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IrishLand Records- Part 2
Article published: August 25, 2001; Updated 26 October 2005
By: Kyle J. Betit
Landholding in Ireland
This is the second part of a two part series on Landholding In Ireland. Click here to read part one.
Landed Estate Records
Estate records are the private papers of the landlords of Ireland, those who held tracts of land and leased or rented property to the occupiers of that land. Only a very few people in Ireland actually owned land outright. Everyone else, the vast majority of inhabitants prior to the twentieth century, leased or rented rather than owned their house and land. Your ancestor could have been a landlord or someone renting from a landlord. In either case, estate records are relevant. Estate papers are relevant to the common tenant because the landlords often kept detailed records, such as rent rolls and leases, of the people living on their estates. In fact, before church records begin, estate papers may be among the only sources available for tracing the common classes.
Many estate landowners were members of the nobility, landed gentry or Church of Ireland clergy. Land was also held by the Crown (the reigning monarch), the Church of Ireland, London guilds (similar to modern-day unions), and various companies. This means that a large majority of landholders after the Reformation were Protestants.
Types of Records and Information
A wide variety of records and information can be found in estate papers. Two of the most common types are rent rolls and leases. A leaseholder held a written agreement for the term that the property would be held, while a renter could rent from year to year. Other records found in estate papers can include estate maps, emigration lists, petitions to the landowner, wills and deeds, freeholders and poll lists, mortgages, and eviction records. These are private family papers with no set rules for their content or even their survival.
Estate papers may indicate relationships and death dates of tenants. For example, it was common for land to be occupied under a "lease of lives" in which the tenant held the lease as long as three people named in the lease were living. The people named were often relatives, particularly children, of the lessee. The ages and relationships of the "lives" at the time the lease was written may be stated in the estate papers as well as their dates of death.
General Strategy for Accessing Estate Papers
Large numbers of Irish estate papers have survived, but they are found in numerous repositories in Ireland, Great Britain and elsewhere without any rhyme or reason. The following steps may be used to locate estate papers that pertain to the place where your ancestor lived:
- Determine the townland (preferably) or parish where your ancestor lived.
- Identify the landowner's full name and title (see the following section for sources to do this). By title is meant that many of the landlords were earls, marquises, dukes, and other nobles. So the MacDonnell family of Antrim were the Earls of Antrim.
- Determine where the landowner's estate papers are deposited.
- Search the estate papers looking for records covering the appropriate time period and townland/parish of interest. Don't assume that all of a landowner's estate papers are in one repository–those for your townland may be in another archives.
Sources for Identifying the Landowner
You can use the following sources to identify the landowner of the property that your ancestor occupied in a particular time period. Land did change hands due to confiscations, sales, bankruptcies, and inheritances, so over time you may need to research more than one landowner's name.
- 1708-present: Registry of Deeds records available at the FHL and the Registry of Deeds in Dublin.
- 1823-1837: Tithe Composition Applotment Books sometimes indicate the landowner.
- 1830s: Ordnance Survey (John O'Donovan) Place Name Books are available at the NLI.
- 1847-recent: Richard Griffith's Valuation of Ireland of 1847-1864 and subsequent revision books include an "Immediate Lessor" column indicating the landlord of each occupier.
Various: Richard Hayes' Manuscript Sources for the History of Irish Civilisation lists estate papers at the NLI, NAI, PRONI and other repositories.
Sources for Locating Estate Papers
Major repositories of estate papers include the NLI, NAI, PRONI, Trinity College, and county and university libraries in Ireland and Great Britain. The FHL has microfilm copies of some estate papers. Estate papers may not have been deposited in the county where the estate was located or even in Ireland. Landowners often had land in several Irish counties and may have lived outside of Ireland altogether (called "absentee landlords").
Here are some major reference works for locating estate papers. Others may be found in Radford and Betit's A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Irish Ancestors.
- Richard J. Hayes' Manuscript Sources for the History of Irish Civilisation catalogues estate papers (1) under the name of county, then "estates," for example: "Roscommon, County: Estates"; (2) under the name of the estate (as in a town or castle name); and (3) under the name or title of the estate owner.
- "County Source Lists" in John Grenham's Tracing Your Irish Ancestors: The Complete Guide include some estate papers and where they are available.
The "Census and Census Substitutes" listings for each county in James G. Ryan's Irish Records include estate papers.National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United Kingdom and Ireland (NIDS) (published by Chadwyck-Healy) includes Trinity College, University College Dublin, University College Galway, archives at universities and county record offices in England, Wales and Scotland. The index to NIDS is available on CD-ROM with capability for key-word searches.
- The National Register of Archives produced by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts inventories manuscript collections repositories in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. A subject index to the NRA may be searched on-line: http://www.hmc.gov.uk/nra.
