Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History. Ryan Tubridy

with their places of origin clearly stated.

      Wills

      Wills were usually written towards the end of peoples’ lives, specifying who was to inherit what. Besides the obviously interesting details of personal possessions, paintings, books, land and so on, they help tie family trees together, sometimes providing details of people who missed being recorded in church, civil or census records. People generally named spouses and children, but you may also find parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and so on.

      Wills tended to be written by people with property. The poor tended not to bother, but this is not always so: if your ancestors were illiterate labourers, they probably didn’t leave wills, but once in a while you might find one.

      Wills are a key source for establishing migrants’ origins. You may not be able to find your migrant ancestor’s baptism in Ireland, but if they wrote a will mentioning brothers and sisters, you can look for their baptisms instead. Sometimes, migrants were kind enough to us to leave bequests to relatives still living in Ireland. In these cases, their wills actually tell you where to look for their origins.

      To make a will a legally-binding document, it was taken, after the testator had died, to a probate court to be ‘proved’. This usually happened immediately after death, but in some cases it was put off for several years, so a wide search is always advisable. Sometimes you’ll find other records attached to wills, such as inventories of personal goods – wonderful material for broadening the family’s history.

      When seeking wills, you will also encounter administrations. When people died ‘intestate’ – without leaving a will – letters of administration could be granted to the next of kin. Administrations give minimal genealogical information, but are still better than nothing.

      Naturalisations

      Each country had different rules, or a lack of them, governing who was allowed to settle there. In many cases, people were allowed to enter and live in a country freely, with little or no interference from the state. If they wanted full legal rights, however, particularly in respect of bequeathing property, they had to become naturalised. Naturalisation records will certainly tell you where your ancestor lived when they were naturalised, and where they came from – stating perhaps just ‘Ireland’, but sometimes a precise place of origin will be given.

      Ché Guevara and Zorro

      Ché Guevara, the epitome of South American revolutionary spirit, was the son of Ernesto Guevara Lynch. In Spanish culture, people generally add their mother’s maiden name to their own surname, so in this case Ernesto’s mother’s family were Lynches, descended from Patrick Lynch, born in Galway in 1715. Ernesto once said of his son, ‘The first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels.’ Ché visited Ireland in 1965, enjoying an evening out at Hanratty’s Hotel, Limerick, sporting a sprig of shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day. He was less Irish, however, than that other great Latin-American maverick, Zorro, ‘the Fox’, whose amorous adventures brought him to an untimely end in 1659. The great swashbuckler had in fact been born William Lamport in Co. Wexford in 1615.

      Shipping lists

      International air travel is a new phenomena, and most people whose ancestors migrated by plane will know where they were from anyway. For genealogical purposes – and because Ireland is an island – the best records of migration are lists of passengers on ships.

      These seldom give much detail, merely who migrated, when, and between which ports. They may state ages, and other helpful details, but won’t give either the ultimate destination or original starting point of the journey. They are still interesting, especially if you can find contemporary pictures of the ship and the ports,

      Ships’ passenger lists

      The best sources for ships’ passenger lists are in the country of arrival. TNA’s lists (BT 32, described in information leaflet 71 and S. Colwell, The National Archives: A Practical Guide for Family Historians, National Archives, 2006) cover 1890–1960 but are arranged by date and port of departure. www.irishorigins.com has indexed those for 1890 to North America. Whilst many migrated at their own expense, the government encouraged emigration to less hospitable, or further-flung parts of the Empire, such as Australia, via the Colonial Land and Emigration Office (renamed Colonial Commission of Land and Emigration), which granted land and paid for journeys. Its records are at TNA, and may help if you are stuck:

      CO 384: correspondence 1817–96 from and concerning settlers.

      CO 327–8: registers for North America, 1850–96.

      CO 385: emigration entry books 1814–71.

      CO 386: records of the Commission for Land and Emigration, 1833–94.

      for they record journeys that changed your family’s history for ever. They can help establish your Irish roots too. The port of departure was often the nearest one to the family home, giving you a rough idea of the area of Ireland they came from. Migrants usually travelled in groups, so people of the same name in the ship’s manifest may be related. People travelling in groups were often listed together, so the people above and below your ancestors in a list could be relatives. Looking at these people’s origins could lead you to your own family’s roots.

      Local histories

      Many settlements in the New World and Antipodes have only been there a handful of generations. A good number have had their histories written up, often utilising oral history and local records. These frequently include lists of the original inhabitants, with good genealogical details. Once you know where your Irish migrant ancestors first settled, contact the local libraries and archives to see what material may be available.

      FURTHER READING

       John Grenham, Tracing your Irish Ancestors: The Complete Guide (Gill & Macmillan, 3rd edn, 2006).

       John O’Hart, Irish Pedigrees (Dublin 1892: GPC, 1999).

       James G. Ryan, Irish Records, Sources for Family and Local History (Ancestry Incorporated [USA] and Flyleaf Press [Ireland], 1997, revised edn, n.d.).

       PART 2 Tracing back to Ireland: country by country

      The spread of the Irish around the globe dates back to ancient times, but it reached epic proportions with the Great Famine. In this section, we will look at the seven countries to which they migrated in most numbers, following a rough chronological order – England and Wales, Scotland, the United States, Canada, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. But these are not seven separate stories – all extended Irish family trees span each of these countries, and the accounts of invasion, transportation, colonisation and economic migration are an extension of Ireland’s own story.

       CHAPTER 3 England and Wales

       Irish migration into England and Wales was fairly negligible until the 19th century, when many Irish Catholic labourers, called spailpíns (or ‘spalpeens’ in English), flocked to mainland Britain to find work, to benefit from the Poor Law, or simply to avoid famine.

      The 1841 census records 60,000 Irish living on the mainland. Few wanted to stay permanently – many who came to Liverpool, for example, hoped to earn enough to pay for the passage to America. When they remained, it was often accidental, not planned. Many came seasonally, and within living memory Irish people would walk from the ferry at Holyhead,