The Passage Money Paid

This picture captures the most rudimentary but fundamental act during emigration: paying the emigration agent.

The various signs in the picture advertize: "G. O'Neil E[mig]ration [Ag]ent", "Direct from Cork", "For Quebec", and "Hibernia." In the right foreground, a woman sits on a box that says: Jack Sullivan Goin to Ameriky [sic]. In the background, there seems to be a woman and child in distress, possibly due to they or a loved one leaving Ireland.

The second and third paragraph make reference to a particularly busy time of year when many people left Cork: "Upon reference to notes and papers of my own, and to information afforded me by the emigration agents here, I am disposed to think that about the middle of May the great emigrational torrent ceases to flow from these shores. Looking backward for the last month, I find that, during the week ending April 11 the greatest rush for the season took place. The numbers who left Cork that week could not have fallen far short of 1500 souls…" The date May 10, 1851 has also been written on the picture. 

Source: NYPL Digital Collections

I'm Giving a Talk in New Jersey

Next Tuesday (24th) I will be giving a talk in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The title is Finding Your Irish Townland of Origin: Research in the U.S. and Ireland. Full details are at the end of this post.

Basking Ridge is only about 30 miles west of Manhattan so hopefully the venue will be reachable for as many people as possible. I'm looking forward to the talk and would like to thank the Bernards Township Library Family History Interest Group and Morris Area Genealogy Society for inviting me. Hopefully,  I can help some people find their townland of origin.

The millions of Irish who came to the United States in the 19^th century did not make it easy for their descendants to find where they came from in Ireland. Finding their townland of origin is the ultimate aim of anyone with Irish ancestry. If you have already combed through the census, searched vital records, written away for Church records, and scrutinized the city directories, only to find "from Ireland", then this talk is for you.

Firstly, the focus is on Irish genealogical research in America. Relevant strategies for breaking through brick walls will be discussed in detail. This will be coupled with records and sources where you can find the Irish place of origin. Then the focus switches to Ireland, with a explanation of the main genealogy record sets: civil registration, parish registers, tax records, censuses, and criminal/legal records.  This important focus on the past will be coupled with current developments in Irish genealogy, in the shape of the best books, blogs, and websites.

Tuesday, 24 June: Finding Your Irish Townland of Origin: Research in the U.S. and Ireland. Hosted by Bernards Township Library Family History Interest Group and Morris Area Genealogy Society. Venue: Bernards Township Library, 32 South Maple Ave., Basking Ridge, New Jersey, USA. 6:30pm - 8:45pm. Free, no booking required. Email RLufkin@bernards.org for more information.

From Roscommon To Canada

The Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth is currently carrying out research on the topic of Famine-era assisted emigration from Strokestown, Roscommon to Canada. The focus of this research are the tenants of the Strokestown Park estate who were sent from Ireland in 1847. In May of that year, 1,490 tenants left Liverpool for Quebec in British North America (Canada). They traveled on four ships: the Virginius, Naomi, John Munn, and the Erin’s Queen.

Unfortunately, before 1865 there are few passenger lists for immigrants coming to Canada. However, sources such as the Filby's phenomenal Passenger and Immigrant List Index (available on Ancestry.com) can help to fill the void. Library and Archives Canada also has a useful webpage about immigration before 1865.

Have you been able to trace your ancestors back to a May 1847 arrival in Quebec on one of those ships? If so, your next trip could be to county Roscommon.

To learn more about this assisted emigration, you can consult a news article from early May on the Journal.ie website.

The Gathering. No, Not That One

Parts of Montana, particularly Butte, have long had large concentration of residents with Irish ancestry. In an effort to try and preserve their stories, traditions, and folk memories, the Irish Studies department at the University of Montana has carried out an oral history project since 2009.

The Gathering: Collecting Oral Histories of the Irish in Montana is an online archive of interviews carried out with Irish-Americans who live in the state. As of June 2014, there are over one hundred interviews in the collection. Whilst the topics discussed with the contributors are wide-ranging, many talk about their recent and deeper family ancestry, including their knowledge of immigrant ancestors.

