Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History. Ryan Tubridy

to return with their wages to their families in Ireland. Many others came with their families, especially to settle in the industrial towns. Such migration often followed distinct patterns, i.e.:

       Yorkshire – many from Leinster and Connacht

       Bradford – mainly Dublin, Laois, Mayo and Sligo

       Leeds – mainly Mayo, Tipperary and Dublin

       Stafford – 40 per cent from the Castlerea area of Co. Roscommon

      The Great Famine brought in vast numbers, sailing to Liverpool, Swansea, Newport and Cardiff. Some 80,000 came in 1847 alone. The 1861 census shows a third of Cardiff’s population was Irish. In Liverpool, where 300,000 people arrived in a mere six months, food was distributed from workhouse to 23,866 people a day. It was from Irish slums there that the typhus epidemic is thought to have started. After the Famine subsided, migration continued erratically: during World War II and in the 1950s, when demand for manual labour was high, more Irish migrated to mainland Britain than to America.

      Early migration

      In the 4th century AD, western Britain was subject to constant raids from Ireland. The Úi Liatháin, kin to the Eóganacht of Munster, settled in parts of Wales and south-west Britain, whilst the Medieval Irish poem The Expulsion of the Déisi tells how Eochaid Allmuir (‘from over the sea’) of the Dési tribe from Co. Waterford, ‘with his descendants, went over the sea into the land of Dyfed, and his sons and grandsons died there. And from them is [descended] the race of the Crimthann over there.’ Linguistic and archaeological evidence in Dyfed supports this, and the old Welsh pedigrees proudly trace the kings of Dyfed and Brycheiniog back to Aed Brosc, son of Corath, son of this Eochaid of the Dési. The ultimate descendant of the Dyfed dynasty, Ellen ferch Llywarch in the 10th century, married Hywel Dda, King of Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Powys, forebear of virtually everyone with Welsh princely blood in their veins.

      The 13th-century English surnames Yreys, Irlond and Iryssh denote people from Ireland, but these may have been returning Cambro-Norman settlers, not native Gaels. This probably applies also to the MacWilliams, traders of Bristol who bought a landed estate at Stambourne, Essex, who are thought to be from the MacWilliam Oughter branch of the Burkes of Connacht. We know Irish beggars had become a problem by Tudor times, for an Act of 1572 was framed to send them home. Later, besides the army, Irishmen were prominent in the navy, and many an Irish sailor found home in the squalid slums of 18th-century St Giles’s, London.

      Archives

      Each county has its own County Record Office, supplemented by local archives and local studies libraries. Details, often with access to their catalogues, are at www.a2a.org.uk. Over these is The National Archives (TNA) at Kew, on the outskirts of London, and the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. The Mormon’s Hyde Park Family History Centre (FHC), London, has the largest collection of Irish material on microfilm in Britain: copies of MMFs can be ordered to any local branch – see www.familysearch.org. A detailed guide to research in England and Wales is my Collins Tracing your Family History (Collins, 2005).

      Societies

      The SoG, London, has much material for both English, Welsh and Irish research. As many Irish migrants were Catholics, it is worth joining the Catholic Family History Society and studying the publications of the Catholic Record Society.

      Civil Registration

      This is the mainstay of genealogical research back to 1 July 1837, when it started, and was thus operational just before the influx caused by the Great Famine. The records are arranged by the quarter of the year (March, June, September and December) in which the event was registered, and registration was usually within six weeks of the event.

      Births record both parents’ full names and father’s occupation.

      Marriages give ages of both parties, residences and occupations (many women’s occupations are left blank, even if they actually worked very hard!), and names and occupations of fathers.

      Deaths state name and address of an informant – often this will be a close relative. Deaths to June 1969 state age at death, and thereafter the date of birth.

      The indexes are with the Registrar General, at the Family Records Centre, but this is due to close. They are online at www.genesreunited.com and www.findmypast.com. A single index to the periods 1866–1920 and 1984–2002 is at www.familyrelatives.org, and an almost complete index for 1837–1901 is at www.freebmd.org.uk. You can order records from the Registrar General at www.gro.gov.uk or 0845 603 7788. You must purchase certificates – the information isn’t released any other way – at £7.00 each, but if you know a detail that will definitely appear on the record, such as a father’s forename, you can have the record checked and receive a partial refund if the document you ordered turns out to be the wrong one.

      Censuses

      British censuses have been taken from 1801, though only a handful before 1841, as detailed in my Collins Tracing your Family History, are any use to genealogists. The 1841 census lists everyone in each household, with occupations and ages rounded down to the nearest five years (someone aged 29 would be listed as 25). Those born in Ireland are marked ‘I’, those from Scotland ‘S’, whilst those born in England and Wales answered ‘Y[es]’ or ‘N[o]’ to the question ‘were you born in this county?’. From 1851, precise ages, relationships to the head of household and places of birth are stated. Those within mainland Britain are usually accurate down to parish level, but the Irish-born are usually just recorded as ‘Ireland’. The censuses from 1881 are more likely to give an Irish county or even parish: it’s worth seeking Irish immigrants in all possible censuses.

      Unfortunately, many Irish migrants to mainland Britain viewed census takers with great suspicion, so claimed to have been born wherever they were living: the antidote is to seek them in several censuses, hoping to find the truth. The 1911 census will be released in 2012, that for 1921 in 2022 and so on according to the 100-year secrecy rule.

      Censuses are at the Family Records Centre (soon to be moved to TNA), and are fully indexed and available online at www.genesreunited. com and www.ancestry.com, with transcripts of the 1881 census at www.familysearch.org.

      1911 census

      Before 2012, the 1911 census can be searched for specific addresses for £45 per search. See www.national archives. gov.uk/1911census for more details.

      Directories

      Directories existed in England from the 17th century, becoming very detailed and widespread from the mid-19th century onwards. They list very few Irish labourers, but are useful for locating and tracking the movements of the slightly better off.

      Religious registers

      Anglican parish registers started in 1538, though few survive before 1600. Most are in County Record Offices and many – not all – are indexed at www.familysearch.org. Transcripts of a good number are at the SoG.

      Protestants from Northern Ireland are more likely to appear in registers of Presbyterian chapels. Presbyterianism was widespread in England during the mid-17th century but, though made legal in 1698, it rapidly lost ground to Methodism in the next century. Surviving registers are mostly indexed in www.familysearch.org with the originals in TNA series RG 10, as described in D.J. Steel, Sources for Nonconformist Genealogy and Family History (Phillimore for SoG, 1973). More information can be sought at United Reformed Church Archives.

      Most Irish immigrants were Catholics. Catholicism survived