National Archive 1901 Census available on-line 3 June 2010

[armaghniac]

Whenever I am visiting the town, I try to maintain sobriety

How do you face it sober?

[muppet]

I have just found my great great grandfather James Mc Donnell from Tullycorbet, you might know him Main Street?  .
He moved to Drumhowan after marrying where half my current family now hail from.

I was inTullycorbert once in my life. Drumhowan is an upgrade, your GGF moved up in the world.

Some spot Ballybary...!

Ballybary???
If you can spell Tully fxckin corbert, surely you can spell Ballybay?
Ballybay  or Ballabay in the vernacular.
The next person who writes Ballybary will be shot.

do you ever be in my mum's cousins pub The Central? A wild spot altogether!

Whenever I am visiting the town, I try to maintain sobriety

You were the one that brought it to our attention. Anyway I've heard you are about as accurate as a Mayo forward choking on a huge pressure sandwich.

Ballybary! 

[Kerry Mike]

Just found my Great Great Grandmother and my Great Grand Father and numerous other relations, none of them could read or write. I'm sure they would all be baffled to know I am reading about them now over 110 years later on a type of printing press with a big glass panel and a yoke with a load of buttons on it with letters and symbols that you push and they magically appear on the window pane.

What the feck will they be reading about us in 100 years time, the mind boggles !!!

[muppet]

Just found my Great Great Grandmother and my Great Grand Father and numerous other relations, none of them could read or write. I'm sure they would all be baffled to know I am reading about them now over 110 years later on a type of printing press with a big glass panel and a yoke with a load of buttons on it with letters and symbols that you push and they magically appear on the window pane.

What the feck will they be reading about us in 100 years time, the mind boggles !!!

They won't believe that Kerry used to play football!

[Bud Wiser]

T'is a great resource altogether, looks like my great-great grandfather couldnt write but was a great man with a shovel and worked as a miner (probably in Castlecomer Coal Mines, and there was me thinking that we had some tie up with the Dell family.

Just looking at the Kerry football team that won their first All-Ireland,  by any chance would yer man lying on the ground in the front row be any way related to Willie Joe Padden or Colm Parkinson.  I could find a few Parkinsons all right and my money is on the ones from Carhoonakineeley down the road from Tarbert.  There were no Paddens allowed into Kerry at that time so given the few facts that are available one has to agree that Laois played a vital role in this All-Ireland.

[Hardy]

What ever happened to the Railway Shield anyway?

[Aerlik]

I reckon there was a wee bit of vanity at play too. I was checking the ages and dates of birth for my ancestors and cousins in 1911 and then checked the 1901 census.  Seems they didn't have the decimal system back then, but everything was by the baker's dozen, as all the ages are wrong except the very youngest children.

Found a relation who was bilingual at 17 in Irish and English in 1911.  Also found a 'servant' living in my great uncle's house, who, likewise, was bilingual. 

Also in the hill country of Ballinascreen/Draperstown there were still Irish-only speakers in 1911.  Likewise in the more remote townlands of the Glens of Antrim.

My mother used to lament how our elderly neighbour was never sat down and recorded for the wealth of information he know about who was related to whom in the district.  But she is a wealth of knowledge herself.  I have managed to find out the names of my great, great grand parents on her maternal lineage.  And it is now official...

I am related to half of North Derry, especially Dungiven, Ballerin and Drumsurn

[A Quinn Martin Production]

I reckon there was a wee bit of vanity at play too. I was checking the ages and dates of birth for my ancestors and cousins in 1911 and then checked the 1901 census.  Seems they didn't have the decimal system back then, but everything was by the baker's dozen, as all the ages are wrong except the very youngest children.
Found a relation who was bilingual at 17 in Irish and English in 1911.  Also found a 'servant' living in my great uncle's house, who, likewise, was bilingual. 

Also in the hill country of Ballinascreen/Draperstown there were still Irish-only speakers in 1911.  Likewise in the more remote townlands of the Glens of Antrim.