You can select and listen to all interviews by clicking here.

Diocese of Wilmington Cemetery Database

The Diocese of Wilmington was established in 1868 and today covers the state of Delaware and nine Maryland counties on the Delmarva Peninsula.[1] The three largest cemeteries in the diocese are Cathedral cemetery (Wilmington, DE, opened 1876), All Saints (Wilmington, DE, opened 1958), and Gate of Heaven (Dagsboro, DE, opened 2002). 

A searchable database is available on the diocesan website for these three cemeteries. Details in the database include name, date of death, and plot location. Existing headstone/grave markers in Cathedral cemetery have been photographed and are also available to view. The diocesan website also lists location and contact information for 18 current and 4 closed parish cemeteries.

Search the database by clicking here.

Cemetery Maps

All Saints map

Cathedral cemetery map

Gate of Heaven map

---

[1] Catholic Diocese of Wilmington. A Brief History of the Diocese of Wilmington. Year Unknown. Available online at http://www.cdow.org/about-the-diocese/history: accessed 13 May 2014 

From Tyrone/Monaghan To Providence, Rhode Island

A paper in the 1997 Clogher Record [1] has an excellent overview of chain migration from Tyrone and Monaghan to the city of Providence, Rhode Island. The author, Edward McCarron, outlines that “between 1825 and 1865, at least 475 persons from county Tyrone and Monaghan were recorded living in Providence and nearby Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The largest contingent, 148 or 37%, came from the parish of Clogher, with significant numbers hailing from adjacent parishes of Errigal Keerogue and Errigal Truagh, straddling the border of Tyrone and Monaghan.”[2]

These numbers are based on an analysis of naturalization records for the city, of which many give an Irish place of origin. More broadly, fully 53% of Irish people who naturalized in Providence between 1840 and 1860  were from Ulster counties[3] - Tyrone, Monaghan, Antrim, Cavan, Fermanagh, Donegal, Down, Derry/Londonderry, and Armagh (listed in order of percentage of overall total).

McCarron outlines a number of different reasons for this chain migration, two of which were economic decline in south Ulster in the 1820s and 1830s and cheaper tickets to Canada with the aim of crossing the border into the New England states. This 19th century migration had a long-lasting effect, and people from the Clogher Valley were “still trickling into Providence in the 1920s, over one-hundred years after the first Tyrone immigrant was recorded there.”[4]

An analysis such as this is an outstanding example of how local history knowledge in Ireland can be combined with a study of particular record sets in the U.S., to create clear evidence of migration from one part of Ireland to one city in America.

---

[1] This is the journal of the Clogher Historical Society. Their research focuses on the diocese of Clogher, which consists of Monaghan, much of Fermanagh, and parts of Tyrone and Donegal.

[2] McCarron, Edward T. Altered States: Tyrone Migration to Providence, Rhode Island During the Nineteenth Century. Clogher Record. Vol. 16. No. 1. 1997. pp. 145-161.

[3] McCarron, p. 146.

[4] McCarron, p 146.

Irish Immigrants in New Brunswick Census 1851 & 1861

In the years following 1845 New Brunswick experienced an influx of Irish immigrants due to the failed potato crop in Ireland. The wave abated by 1851 but is commonly remembered as the sole contribution of Irish to New Brunswick. Yet thousands of Irish were living in New Brunswick prior to these events. In 1851 and 1861 New Brunswick conducted full censuses which were to become invaluable records documenting the makeup of the province. In particular these records highlight the “Irishness” of the province, bringing to light a substantial number of Irish persons who made their home in New Brunswick prior to the famine in their homeland. Unlike previously gathered statistics, such as those from 1841, these returns enumerated the birthplace of immigrants living in New Brunswick, identifying those born in England, Scotland, Ireland.[1]

These are valuable census records beyond the obvious notion of looking for Irish ancestors who lived in New Brunswick:

New Brunswick shares a long border with the U.S. state of Maine. Therefore, there would have been a lot of migration to the New England region and vice versa.

