Irish records missing images
Is it normal to not have images in "Ireland Births and Baptisms" collection and the "Ireland Civil Registration, 1845-1913" collection? Any idea where I can find the source images?
I'm also having some challenges "connecting the dots" between ancestors as I often lack some context for the exact town they were born in, etc. For instance, my great-great grandfather is William Maguire. There's another William Maguire that could be possibly be a duplicate (they both have a son James born Nov 1871, dates are off by about 10-11 days and one baptism record lists a slightly different mother's name, but it could be explained by a transcription error).
Was it common to have couples with the same names back then?
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Hello @James84179
All Irish Civil Records for Births, Marriages and Deaths can be viewed and dowloaded at no charge on the Irish Government website www.Irishgenealogy.ie
Both the names William and Maguire are very frequently found in Ireland. Thus, you will need to be very specific in your related data to ensure you are not confusing the details of similar people living in the same area.
Irish Civil Records will show the name of the Townland where the birth, etc occurred. If the person was born in a City, the Street Name is usually given. I find that I always need to use and document the Townland (or Street) name to help distinguish between individuals.Understanding what a Townland is and their mapping is vital for Irish family history. The website www.townlands.ie is a great reference source.
Two married couples with the same name is not an uncommon occurrence. Names repeat a lot. The particular two Williams that you indicate, are married to a Bridget and a Biddy. Bridget and Biddy are the same name, Biddy being the more familiar form of the name.1 -
You'll see a link to the free Irish government website in the Collection Record description: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/2659409 IrishGenealogy adds another year of images/records every year, in compliance with the privacy regulations - 50 years for deaths, 75 for marriages, and 100 for births.
There are a few years of early civil death records (1864-1870) that are not yet available.
The index on FamilySearch gives us the advantage to search by parents' names on civil births - that can be really useful for finding everyone in a family unit.
You may find Claire Santry's Irish Genealogy Toolkit useful. She explains in good detail the various recordkeeping systems of Ireland. https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/
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Alright, so for example, this index record on familysearch lists page number 116, volume 13.
I found this record on IrishGenealogy.ie that lists 116 on the upper left corner - does that mean it's a match?
If so, I think I have the wrong record matched up to my James McGuire, as the parents do not match. Unfortunately, I did not find any other James McGuire's on the IrishGenealogy.ie that could be a match on the civil side.
As another example: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sources/viewedit/93JT-LTJ?context is an index entry for a church registration. I'm struggling to find the underlying records for those.
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As another example: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/MHJR-DBZ - I cannot find a matching record on civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie
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It also looks like county of Mayo only has 26 birth certificates: https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/civil-perform-search.jsp?location=Mayo&submit=Search
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The 116 in the corner is a match, but I would caution that your link refers to an index page not the record page.
The record set Ireland Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958 has less information and is, therefore, less helpful than the record set Ireland Civil Registration, 1845-1913
This is an example of an index page. My GGM's birth is on that page.
As indexed:
Name
Catherine M'Geraghty
Event Type
Birth Registration
Event Date
1868
Event Place
Omagh, County Tyrone, Ireland
Page Number
339
Volume Number
7
And the image:
And this is the record page for her birth. As indexed:
Name
Catherine McGeraghty
Sex
Female
Father's Name
Father's Sex
Male
Mother's Name
Mother's Sex
Female
Event Type
Birth
Event Date
21 Mar 1868
Event Place
Omagh, County Tyrone, Ireland
And the image:
As for Mayo birth certificates being in short supply, on irishgenealogy.ie, you'll need to narrow down the location to the Registration District, as shown on this map. Choosing Swinford district at random, it has over 75,000 birth registrations.
Mc names are often indexed as M' and sometimes accidentally indexed with just the main name, with the M being assumed to be a middle initial. We have to search multiple ways to find them.
For the record https://www.familysearch.org/tree/sources/viewedit/93JT-LTJ?context that may not be a church record. The title of that collection is misleading. For records after 1863, you will generally find those refer to birth records, not baptisms.
If I missed any of your questions, let me know. It's early here, and I'm on my 1st cup.
Hope this helps.
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The birth record for Patt Maguire, son of William Maguire and Biddy Donohoe: https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_returns/births_1870/03333/2221631.pdf
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Thanks. The registration district tip helped a lot for County Mayo, and was I was able to have some success finding ancestor records from another part of the tree in County Mayo (Ballerina district).
I'm still not able to locate a matching record James Maguire, born 22 Nov 1871 parents William Maguire / Biddy Donohue. There's 76 records in cavan county with a first name of James. The potential misspellings appear to be accurately transcribed. There's also a James McGuire, born August, parents Richard & Anne Donohue. Weird that the Family Search appears to have it indexed correctly, but IrishGenealogy does not.
Looking at his sibling's civil registration records, the district appears to be listed as Killeshandra, but I cannot find a filter for Killeshandra.
Your images appear to be different than what's available on IrishGenealogy.ie - where did you get those?
Thanks again!