- Estate Records of the Irish Famine: A Second Guide to Famine Archives, 1840-1855, by Andrés Eiríksson and Cormac O Gráda, lists collections at the NAI, the NLI, the PRONI, and county, university and other libraries in Ireland. The book is arranged alphabetically by county and name of proprietor.
- Estate record inventories of papers in the NLI and the NAI were published in a joint project of the Irish Genealogical Society International (PO Box 16585, St. Paul MN 55116-0585) and the GO. At this writing, inventories have been published for counties Armagh, Cavan, Cork, Donegal, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Leitrim, Mayo, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Tyrone, and Waterford, as well as for the Lismore Papers.
- The PRONI's Guide to Landed Estate Records inventories records in the six Northern Ireland counties held at the PRONI.
Incumbered Estates Records
The Incumbered Estates Act of 1849 created a court to sell debt-ridden estates. Over 3,000 estates were processed by the court between 1849 and 1857, and the court continued to sell estates through the 1880s. Printed sales brochures for estates being sold are available at the NAI, NLI, PRONI, and FHL. They usually include a map of the estate and a listing by townland or street of the tenants, their yearly rents, and their types of tenure. If the land was held by a lease, the brochure lists the date of the lease and the number of years or names of lives, sometimes going back into the eighteenth century.
The NAI has a finding aid arranged by townland to the Incumbered Estates records (called LEC or Landed Estate Court rentals), and the NLI has a finding aid arranged alphabetically by owners' names. You can also call up the sales brochures in volumes by date at the NLI. The FHL has microfilmed eighty-three volumes of printed sales brochures, but there is no index included.
References and Further Reading
Agnew, Jean. "The Registry of Deeds: A Beginner's Guide." In Aspects of Irish Genealogy III: Proceedings of the Third Irish Genealogical Congress, edited by Christopher Ryan. Dublin: Irish Genealogical Congress Committee, 1999.
Betit, Kyle J. "Freeholders, Freemen and Voting Registers," The Irish At Home and Abroad 6 (4) (4th Quarter 1999): 146-164.
Betit, Kyle J. "Catholic Qualification Rolls, 1775-1801," The Irish At Home and Abroad 6 (4) (4th Quarter 1999): 165-167.
Collins, Peter. "Eighteenth-Century Records." In Pathways to Ulster's Past: Sources and Resources for Local Studies, pp. 21-23. Belfast: The Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen's University of Belfast, 1998.
De Burgh, U.H. Hussey. The Landowners of Ireland. An Alphabetical List of Owners of Estates of 500 Acres or £500 Valuation and Upwards. Dublin: Hodges, Foster and Figgis, 1878.
Eiríksson, Andrés and Cormac O Gráda. Estate Records of the Irish Famine: A Second Guide to Famine Archives, 1840-1855. Dublin: Irish Famine Network, 1995.
Evans, M.D. "Manuscripts of Genealogical Interest in Trinity College, Dublin." In Aspects of Irish Genealogy II, edited by M.D. Evans, 61-82. Dublin: Irish Genealogical Congress Committee, 1996.
Falley, Margaret Dickson. "Records of Public Office, Freemen, Freeholders, Guilds, Schools." In Irish and Scotch-Irish Ancestral Research, vol 1, pp. 666-671. 1962. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988.
ffolliott, Rosemary. "Co. Carlow Freeholders in 1767," The Irish Ancestor 12 (1-2) (1980): 46-47.
ffolliott, Rosemary. "The Registry of Deeds for Genealogical Purposes." In Irish Genealogy: A Record Finder, edited by Donal F. Begley, 139-156. Dublin: Heraldic Artists, Ltd., 1987.
Grenham, John. Tracing Your Irish Ancestors: The Complete Guide. 2nd Ed. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Ltd., 1999.
Guide to Landed Estate Records. Belfast: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 1994.
Hayes, Richard J. Manuscript Sources for the History of Irish Civilisation. 11 vols. Boston: G.K. & Co., 1965.
Landowners in Ireland. Return of Owners of Land of One Acres and Upwards. 1876. Reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1988.
Lynn, James Hugh. "Leases for Lives in Ireland," The Irish At Home and Abroad 6 (4) (4th Quarter 1999): 168-173.
Maxwell, Ian. Tracing Your Ancestors in Northern Ireland: A Guide to Ancestry Research in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Edinburgh: The Stationery Office, 1997.
Radford, Dwight A. and Kyle J. Betit. A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Irish Ancestors. Cincinnati, Ohio: Betterway, 2001.
Ryan, James G. Irish Records: Sources for Family & Local History. Rev. ed. Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry, 1997.
Trench, Richard Chenevix. Grace's Card: Irish Catholic Landlords 1690-1800. Cork: Mercier Press, 1997.