The port city of Saint John is in New Brunswick. Irish immigrant who stayed in the city for an initial few years in 1849-51 and 1859-61 period will be recorded.

Many Irish immigrants might be captured in these censuses who then moved elsewhere in Canada.

For more detailed information about the Irish in New Brunswick in the mid 19th century, you can read this paper by P.M Toner - The Irish of New Brunswick at Mid-Century: The 1851 Census.

---

[1] Library and Archives Canada. Irish Immigrants in the New Brunswick Census 1841 and 1851. Date Unknown. Available online at http://archives.gnb.ca/Irish/Databases/Toner/?culture=en-CA: accessed 22 May 2014.

Omaha Catholic Cemeteries

The Archdiocese of Omaha was originally founded as the Vicariate Apostolic of the Nebraska Territory in 1859.[1] Since then, it has decreased in size and increased in importance, becoming an archdiocese in 1945. Currently, the archdiocese consists of 23 counties in north-eastern Nebraska.

Since the late 19^th century, the archdiocese has had five cemeteries under is auspices: Saint Mary Magdalene (opened in 1868, traditionally German), Holy Sepulchre (1873), Saint Mary (1883), Calvary (1952), and Resurrection (founding year unknown, but after 1952).

Burials at these cemeteries are available to search via the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Omaha website. Where known, you will be provided with name, date of death and plot location. Click here to search the database.

---

[1] Archdiocese of Omaha. Prelate History. Available online at http://www.archomaha.org/about/history/prelate-history : accessed 6 May 2014.

I Found My Townland, Do I Have Any Long Lost Cousins?

After the joy of finding your townland of origin is realized, the next question on your mind can be: do I have any cousins in Ireland? Due to the nature of Irish social history, you might very well find some long-lost cousins still on the same piece of land that your ancestor left in the 19th century.

However, if you don't, tracing forward from some point in the 19th century to find modern-day cousins can be a difficult process. Last Monday, John Grenham provided a helpful list of resource to do just that in his weekly genealogy column.

Click here to learn about this "reverse genealogy."

New Irish Directories Database

City directories are one of the most useful genealogical resources in the Unites States. Did you know that directories, in various formats, have been published in Ireland since the mid-eighteenth century? Many of these publications have come online over the last number of years. However, one stumbling block to utilizing them for research is the fact that they are spread across a large number of free, subscriptions, and fee-paying websites.

Myself and Shane Wilson, a Dublin based family historian and owner of the excellent Irish genealogy website, www.swilson.info, have created the Irish Directories Database. This database will allow you to easily find Irish directories that are currently online.

To access the database, click here.

How A Professional Genealogist Found Her Townland Of Origin, Part II

This is the second post from professional genealogist, Lisa Walsh Dougherty, about how she found her townland of origin. To read her first post scroll down, or click here.

Lisa (Walsh) Dougherty has been an avid family history researcher for nearly 20 years.  Since 2009, she has shared her knowledge and experience with many through her volunteer hours, workshop trainings, and commissioned research.  A member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) and a graduate of the ProGen Study Group, she specializes in helping people with Irish roots discover their “Townland of Origin”.  Lisa is based in Upstate New York near Albany, and provides a free consultation toward assisting you in finding your own unique family story! You can find out about Lisa's professional genealogy services on her APG profile page.

Her website is Upstate NY Genealogy.

My great-great grandmother, Anne Mortimer, left County Laois (then Queen’s County), Ireland in the mid-1860s.  She married a man, James Walsh, who was native to nearly the same area, and they settled in Troy, NY.  Two brothers and a sister also emigrated and lived nearby, at least initially.  A brother John remained in Ireland, where he raised a large family.  The Mortimer letter writers of the 1970s, and the Mortimers who remain in the area today, are descended from John and his wife Maria Bennett.

