for a record for my 2 rd great grandfather, John Cummings of Thurles, Tipperary, Ireland, of St John s Newfoundland and of Lingan, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. As I indicated before, John was born in Thurles, Tipperary according to his 1839 marriage record in Register of the Basilica of St John s. I entered 1816 in the Birth Year, the first Birth year in the three Census records for Canada (1881, 1891 and 1901). In the 1881 Census, he was born in 1816. In the next Census he was born in 1818. In 1901 Census, his date of birth was 24 May 1820. Please note that I believe that the Cummings family moved to Cape Breton from St John s before 1860 but I have not found them in the 1861 and 1871 censuses of Canada. The following screen print is the first page of the Results Screen. The first record is a close fit. The following transcription record resulted when I clicked on the first record.

The following screen print shows a magnified image for the first record. I think that this my ancestor! ANCESTRY TIP: Deliberately Misspell Surnames In May of 2016, two clients were searching for Irish Catho;ic Baptism records. After trying different approaches, he clients and I found them by deliberately misspelling the surnames. One search was for Ellen Spillane who was born in Aghaguille, Cork in 1875. Her parents were Michael and Ellen Connor. The Civil Parish was Cloanakilty. The Civil Registration was done in Castleventry. There were two Catholic parishes in Castlevenrty. The Catholic Parish was unknown. First, we chose Castlevenrty Parish without success. We searched Keleen and Castleventry Parish successfully. Specifically, for the deliberate misspelling, we searched for Ellen Spillaine, born 1875 in Cork. The first record on the results list was the record that we were searching for. We celebrated! We found a record for Ellen Spellane daughter of Michael and Ellen. She was the client s grandmother. She was baptized about a month before civil registration. I picked the Spillaine surname because it was the surname of a neighbor in my parent s neighborhood in Dedham, MA.

The result screen is shown below. The following screen is the transcript. When the client and I viewed the image, we were convinced that the farther s surname looked more like Spillane than Spellane. We did not check Find My Past.

For another client, we repeated the process for Martin Curley who was born in Galway. Eventually after trying different approaches, we searched for Martin Carly and found the record. Again, when the client and I viewed the image, we were convinced that the farther s surname looked like Curly than Carley. As before, we did not check Find My Past. SUMMARY Now you know what is in my toolkit for searching Irish Catholic Parish Registers. Ancestry Librry is where I start. Why Ancestry Library? On the home page, I use the grean Begiin Searching button. Its search engine requires one of the four fields to be filled. Typically, I use two fields: Last Name (Surname) and Place where your ancestor may have lived. Also, you learned that I like to use Ancestry Library s New Collections for the Catholic Parish Records. In addition, you kmow that I use more than one software. Often, I use both Ancestry Library and Find Mt Past because they use the same records. John Grenham, one of Ireland s finest genealogists, has shown that the search engines often return different records. The Ancestry Library software often retrieved records that were unexpected. Finally, you know about successes f rom searching using deliberately misspelled surnames. Please remember that priests are human and can make human errors, like misspelling surnames. Transcribers can also err. Recommend that users add free Ancestry Library to their genealogy toolkit if available! I have neen told that 700 librarues in New Hampshire will have Ancestry Library. Because I do not recommend subscription services, either Ancestry or Find My Past is recommended for individuals without access to Ancestry Library. I have never had to compare costs! # Your corrections, comments and suggestions are appreciated. Please Email me at joeapg@norwoodlight.com. Joseph F. Petrie, AB (Economics and Business St. Anselm College) MA (Economics Boston College) Founding Member, Friends of Irish Research (FIR) Member, Cape Breton Genealogy and Historical Association (CBGHA) Member, Family History Society of Newfoundland and Labrador (FHSNL) Member, New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) Member, Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) Research Correspondent, Cape Breton Genealogy and Historical Association (CBGHA) Member, Friends of Morrill Memorial Library, Norwood, MA Resident Genealogy Volunteer, Morrill Memorial Library, Norwood, MA