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Chapter THREE
CENSUS RECORDS
After General Register Office records, the natural source to turn to is Irish census returns. The good news is that full government censuses were taken every ten years between 1821 and 1911. The bad news is that almost all the nineteenth-century returns were destroyed, either by official order or by the 1922 fire in the Public Record Office. The earliest full censuses for the entire island date from 1901 and 1911. Because of this (a small bit of good news) the normal rule that the original returns remain closed for a century was suspended in the 1970s and microfilm copies of both 1901 and 1911c are available at the National Archives of Ireland. Only 1901 for Northern Ireland is available at the . Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The 1901 microfilm has also long been held by the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons, and can be ordered through the Family History Library attached to any LDS temple. Portions of the 1901 returns for particular areas of Ireland are also online (see Chapter 11) or published (see my own Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, 1999, 2nd ed., or James G. Ryan's Irish Records, 1998, 2nd ed.). In addition, significant fragments of the earlier censuses have survived for some parts of the country (see below for details).
1901 AND 1911 RESEARCH
The basic problem is finding the right set of returns. Ideally you should know the relevant street or townland. In both 1901 and 1911 the returns were collected by the District Electoral Division (DED), a subdivision of the county used for electoral purposes. For rural areas, if you identify the placename in the 1901 Townlands Index, this will also give you the name and number of the DED in which the townland is situated. County- by-county volumes on open shelves in the National Archives reading room go through the DEDs in numerical order for both 1901 and 1911, giving the name and number of each of the townlands they contain. To order the returns for a specific townland in the National Archives, you need to supply the name of the county, the number of the OED and the number of the townland, as given in these volumes. For the cities of Belfast, Cork, Dublin and Limerick separate street indexes are available on open shelves in the reading room. Again each street or part of a street is numbered, and these numbers are necessary to order specific returns. Between 1901 and 1911 some changes took place in the District Electoral Divisions and their numbering is different in some cases. There is no separate townlands index for 1911, but the changes are minor so that a DED numbered 100 in 1901 may be 103 in 1911 and can be found simply by checking the divisions above and below 100 in the 1911 volume for the county.
INFORMATION GIVEN
The 1901 and 1911 returns record:
The returns also give details of the houses, indicating the number of rooms, outhouses and windows, and the type of roof. Members of the family not present when the census was taken are not recorded.
TIPS
Age
This most obviously useful piece of information is also one that needs to be treated with the most scepticism. Very few of the ages given in the two sets of returns actually match precisely. In the decade between the two censuses most people appear to have aged significantly more than ten years.
Location
When you know the names of all or most of the family, as well as the general area, it is possible to search all the returns for that area to identify the relevant family and thus pinpoint them. This can be particularly useful when the surname is very common; the likelihood of two families of Reillys with precisely the same children's names in the same area is remote.
Cross-checking
At times, again when a name is common, it can be impossible to identify from information uncovered in civil or parish records a particular family as the one you are searching for. In such cases, when you know details of the subsequent history of the family -dates of death or emigration, or siblings' names for instance -a check of the 1901 or 1911 census for the family can provide useful circumstantial evidence.
Marriages
The requirement in the 1911 census for married women to supply the number of years of marriage is obviously a useful aid when subsequently searching civil records for a marriage entry. Even in 1901 the age of the eldest child recorded can give a rough guide to the latest date at which a marriage is likely to have taken place.
Living relatives
Children recorded in 1901 and 1911 are the parents or grandparents of people now alive. The ages -generally much more accurate than those given for older members of the family -can be useful in trying to uncover later marriages in civil records. When used together with Land Valuation Office records (see Chapter 5) or the voters' lists of the National Archives, they can provide an accurate picture of the passing of property from one generation to another. Luckily the Irish attitude to land means that it is quite unusual for rural property to pass out of a family altogether.
1821. Only a few volumes survive for parts of Cos. Cavan, Fermanagh, Galway, Meath and Offaly (King's County). These are now in the National Archives. They record:
1831. Most of the remaining fragments relate to Co. Derry. Information on the house was dropped and religion added.
1841. Literacy, date of marriage and 'family members who died since 1831' were added. Only the returns for the parish of Killeshandra in Co. Cavan survive.
The 1841 and 1851 census returns were sometimes used as proof of age when state old-age pensions were introduced in the early twentieth century, and the forms detailing the results of searches in the original returns to establish age have survived and are found in the National Archives for areas in the Republic of Ireland, and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland for areas now in its jurisdiction.
1851. Most of the surviving returns relate to parishes in Co. Antrim.
1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891. The official destruction of the returns for these years was lamentably thorough. Virtually nothing survives. The only transcripts are contained in the Catholic parish registers of Enniscorthy (1861) and Drumcondra & Loughbraclen, Co. Meath (1871).
CENSUS SUBSTITUTES
Almost anything recording more than a single name can be called a census substitute, at least for genealogical purposes. What follows is a listing, chronological where possible, of the principal substitutes. For details of the parishes they cover, you should see my own Tracing Your Irish Ancestors (1999, 2nd ed.) or James G. Ryan's Irish Records (1998, 2nd ed.).
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
1703-1838. The Convert Rolls (ed. Eileen O'Byrne, Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1981) lists those converting from Catholicism to the Church of Ireland.
1740. Names of Protestant householders for parts of Cos Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal and Tyrone.
1749. The Elphin diocesan census, which is arranged by townland and parish, lists householders, their religion, the numbers, sex and religion of their children, and the numbers, sex and religion of their servants.
1766: This is a somewhat ham-fisted attempt at a census carried out by Church of Ireland rectors on the instructions of the government. Many of the returns give only numerical totals. All the original returns were lost in 1922, but transcripts survive for some areas and are deposited with various institutions. The only full listing of all surviving transcripts and abstracts is in the National Archives reading room on the open shelves.
1796: Spinning-Wheel Premium Entitlement Lists are a record of those entitled to a government subsidy to the weaving trade covering almost 60,000 individuals, which show only the name of the individual and the civil parish in which he lived. A microfiche and CD-ROM index to the lists are available.
1824-38. Tithe Applotment Books (see Chapter 5).
1847-64. Griffith's Valuation (see Chapter 5).
1876: Landowners in Ireland: Return of owners of /and of one acre and upwards... (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1876), reissued by the Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1988, gives the names, addresses and acreage of 32,614 owners of land in Ireland in 1876. Only a minority of the population actually owned the land they occupied.
Various dates
Freeholders. From the early eighteenth century freeholders' lists were drawn up regularly, usually because of the right to vote which went with freehold of property over a certain value. This was of interest for only a small minority of the population.
Voters' lists and poll books. Voters' lists cover a wider range of population than freeholders' lists since they also include freemen of the various corporations. Poll books are the records of votes actually cast in elections.
Electoral records. No complete collection of the electoral lists used in the elections of the twentieth century exists. The largest single collection of surviving electoral registers is to be found in the National Archives, but even here the coverage of many areas is quite skimpy.
Valuations. Local valuations and revaluations of property were carried out with increasing frequency from the end of the eighteenth century, usually for electoral reasons. The best of these record all householders.