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You may have missed my suggestion to spend some time with Claire Santry's Irish Genealogy Toolkit. This section covers the Registration Districts: https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/Ireland-civil-registration.html Shane Wilson's site is another excellent one for understanding the organization of Irish recordkeeping. https://www.swilson.info/ And I mustn't forget the guru, John Grenham. https://www.johngrenham.com/places/
Some of my images date from the time before any of these Irish records were online. Back in the Dark Ages of Irish research, we had to borrow microfilms from SLC, wait for them to arrive, go to the local FSC, get an achy shoulder from slowly cranking the microfilm, page by page, to find the records we needed.
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@James84179 And here's the 1871 birth for James, son of William and Biddy. https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_returns/births_1871/03272/2198981.pdf
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Yes, I've been reading through that website, obviously not enough though. I'll check out the other links as well.
Wow! I'm curious how you found that record! I'm sure it was some sort of user error on my part, but I'm curious what I was doing wrong.
Also, wow, I cannot imagine having to look at microfilms by hand.
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I don't think you were doing anything wrong. I think that record for James may have been missed in the indexing on irishgen.
I eventually looked for another birth indexed on FS for the same week and the same district. Once I found that one on irishgen, I just paged forward manually to see James' record.2 -
On a related topic. I see that on the Person Page for GTRP-3G4 you have shown his name as "James McGuire". While I see that this is the spelling of his name, or alias, that he used when he emigrated to the US, it's not the name he was born with.
James Maguire is what is documented on his birth record and is what his parents, family and friends would have called him.
I realize that "McGuire" is the name that he went with while in the US and the name he chose to give his children, however, it would feel more correct that the name on a Person Page should be the name a person was born with, and all other names they used during their life, should be documented under Alternate Names.
I would be interested in your thoughts on this.
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@John Curran While the birth register shows his name spelled Maguire, without more research we don't know with any certainty that is the name his father's family used. Were they literate? Did he tell the registrar what to write or did the registrar write the name as he thought it should be spelled?
My Tyrone family (shown in those images I used as examples earlier in this thread) is known as McGarrity today. On that one register page, you will see my GGM, with the surname spelled McGeraghty, and her 1st cousin, with the name spelled Magerity. The two fathers were brothers, living in the same townland.Standardized spelling is a very modern concept.
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That's a good callout. Per the 1910 census, it says he (James McGuire) could read and write. I do not know if his father could read/write. I have noticed his wife's maiden name was listed as Doherty sometimes, Dogherty others.
All of his other siblings are listed as Maguire, so I think it makes to switch it and list McGuire as an alternate name
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Ok, so I'm still struggling unfortunately to map records I found on FS to other sites.
I've traced my ancestors back to Drummullagh townland, County Cavan, Drumlane civil parish and Killshandra Registrar's district. On IrishGen, Cavan seems to be the registrar district to use to find records for Drummullagh, which seems inconsistent, but at least I found something that works.
I found my ancestor's townland on FS's indexed data - Drummullagh: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGYW-24HQ
Thanks to your help earlier, we were able to find his civil record on IrishGen.Now, I'd like to find the associated image for this christening record, listed as Killeshandra: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FPBW-V62
I would expect that it would show up in the Killeshandra parish baptism records here (pg 33 lines up to Nov 1871): https://registers.nli.ie/registers/vtls000634867?locale=en#page/1/mode/1up
However, I don't see a record for James.Another point of confusion - using this RC / civl parish overlay map: https://www.johngrenham.com/places/overlay_map_index.php
Seems to indicate the RC parish should be Drumlane as well, but I didn't spot a record there either ☹️0 -
@James84179 The index https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FPBW-V62 comes from the collection Ireland Births and Baptisms, 1620-1881. As I explained earlier in this thread:
The title of that collection is misleading. For records after 1863, you will generally find those refer to birth records, not baptisms.
And, I also supplied the URL of that civil birth registration, for James Maguire, earlier in this thread.
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Yes, that's correct, you did find the civil record, which was very helpful. As far as I can tell, the civil registration you linked does not contain any baptism/christening mentioned, which I was I thought that index record was different - as it specifically mentioned a christening. Which is why I got confused.
My goal is to find records for his father (William). Once I find the father, I can work on the mother. Since James, the son, was born Nov 1871, it's pretty safe to say William was born before civil registration begun in 1865.
I figure if I can find his (James, the son) church record I can confirm I am looking at the correct church parish before searching for the father.
However, I am having trouble finding a church record. His (son James)'s civil townland was Drummullagh. https://www.townlands.ie/cavan/loughtee-lower/drumlane/milltown/drummullagh/ says that civil parish would be Drumlane.
https://www.johngrenham.com/places/overlay_map_index.php was saying the RC Parish would be Drumlane as well, but now I'm just getting a paywall. Looking at the Catholic parish map (https://www.johngrenham.com/places/rc_map_county.php?county=Cavan), Drummullagh is close to 4 different RC parishes - Kildallen, Killeshandra, Kilmore, and Drumlane. The nearest town would be Killshandra, but the townland of Drummullagh would have been in the Drumlane RC parish.
I've checked those 4 records, and don't spot him there though. Though the Kilmore records are very difficult to read.
Am I missing something in regards to which RC parish he would have been in?
