Parish
Records
Before the commencement of civil registration in Ireland, parish records
are the most important source of information for those researching
their ancestry. There is, however, much confusion amongst genealogists
and historians concerning the existence or availability of Irish parish
records.
The first problem is identifying which records exist for a particular
area and the period covered. A parish is an administrative unit, be
it civil or religious. In general, the Church of Ireland parish boundaries
follow those of the civil parish. However, during the 18th and 19th
centuries many new parishes were formed (particularly in urban areas)
and some old parishes were united as a result of falling populations.
Many of these changes are recorded in Samuel Lewis's Topographical
Dictionary of Ireland (1838). The boundaries of Roman Catholic parishes
can be difficult to define as, on the whole, they do not conform to
those of the Church of Ireland or to civil parishes. Another problem
is that the names of Roman Catholic parishes not only differ from
those of civil and Church of Ireland parishes, but may also be known
by several names.
In Ireland Protestant dissenters, such as Methodists and Presbyterians,
do not conform to a parish structure, but are Congregational in their
church government. In ordinary terms, this means that their followers
were not (generally) tied to attending any particular church, chapel
or meetinghouse.
In where the name of a Minister or Priest is known, but not to which
parish or congregation he was attached, it is worthwhile consulting
the various published directories of the various denominations. The
Irish Catholic Directory was first published in 1836; the earliest
directory for the Church of Ireland was published in 1814 as the Ecclesiastical
Registry by Samuel Percy Lea; the first Irish Presbyterian Directory
was published in 1840 as McComb's Presbyterian Almanac; the minutes
of the annual conferences of Irish Methodists have been published
from 1746.
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Registers
The
information contained in parish registers differs, depending not only
on the denomination concerned, but also upon the individual who maintained
the register. Among Disstenters and Roman Catholics, many registers
were simply notebooks and on the death of the minister or priest were
often considered that person's personal property and passed out of
the hands of the church. While other register books were in a printed
format (particularly so in the Church of Ireland), often all the details
that were meant to be inserted were not. Another point to remember
is that while many registers were written neatly, some others can
be extremely difficult to read.
The information recorded in Irish parish registers will usually include:
* Baptism - Name of the child and date of baptism and birth (usually
only date of baptism in early registers), names of the father and
mother and their home address. In Roman Catholic registers the mother's
maiden name is normally recorded and the names of least two Godparents.
In Church of Ireland registers, the father's occupation may be recorded.
* Marriage - Usually record the names of both parties and the home
address of each and the names and addresses of at least two witnesses.
From the middle of the 1850s Roman Catholic registers (particularly
in urban areas) often record both parents' names and their address.
In Church of Ireland registers, before the advent of civil registration,
the name of the bride's father is far more likely to be recorded than
ever that of the groom. Protestant Dissenters often married in the
Church of Ireland because of the legal implications relating to the
validity in law of marriage. [Jane - refer here to 'See also section
on Civil Registration'].
* Burial - The name of the deceased and the home address and date
of burial. Church of Ireland registers will often include the deceased's
age, occupation and cause of death. More often than not Roman Catholics
and Protestant Dissenters failed to maintain any type of burial records.
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Roman
Catholic Records
There
are very few Catholic records which pre-date 1800. Those that do tend
to relate to urban areas and were begun in the very late eighteenth
century. In general, records date from the 1820's-30's. Few parishes
have maintained burial records.
Most Roman Catholic parishes contain a parish church and a number
of other smaller churches or chapels. Usually only one register will
have been kept for the whole parish, but occasionally it might be
found that each church or chapel has its own register. Establishing
into which Roman Catholic parish a rural Irish address falls (especially
those taken from civil registration records) can be difficult. The
best and most reliable source is the Topographical Dictionary of Ireland
by Samuel Lewis, which was published first in 1837. For example, having
established that Balgeeth townland falls into the civil parish of
Ardcath, in Co. Meath, by looking up the entry for the civil parish
of Ardcath in Lewis one finds the description: "In the R.C. divisions
the parish is the head of a union or district which comprises also
the parish of Clonalvy and part of Piercetown, and contains two chapels,
situated respectively at Ardcath and Clonalvy..." Thus, we have
discovered that the whole of the civil parish of Ardcath falls into
the Roman Catholic parish of the same name. The registers of Ardcath
R.C. parish date from 1795.