My mother used to lament how our elderly neighbour was never sat down and recorded for the wealth of information he know about who was related to whom in the district.  But she is a wealth of knowledge herself.  I have managed to find out the names of my great, great grand parents on her maternal lineage.  And it is now official...

I am related to half of North Derry, especially Dungiven, Ballerin and Drumsurn

Likewise my gr-grandfather in 1901 claimed to be 50 but by 1911 he was 64...life was hard in those days.  Wonder if it had anything to do with the advent of the Old Age Pension in 1908??

[Harold Disgracey]

My great grandfather was 35 in 1901 & 1911! He had a 4 year old daughter called Jane in 1901, somehow she became a 14 boy called Jame in 1911. Looks like my great great grandfather was the only Valentine Blacker in Ireland in 1901. My granny who was one in 1911 celebrated her 100th birthday last November, she's still going strong and living on her own.

[balladmaker]

My granny who was one in 1911 celebrated her 100th birthday last November, she's still going strong and living on her own.

Unreal, I'm sure she has some stories to tell!

[maddog]

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

This is very useful too. Strange the way you grow up to know somewhere and when you see it on old maps its referred to as something you never heard of. For example (the armagh lads will know this one) the bridge on the old moy road is referred to as Gearys bridge. I grew up beside it and never heard of it called that.

[Orior]

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

This is very useful too. Strange the way you grow up to know somewhere and when you see it on old maps its referred to as something you never heard of. For example (the armagh lads will know this one) the bridge on the old moy road is referred to as Gearys bridge. I grew up beside it and never heard of it called that.

Flip maddog. You've saved my life with that link.

[muppet]

Great link.

Don't have to argue with muppets all night now.

[LeoMc]

The returns for 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 were, apart from a few survivals, notably for a few counties for 1821 and 1831, destroyed in 1922 in the fire at the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War. . The first full government census of Ireland was taken in 1821 with further censuses at ten-yearly intervals from 1831 through to 1911. No census was taken in 1921, because of the War of Independence. The first census of the population of the Irish Free State was taken in 1926.

What about the census from 1861, 1871, 1881 & 1891? Are they being digitised also?

Also, anyone know any good free software for mapping out family trees?

[muppet]

The returns for 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 were, apart from a few survivals, notably for a few counties for 1821 and 1831, destroyed in 1922 in the fire at the Public Record Office at the beginning of the Civil War. . The first full government census of Ireland was taken in 1821 with further censuses at ten-yearly intervals from 1831 through to 1911. No census was taken in 1921, because of the War of Independence. The first census of the population of the Irish Free State was taken in 1926.

What about the census from 1861, 1871, 1881 & 1891? Are they being digitised also?

Also, anyone know any good free software for mapping out family trees?

AFAIK they were destroyed also. There are documents now optimistically called census replacements such as Griffith's Valuation and some Tithe records that are useful.

The following sites offer family tree software:

myheritage.com (offers membership free up to a certain number of individuals on the tree. After that it is by subscription but you will have an idea by then whether it is worth the money or not. It takes a while to get used to their software and it is not easy to navigate (I have nearly 6,000 people on my tree) but the books & reports function is really fantastic and that is what you will want at the end of your work.)

ancestry.co.uk (not sure about any free aspect but it is easier to read than my heritage.com and actually has a database of many of the areas you would want to research e.g. UK & USA census, deportation records, ship manifests etc., but you pay extra for that).

http://ifhf.rootsireland.ie/search.php (no tree software but it has almost all the birth and marriage records available in Ireland. N.B. They charge €5 per record, and you can't see the record until you have paid for it, so be very careful to narrow down your search as much as possible before buying otherwise you will waste money on the wrong records.)

google.ie (people all over the world are researching their families and many post their research free online. It can save a lot of time and money if you find some of theses trees and verify them rather than looking in the dark.)