Over the years 2000 to 2013, while busy with raising our son, I posted on a variety of genealogy message boards, and received sporadic replies from various family members, telling me of other Mortimer family members.  One who owned a pub in Kinsale, another who played in Wham’s backup band, still another who was a member of a popular UK “boy band” of the 1990s.  Those Mortimers were indeed a talented and diverse bunch, scattered all over the globe.

Recently, comparing family trees on Ancestry.com, I stumbled across a tree that contained many of the same Mortimers that mine did.  I contacted the owner, who turned out to be a local Laois woman with a wealth of knowledge about the area and its families.  She gave me information about family members who had remained in Ireland that I did not have, and I was able to fill her in on those who had emigrated. After an absence of 14 years, I finally returned to Ireland in April 2014. My new-found Ancestry contact was able to arrange for me to meet my cousin, Sean Mortimer, brother of Brendan Mortimer who had shown us around in 1999, now, sadly, deceased.  We had a wonderful visit—he lives very nearby the townland of Killinure where my great-great grandmother was born.

3^rd cousins Lisa (Walsh) Dougherty and Sean Mortimer, Killinure, County Laois, April 12, 2014

Since returning home, I've become Facebook “friends” with several other Mortimers from County Laois, many of whom heard of my visit through the grapevine.  Plans are underway for the formation of a Facebook group dedicated to the descendants of Michael Mortimer and Catherine Phalen, where we can all connect, share pictures, stories and interesting tidbits, 140 years after the family was separated.  Modern technology continues to propel my research forward, but the foundation laid by those 1970s letters is the strength the Mortimer family tree is built on.  My dad would approve, wherever he is today. 

How A Professional Genealogist Found Her Townland Of Origin, Part I

This week and next, Townland of Origin is delighted to have guest posts from professional genealogist, Lisa Walsh Dougherty. Lisa has been researching her Irish ancestry since the 1990s. In her article, she outlines how she found her townland of origin.

Lisa (Walsh) Dougherty has been an avid family history researcher for nearly 20 years.  Since 2009, she has shared her knowledge and experience with many through her volunteer hours, workshop trainings, and commissioned research.  A member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) and a graduate of the ProGen Study Group, she specializes in helping people with Irish roots discover their “Townland of Origin”.  Lisa is based in Upstate New York near Albany, and provides a free consultation toward assisting you in finding your own unique family story! You can find out about Lisa's professional genealogy services on her APG profile page.

Her website is Upstate NY Genealogy.

I grew up being aware and very proud of my Irish roots.  It was something that made a huge impression on me, and I remember it always being a part of my life.  When I was a teenager, my father, Jack Walsh, became interested in genealogy, and his one goal was to find out about his Irish roots.  I don't think I was aware until much later that my dad was only half-Irish, because this was the only part of his origins that he was interested in.  He pursued his family history the way many people did in those days, by visiting family plots in cemeteries, utilizing local libraries, and writing letters.  A gravestone found in St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Troy, New York, revealed a puzzling place of origin for his great-grandfather James Walsh—Osary, Queen’s County.  Research in the local library told us that Queen’s County was now called Laois, and Osary was actually Ossory.  An ad placed in the Laois Nationalist newspaper seeking information on the Walsh family (with a mention of the wife’s maiden name, Anne Mortimer) yielded surprising results in the form of several letters from Mortimer family members who very well could have been cousins!

Alas, Dad passed away in 1990, after a short-lived interest in genealogy only got him so far.  His desire for answers and legacy lived on—I found his genealogy folder 5 years after his death, stuffed in a drawer and forgotten.  With the dawn of the internet, and a whole new world of possibilities opening up, the time was ripe for new discoveries. This was the beginning of my own personal obsession with family history, and for me it has been not fleeting, but life-changing.