The National Library of Ireland(NLI) has microfilmed almost all of
Ireland's Roman Catholic parish registers up to the year 1880 (and
in more recent times filming has been extended to approximately 1900).
Microfilm copies of the NLI's Roman Catholic parish registers for
the the six counties of Northern Ireland are also held at the Public
Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast. PRONI also
has copies for most of the parishes in counties Donegal, Cavan and
Monaghan, which are part of the province of Ulster, and some for counties
Louth and Leitrim (which border Ulster).
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Church
of Ireland Records
The
Church of Ireland, the state church in Ireland, was disestablished
in 1869, and from the 1st January 1871 it became an entirely voluntary
body. Under the direction of the Irish Master of the Rolls, and through
the Parochial Records (Ireland) Act of 1875, it declared that marriage
registers dated pre-1845, and baptismal and burial records pre-1871
were public records and should be deposited in the Public Record Office
of Ireland in Dublin. Some parishes parishes opposed this decision
and there was a further Act passed in 1876 which allowed records to
remain in local custody, provided there was provision made for their
safe keeping in the form of a fire-proof safe.
By 1922, the records of 1,006 Church of Ireland parishes had been
deposited in the Irish Public Record Office, while a further 637 parishes
kept their records in local custody. When the Public Record Office
was consumed by fire during the Irish civil war in 1922, all but four
sets of registers were completely destroyed. The first thing that
people hear when they begin Irish research is that all Irish Church
of Ireland parish records were destroyed in 1922, but the above figures
show that over one third survived.
This was a loss to all, not just members of the Church of Ireland,
because these registers also contained information on both Roman Catholics
and Protestant Dissenters.
The privileged position of the Church, up to about 1800, gave it the
exclusive right to administer the rites of baptism, marriage and burial.
In reality, an 'official' blind-eye was turned and the non-Anglican
denominations baptized, married and buried their own (although in
large urban areas most burials came under some sort of notice of the
Church of Ireland as that church controlled almost all urban graveyards
and would thus be recorded in Church of Ireland parish registers).
The best publication to consult to establish the current situation
relating to Church of Ireland parish registers is 'A Table of Church
of Ireland Parochial Records and Copies', edited by Noel Reid and
published by the Irish Family History Society in 1994. A typical entry
records the name of the parish, the years for which the records were
extant up to 1922, whether they survived and where they are now held
(in original form, microfilm or transcript). However, bear in mind
that this publication dates from 1994 and is now out of date in places.
Only the records of baptism, marriage and burial were covered by the
Parochial Records Act (1875), all other records kept by Anglican parishes
remained in local custody. In more recent years many parishes from
the Irish Republic have deposited their records at the Representative
Church Body Library, Dublin (which is a stated place of deposit for
Church of Ireland records under the 1987 National Archives Act. The
types of records, other than registers of vital events, which can
be of use to family historians are such items as vestry minutes, confirmation
rolls, lists of names of parishioners.
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Methodist
Church Records
When
John Wesley came to Dublin in 1747 shortly after Methodism had been
planted in Ireland. Those who joined Methodist societies were from
all Protestant denominations, but in doing so remained in full membership
with their own churches.
There was a split in Irish Methodism in 1816/1817 over the issue of
retaining loose links with the Church of Ireland and the administering
by Methodist preachers of the rite of baptism (and to a lesser extant
that of marriage). The result was that two bodies emerged, the Wesleyan
Methodist Connexion (now a formal church) which from then on allowed
its preachers to baptize and marry; and the Primitive Wesleyan Methodist
Connexion, which held that its members should still subscribe to the
Church of Ireland to the rites of baptism, marriage and communion.
However, after the distebalishment of the Church of Ireland, the split
between these two bodies appeared to matter little and in 1878 they
united to become the Methodist Church in Ireland.
Other branches of Methodism include the Primitive Methodist Connexion,
which began in England in 1812, and which was also established in
Ireland from 1832; The Rev. John McClure, amongst others, is credited
with bringing the Methodist New Connexion to Ireland when he began
preaching in Dublin in the autumn of 1800. One year later, in the
New Connexion conference minutes, Dublin is referred to as a circuit.