Vaughan, W.E. Landlords and Tenants in Mid-Victorian Ireland. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
Addresses
County Roscommon Family History Society: Bealnamullia, Athlone, Co. Roscommon, Ireland; Internet: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Pines/7030/; e-mail: rendell@eircom.net
Family History Library: 35 North West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84150, USA; British Isles Ref Tel: (801) 240-2367; Internet: http://www.familysearch.org/
National Archives: Bishop Street, Dublin 4, Ireland; Tel: (01) 4783711; Fax: (01) 4783650; Internet: http://www.nationalarchives.ie.
National Library of Ireland: Kildare Street, Dublin 2, Ireland; Tel: (01) 6618811; Fax: (01) 6766690; Internet: http://www.heanet.ie/natlib.
Public Record Office: Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU, England; Tel: (0181) 392 5200; Fax: (0181) 878 8905; Internet: http://www.open.gov.uk/pro/prohome.htm
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: 66 Balmoral Avenue, Belfast BT9 6NY, Northern Ireland; Tel: (028 90) 251318; Fax: (028 90) 255999; Internet: http://proni.nics.gov.uk/index.htm
Registry of Deeds: Henrietta Street, Dublin 1, Ireland; Tel: (01) 6707500; Fax: (01) 8048408.
Trinity College Dublin: College Street, Dublin 2, Ireland; Tel: (01) 608 1189; Fax: (01) 608 2690; Internet: http://www2.tcd.ie/Library; e-mail (Keeper of Manuscripts): mscripts@tcd.ie.
University College Dublin: Archives Department, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland; Tel: (01) 7067547; Fax: (01) 7061146; Internet: http://www.ucd.ie/~archives/.
Valuation Office of Ireland: Irish Life Center, Abbey Street Lower, Dublin 1, Ireland; Tel: (01) 8171000; Fax: (01) 8171180; Internet: http://www.valoff.ie/.
NEWS & EVENTS IN THE WORLD OF IRISH GENEALOGY
NEW BOOKS...
- A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Irish Ancestors
by Dwight A. Radford & Kyle J. Betit
Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2001. Paperback. ISBN 1-55870-577-5. 304 pages. (Click here for availability and price )
Comments from the publisher: "A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Irish Ancestors helps you define the challenges of Irish family research, then provides strategies to overcome them. You'll learn how to investigate the various generations of your family, the events that shaped their lives, the details about how they lived, and the story of their emigration.
You'll also find answers to common questions: How far back in time can you expect to trace your family? How does Protestant Irish research differ from Catholic Irish research? What's the most efficient way to use archives and libraries?
There's a wealth of information inside, including:
- Guidelines for determining an Irish ancestor's place of origin
- Advice for researching Irish records domestically and overseas
- Basic strategies of Irish research—essential to your success
- Working with heirlooms to fill in the details of social history
- Advice for accessing Irish cemetery, land, church, estate, census, and military records
- Civil registrations including birth, marriage, death, and emigration lists
- Sources and strategies for researching Irish ancestors that settled in Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, and the Caribbean
- Information on Internet resources and favorite sites
Everything you need to get started is right here! It's the beginning of a journey that will transform your family's history from legend…to fact."
- Second Calvary Cemetery—New Yorkers Carved in Stone
by Rosemary Muscarella Ardolina
Published in 2000 by Delia Publications, LLC, PO Box 20714, Floral Park, NY11002-0714; Internet: www.DeliaPbl.com. ISBN 0-9705632-0-5. Paperback. 261 pages. USD$43.00 plus $3.00 for shipping, $4.00 for priority mail. New York State residents should add $3.65 sales tax.
Another extraordinary New York City research tool is now available to family historians from Rosemary Ardolina with the publication of her Second Calvary Cemetery. This meticulous transcription preserves and makes accessible a vast collection of data from this important New York City cemetery. It is helpful in including both a personal name and place name index to the tombstone inscriptions.
New York's Calvary Cemetery was established in 1848 by the Archdiocese of New York, and now holds the remains of more than 3 million persons in its 365 acres. This cemetery has thousands of monuments that bear some kind of information about where in Ireland the deceased immigrant had come from, such as "native of Dungannon, Tyrone." In her first volume of inscriptions from the cemetery, published in 1996, she reported over 5,000 inscriptions from "Old Calvary," the first of the cemetery's four divisions. Now she has done the same with over 3,000 entries for "Second Calvary."
- Irish Relatives and Friends:
From "Information Wanted" Ads in the Irish-American, 1850-1871
by Laura Murphy DeGrazia and Diane Fitzpatrick Haberstroh
464 pp., Indexed. ISBN 0806316772.