My husband and I went on our first of 4 trips to Ireland in the 1990s, with a guided tour in 1996.  It was not nearly enough to satisfy my hunger for all things Irish.  I dug out the Mortimer letters from the 1970s, booked a B&B nearby where they had been sent from, and started my journey.  In 1997, I met Jim Mortimer, one of the letter writers, knew we were cousins, but did not know how.  By our 4th trip in 1999, the B&B owners where we stayed had become good friends, and were seeking out my Mortimer relatives for me so I could meet them when I got there!  Their detective work introduced me to more members of the Mortimer clan, including an audience with an elderly gentleman, Michael Mortimer, who had a razor-sharp memory, and his son Brendan who showed us the family homestead high in the Slieve Bloom Mountains.  A chance meeting in the local pub with the parish priest’s bridge partner got my sister and I in to copy the baptism and marriage records.  Only after a thorough examination of those, together with the memories in the 1970s letters, was I able to piece together everyone’s relationship.

On Monday, learn more about those relationships and which townland Lisa’s ancestors came from.

From Tipperary to Rutland County, Vermont

In a random browse through the online version of Bruce Elliott's Irish Migrants in the Canada's[1] (see my article about this fantastic book), I came across a short reference to a migration of Irish people from north Tipperary to Rutland County, Vermont. Peter Patten, who is from that part of Vermont, is an expert on this migration and has researched it extensively.

He outlines that, "In the 1800s the Portroe Slate Quarries were one of the largest employers in North Tipperary. However, the onset of the Great Famine in the 1840s saw a significant decline in the numbers employed in Portroe. Many of those who lost their jobs decided to emigrate and...they pretty much reformed their community [in] Castleton, Vermont, in a strikingly similar landscape."[2]

The density of numbers who made this Tipperary to Rutland County, VT migration is illustrated in this transcribed list of men who naturalized in Rutland County, VT from 1859 to 1873.

---

[1] Elliot, Bruce S. Irish Migrants in the Canada's: A New Approach. Belfast. McGill-Queens Press. 2004. p251.

[2] Ormond Historical Society. Portroe to Castleton - The Slate Quarry Emigrants; Rebuilding a Tipperary Community in Rural Vermont. 2013. www.ormondhistory.ie: accessed 27 March 2014.

Emigration To New York

This image of Irish emigrants waiting to board ships to New York comes from an 1866 edition of Harper's Weekly. There is a large crowd on the docks with many ships moored and ready to bring them across the Atlantic. 

The image was sourced from the Historical Archaeology journal.[1]

---

[1] Linn, Meredith B. Elixir of Emigration: Soda Water and the Making of Irish Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Historical Archaeology. Vol. 44. No. 4. 2010. p. 73.

Poetic Place Of Origin

I came across this fantastically poetic example of an Irish place of origin in an article about indentured servitude of Irish people in Philadelphia.[1] Along with his home town of Belfast, a lot of other valuable genealogical information is included. 

---

[1] Clark, Dennis. Babes in Bondage: Indentured Irish Children in Philadelphia in the Nineteenth Century. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Vol. 101. No. 4. October 1977. p. 478.

Originally from Geiser, Karl Friedrick. Redemptioners and Indentured Servants in the Colony and Common wealth of Pennsylvania New Haven, CT. 1901. p. 6.

Where The Irish Lived In Canada 1901 II

In my last post, I highlighted two maps that show where people of Irish origin lived in Canada in 1901. These two maps, below, show the rest of Canada - Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Alberta. Scroll down to the first part of this blog post or click here to read it.

Origins of the people of Canada 1901
Manitoba and Saskatchewan
Green sections = Irish origin

Origins of the people of Canada 1901
British Columbia and Alberta
Green sections = Irish origin

The maps come from the excellent David Rumsey website. You can zoom in for more details, and find more information about the maps on the site. Click here for Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Click here for British Columbia and Alberta.

Where The Irish Lived In Canada 1901 I

I have previously posted social data maps showing concentrations of Irish people in the U.S. These maps were created from federal census data (see 1874, 1910 & 1930, and 1990). North of the border, similar, and very beautiful maps exist for Canada, with data drawn from the 1901 census. This post, and the next, will show the four maps that were created for the country, as it existed then.