Irish Wesleyan Methodists only began keeping registers of baptism
and marriage from the time of the split in 1816/1817, before that
one should expect to find relevant records of these events amongst
the records of the Church of Ireland (and to a lesser extent the various
Presbyterian churches). Primitive Wesleyan Methodists did not begin
to perform (and thus record) the rites of baptism and marriage until
shortly before the Irish Methodist union in 1878.
Registers are usually maintained on a circuit basis, and their start
dates tend to be somewhere between 1816/17 and c1830. A further source
for baptismal records of Irish Wesleyan Methodists is the Irish Wesleyan
Methodist Connexional Baptismal Register. This record is an official
church transcript, compiled during the mid-nineteenth century, of
almost all of the then surviving baptismal registers for the various
circuits. It covers the period c1815 to c1845. It can be seen on microfilm
in both the National Library of Ireland and the Public Record Office
of Northern Ireland.
Very few Irish Methodist churches have burial grounds.
Most of the Methodist churches from the six counties of Northern Ireland,
(Armagh, Antrim, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry (Derry) and Tyrone)
have had their registers and other records microfilmed by the Public
Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). PRONI has also filmed
many, but not all, Methodist records from the counties of Cavan, Donegal
and Monaghan, which are in the Irish Republic.
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Presbyterian
Church Records
Presbyterianism
was introduced into Ireland in the seventeenth century by 'planters'
from Scotland. (An explanation of 'planter's and plantations
in Ireland is in preparation) It should be remembered that the Penal
Laws applied to all those who were not members of the Church of Ireland,
the state church in Ireland. However, while other Penal Laws remained
in force, after the passing of the Irish Toleration Act in 1719, all
forms of Protestant dissenting public worship was legalised. Information
on Presbyterians can also to be found in the registers and records
of the Church of Ireland. While most rural Presbyterian congregations
had burial grounds, few maintained burial registers until the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
As many Irish towns, particularly in the north of Ireland, had more
than one Presbyterian church, to differentiate between each congregation
to terms 'First', 'Second' and 'Third' were employed, i.e. Ballymena
First, Ballymena Second. A number of congregations existing in a town
might have been the result of some historical dispute over doctrine,
the choice of minister, or simply because a congregation had grown
too big and needed new accommodation.
There were a number of Presbyterian traditions in Ireland, the main
ones being the Synod of Ulster and the Seceding Presbyterians (both
of which now form a part of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland; the
Synods of Munster and Dublin which are in union with the Non-subscribing
Presbyterian Church in Ireland; the Reformed Presbyterian Church in
Ireland; the Covenanters; and a number of small divisions.
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has microfilmed
almost all of the surviving registers
for the Presbyterian congregations of the nine counties of Ulster,
Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry (Derry) and Tyrone. A
number of early original Presbyterian registers and records are held
by the Presbyterian Historical Society for congregations from both
Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.
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Religious
Society of Friends (Quakers)
This
society began in Ulster in the mid-17th century, mainly around Lurgan,
Co. Armagh and Lisburn in Co. Antrim and birth, marriage and burial
information exists from that time.
Abstracts were made of all monthly meetings from 1860 forward. These
abstracts are located in the Dublin Friends Historical Library (DFHL)
and are retrospective to the 1670's. National Abstract Registers have
been maintained in Dublin since 1859.
The
DFHL holds the following: the registers, minute books and archival
material belonging to each monthly meeting; private papers, family
photographs, and diaries.
Prof Theodore Moody (TCD)( 1907-1984) created a reference system for
Society in 1984, arranging that microfilms of the Ulster province
archives were given to the DHFL, and the Lisburn Archives.
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Some
References:
Methodist
Records:
ffeary-Smyrl,
Steven C. Exploring Irish Genealogy, No. 1. Irish Methodists -
Where do I start? published by the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations,
Dublin 2000. ISSN: 1393-9645
Quaker Records:
Goodbody, Olive: Guide to Irish Quaker Records, 1654-1860
Eustace, P.B & Goodbody, O. Quaker Records, Dublin, Abstracts
of Wills (2 vols.) Irish Manuscripts Commission 1954-58.
