FMP's Irish Marriage Notices In American Newspapers

In May, Find My Past announced the release of two new record sets, Irish Marriage Notices In American Newspapers and Irish Death Notices in American Newspapers. This post will focus on the collection of marriage notices; my next post, in a few days, will look at the death collection in more detail.

Irish Marriage Notices In American Newspapers contains 2,550 records, taken from four different U.S. newspapers: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Herald, New York World, and Phoenix. When the record set was released, Irish Genealogy News reported that these notices appeared in the newspapers from 1835 to 1860.

In total, 1,446 notices are for people living in the Unites States. Almost all—1,304—are for marriages in New York. The remaining 1,104 notices are for people outside the U.S., of which the majority—926—are for people in Ireland.

I don't have a Find My Past subscription so unfortunately was unable to look at the actual records and see if Irish places of origin are included for marriages occurring in the U.S. For marriages that occurred in Ireland, it is likely that the place where the marriage took place is included. Scanning through the surname of those in the records shows that many are for Irish immigrants with traditionally English and Scottish names, e.g. Adams, Allen, Brown, Greenswood, Jackson, Stewart, Thompson etc.

However, this is understandable. Firstly, some of the records are from pre-Famine years, and therefore from a time when non-Catholic immigration to the U.S. still made up a significant proportion of overall Irish immigration. Secondly, marriage notices cost money. Irish emigrants who could afford these notices were able to bring some startup capital to the U.S., were generally from a higher social class in Ireland, and were usually from an Anglo-Irish heritage.

MARRIAGES                     2550
________________________
Alabama                               8
California                            14
Connecticut                        4
Illinois                                   4
Indiana                                 2
Louisiana                            10
Maryland                             8
Massachusetts                    6
Missouri                               2
New Jersey                         64
New York                          1304
Pennsylvania                     10
Rhode Island                       2
United States                      60
Virginia                                 4
Washington DC                  2
TOTAL                               1446
_________________________
Ireland                                926
England                               68
Australia                             16
India                                      8
France                                   6
Canada                                  6
Cuba                                       4
Windward Islands           4
Belgium                                2
Italy                                        2
Turkey                                  2
Scotland                                2
TOTAL                              1104

Link to Irish Marriage Notices in American Newspapers database.