Areas with people  predominantly of Irish origin are color-coded green.

Origins of the people of Canada 1901
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia & Quebec (south)
Green sections = Irish origin

Origins of the people of Canada 1901
Ontario (south) & Quebec (south)
Green sections = Irish origin

The maps come from the excellent David Rumsey website. You can zoom in for more details, and find more information about the maps on the site. Click here to access  the top map (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec [south]). Click here to access the bottom map (Ontario [south] and Quebec [south]).

Are You Related To A Bishop?

Finding out that you have an ecclesiastical figure in your family tree can be very useful for discovering your ancestor's place of origin in Ireland. In the Catholic Church, some form of study at a seminary is required to become a deacon, priest, or bishop. The first seminaries in the U.S. date back to the early 19th century and, if they survive, their records can be of value.

After ordination, members of the clergy were often profiled in parish publications or historical overviews of the Catholic Church in a particular city of state. For example, for more information about this topic in New York City, see Chapters 4 and 7 of my book, Finding Your Irish Ancestors in New York City.

That self-promoting segue brings me to an interesting title I recently came across, Bishops of the United States of Irish Birth or Descent.[1] Chances are, if you have a Catholic bishops in your family tree you more than likely already know about it. If you don't know, or do, but don't know about their ancestry, then this book is worth a look. It contains a valuable amount of genealogical information about the 466 bishops profiled, from John Carroll, appointed in 1784 as Bishop of the Apostolic Prefecture of the United States (it became the Diocese of Baltimore in 1789), to John Ford, appointed as Bishop of Kaying, China, in 1935, the year before the book was published.

Entries from p.38 of  Bishops of the United States of Irish Birth or Descent

When known, information is provided about the birth date and place of the bishop, where his parents were from, surname history information, and other useful nuggets about their origin. The chapter, Mothers of the Bishops, is particularly innovative, and provides the maiden names of all, bar three, of the bishops. There is also an Irish county and U.S. state breakdown of where bishops were born. Up to 1935, Tipperary and Massachusetts lead the way with twelve and twenty-nine, respectively.

The book is available to read on the excellent Hathi Trust website. If anyone has a bishop in their family tree it would be very interesting to hear from you in the comments section.

EDIT (25 April): A commenter on a previous post made the excellent point that information in these types of publications should be treated just the same as any secondary source. Citations are not provided for the claimed genealogical information. Use them as a guide in your research and be prepared to find evidence to the contrary of what is published in such volumes.

---

[1] Hackett, James Dominick. Bishops of the United States of Irish Birth or Descent. New York, NY: American Irish Historical Society. 1936.

Lowell, MA Burials 1895-2011

St. Patrick's Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts, was founded in 1832 in response to the need for a consecrated burial ground for the growing Catholic Irish community. The website of the cemetery has a genealogy section where you can search for information about burials that occurred from 1895 to 2011. All burials for those years are listed alphabetically in PDF documents. Provided information includes name, age at death, date interred, the location of the grave, and the name of the funeral director who arranged the burial, if know. This final piece of information could potentially lead to funeral home records.

More information about records before 1895 can be found in the comprehensive history of the cemetery. The website also has detailed maps of individual lots to help you locate a specific grave.

Contact details are also available on the website, should you need to get full interment records.

Representative Young Irish-Americans of Troy, NY....

.....is the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title of a series of biographical sketches of 72 men of Irish heritage who lived in the city in the 19th century.[1] The book was published in 1889 and contains excellent genealogical material for those who are profiled. Dates of birth, parents names, years of immigration, schooling, work history, and notable achievements are included where relevant, or known. Profile sketches are also to be found in this publication.

You can read the book on the archive.org website.

William J. Roche in Representative Young Irish-Americans of Troy, NY,  p. 13

Michael Francis Collins in Representative Young Irish-Americans of Troy, NY,  p. 17

---

[1] E.H. Lisk. Representative Young Irish-Americans of Troy, NY. Troy, NY: E.H. Lisk. 1889.