Published in 2001 by GPC click here for price and availability
For bringing this book and its very helpful contents to publication, the Irish-American genealogical community owes much thanks to DeGrazia and Haberstroh. This is a fabulous source for identifying the Irish origins of New York City immigrants, as well as Irish immigrants who settled in other parts of the country. I highly recommend it as an addition to your personal Irish genealogy library, and I think any library or repository with a serious genealogy section NEEDS THIS BOOK!
The Irish-American, a weekly newspaper published in New York City for the Irish immigrant population, began publication in August 1849, at the height of the great exodus from Ireland. Besides news items of interest to the Irish community, the paper ran a popular classified section for people seeking information about relatives and friends who had recently come to the U.S. These classified ads appeared in a column entitled "Information Wanted," and because of their genealogical value they have been transcribed in this book in their entirety. The ads usually indicate the Irish county, townland, or parish in Ireland from which an immigrant came. The success of Irish genealogical research often depends on the identification of these jurisdictions. The ads also often name places of residence in the U.S., provide names and relationships of family members, give dates of departure from Ireland and arrival in the U.S., indicate ships' names, and sometimes specify ages and occupations.
A particularly wise addition to this work is the compiler's five separate indexes: Personal Names, Irish Place Names, United States Place Names, Other Places, and New York City Streets. Some 8,500 names appear in the Personal Names index alone; and there are references to several thousand place names. With the Place Names indexes you can check to see if anyone came from the same townland as your ancestor in Ireland, if people who settled in the same place in the United States have their Irish origins mentioned here, or if people living on the same street in New York City are mentioned!
New CD-ROM Publication
- The William Smith O'Brien Petition 1848 (Irish Records Index Vol. 2 )
Compiled and Edited by Ruth Lawler
Published in March 2001 by Eneclann (Trinity College), Dublin
This second in the Eneclann CD-ROM Irish Records Index series is an important nineteenth-century census substitute for both Roman Catholics and Protestants. This petition was signed by over 80,000 people from every part of Ireland and from Liverpool, Manchester, and other parts of England, between 1848 and 1849. The CD-ROM contains over 80,000 names, addresses and occupations (of which 70,000 are from Ireland and 10,000 from among Irish immigrants in England).
Following the failure of the 1848 rising, rebel leader William Smith O'Brien was sentenced to death, and this petition was collected to gain clemency for him. His sentence was commuted and O'Brien was transported to Australia for life.
System Requirements
Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0 or higher.
Minimum IBM compatible Pentium 90Mhz with 16MB RAM
News in the World of Irish Genealogy
The Irish At Home and Abroad Back Issues For Sale:
The back issues of The Irish At Home and Abroad journal of Irish genealogy and heritage, which was published between 1993 and 1999, are now available for purchase from Global Genealogy & History Store in Milton, Ontario. Each issue of the journal features a particular Irish county and contains other articles helpful to various aspects of Irish and Irish immigrant research.
Irish Genealogy Certificate Courses:
PRESS RELEASE from National Institute for Genealogical Studies
Certificate in Genealogical Studies Course Offerings Expanded to Include
United States, England and Ireland
North America's first web-based certificate program in genealogy is growing.
In the fall of 1999, the National Institute for Genealogical Studies partnered with the Continuing Education Program of the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto (FIS/CE) to offer North America's first Certificate Program in genealogical studies delivered entirely over the Internet.
Today, people across North America have registered for thousands of online certificate-level courses, taking advantage of this convenient and practical way of mastering the techniques of genealogical research.
Starting with a core of eight courses in the Basic Level Certificate in Canadian Records in October 1999, the Intermediate Level commenced one year later. The Advanced Level will be added in October 2001. The National Institute and FIS/CE also added certificates in English Records and Irish Records in February 2001. Brian Hutchison, B.Comm, CMA, CG, FSA (Scot) is heading the Irish Records Department.
The latest country added to the growing list is the United States. Beginning in June 2001, students will be able to complete the Basic Level Certificate in American Records. Kyle J. Betit has joined the team of leaders and faculty as the American Records Department Leader. Betit is a professional genealogist, author, lecturer and consultant specializing in American, Canadian, Irish and French research. He is also involved in the application of genealogy to medical
genetics studies.
Other leaders are Dr. Penelope Christensen for the English Records Department, and Louise St Denis for the Canadian Records Department.
Recognizing the diverse ethnic backgrounds of North Americans, the National Institute and FIS/CE anticipate adding specializations in the records of other countries in the coming years.
For further information, please visit these websites: National Institute (www.genealogicalstudies.com) and FIS/CE (ce.fis.utoronto.ca/genealogy/).
Karen Melville, Director
FIS Continuing Education Program
Louise St Denis, Managing Director
National Institute for Genealogical Studies
More Irish Resources
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