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A civil birth record for Ireland will not include baptismal/christening information. We sometimes see such a combination in Italy, for example, but not in Ireland.
Pardon me, but you are trying to find oranges with information about apples. For Irish research, we are fortunate that the complete run of Irish civil records survived. The same is not true for church records. Many were lost due to various causes; not all have been indexed and put online. Knowing that someone had a birth registered does not tell us if he/she was baptized and/or if the baptismal record survived or if the baptismal record is online.
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OK, so that kinda underscores my confusion. Why would the indexed christening record point to a civil record if civil records in Ireland did not contain christening information? (EDIT: to clarify, the indexed record is civil record that lists the event type of christening) Bad indexing? Also worth noting that index record pointed to Killeshandra, not Drummullagh like the other birth record indexes on Family Search did. Killeshandra is listed as the registration district at the top of the civil birth registration you found, so maybe just bad/incomplete indexing?
All these questions would be easily answered, of course, if I could simply see the source document on FamilySearch. IMO, really unfortunate that's not possible today.
I was not aware so many church records were lost. I was under the impression that NLI registers were fairly complete, but unindexed.
I may have to at least attempt to look for my ancestors in the church records anyway, as I'm obviously limited by not having Civil records before 1865.
I do have a potential civil death record for William (the father) that I found on IrishGen. A 33 year old William Maguire died Dec 1879, 33 years of age. Informant was Pat Maguire (he does have a son Pat) of Drummullagh. I also saw on ancestry's dog license records that dog registrations for William Maguire of Drummullagh stopped roughly then too (my access has ended since then so I cannot verify). His last known child was born Feb 1880.
Doing a little bit of googling, it does seem like Milltown (in the Drumlane RC parish) has the nearest church to Drummullagh (3.3km), so I guess that seems like the first RC parish to check. Killaden (4.9km) and Killeshandra (6.6km) RC parishes are also somewhat close as well and probably worth checking if I'm unsuccessful.
So I could test that theory by searching the Drumlane RC parish records for William's baptism records in 1845 or death records in 1879.0 -
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FPBW-V62 is NOT a christening record. As I have tried to explain multiple times, the title of the record set is misleading. It is a BIRTH record, and I already found that for you.
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Right, I understand that. What I am trying to understand is why it would say "Event Type Christening". Bad indexing?
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It's a VERY old record set, created from a variety of sources. It probably dates from manual indexing - folks sitting around a FamilySearch center, either with microfilm readers or photocopies of records from microfilm, writing down what they saw. It is a FINDING AID. It does not include a baptism/christening DATE. If it were a baptism record, it would include a date for the baptism.
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Thanks for that explanation - that makes sense to me.
Also, thank you for your continued patience as I learn about Irish genealogy and genealogy in general.
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To confirm my comment that the record set is VERY old:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Ireland_Births_and_Baptisms_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records
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Ok, so I think I am more confused then. If civil records does not contain baptism/christening information, why would that index record on FamilySearch indicate it was a christening? Incorrect indexing? I do see the registration district on top of the record you found says Killeshandra, so incorrect indexing could explain that.
RE: missing church records - I didn't realize many of them were missing. I thought https://registers.nli.ie/ had unindexed records of from all the parishs and they were fairly complete.
Still, I would like to try to locate those records in case I am lucky and the father's records survived, but maybe have a little confusion about which parish they would have been going to.
Milltown has a Saint Patrick's RC church that is 3.3km away from Drummullagh, which seems to align with the map indicating they would have been in the Drumlane RC parish. It was built 1867, but replaced an existing barn type chapel that stood for 100 years per https://www.kilmorediocese.ie/st-patricks-church-milltown/
Killeshandra has a St. Brigid's was 6.6km away from Drummullagh. Built 1790, burned and reopened in 1863. https://www.kilmorediocese.ie/st-brigids-church-killeshandra/
Killaden has a Saint Dallan's that would have been 4.9km away. Built 1843 per https://www.kilmorediocese.ie/st-dallans-church-kildallan/
I think I can probably rule out Kilmore, that nearest church would have been 17km away.0 -
Because, again, Ireland Births and Baptisms, 1620-1881 is a very very very old index-only record set containing information AS A FINDING AID from many different kinds of records. Some older records, from before 1864, are likely baptism/christening records. It is a simplistic, legacy record set. One template was used for all the indexes in that set.
The record set available on https://registers.nli.ie/ is far from complete. When those were filmed, the cut-off date was 1880, to preserve the privacy of those possibly still living at that time. Many earlier registers were lost to time and a variety of causes. The damp weather and storms of the exposed counties on the west made those counties particularly subject to register loss or damage. For many years, it was dangerous for Catholics to keep records. Those that were kept may have been hidden in locations that were subject to loss from dampness. Some parishes declined to allow the microfilming.
Some additional RC parish records are on RootsIreland, a for-pay site, that are not on the NLI, FMP, Ancestry, or FS. Those index-only sets were created by viewing the original registers, not microfilm, and include indexes of registers never microfilmed.
My Irish ancestors came from Tyrone, Westmeath, Louth, and Mayo. Only the registers for Westmeath and Louth survived. I have no early baptism or marriage records for my Tyrone and Mayo families.
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