I heard today that the results of the census of 1911 have been put online (at least the records for Dublin, not for the rest of the country yet). My surname is not that common, as far as I know there's only one family of us in Ireland so I thought I'd take a look and see what I could find. Only one family came up but they had a two-year-old son called Patrick, which is very likely my paternal grandad. His dad was Charles and I do have an Uncle Charlie on that side as well so that would tie in too.
The website is http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ for anyone with ties here who might like a look. I find it fascinating. I now know my great-grandad's name, that he had very nice hand-writing but was terrible at following instructions on how to fill the form out, worked as a vice man (or rice man?) and was married at 18 to my great-granny of the same age. I can also see that they lived in one room of a house with nine rooms, which altogether housed nine families (42 people). And none of them were deaf, dumb, blind, imbecile/idiot or lunatic.
There were dozens of my granny's family name and I don't think she was born until 1913 so I'd need to find out her parents' names before searching again. I do have a copy of my dad's maternal grandad's military record somewhere for around the same time. Not so much full of heroic deeds and valour as it is full of things like "two days in the hold for drunk and disorderly behaviour" and "arrested for drunkeness". Ah well, in the fairytale version of my past it's easy to think I would have been a very sophisticated, well-read young lady attending balls and parties every other night - but I think my family stock was something far more earthy than that.
My sister has been doing the family genealogy lately and has been excited about finding census reports. It's been pretty interesting learning about all of her discoveries and when people got married, how many kids they had etc. It seems that we have a lot of Thomas' and Patricks in our family. We didn't know about the Thomas' but my sister named her youngest son Thomas years ago.
ReplyDelete*melanie from www.meli-mello.com
How cool to discover more about your family. Perhaps I should search it too since I have Irish ancestry (not sure where from though and would need to ask my mum). Only problem is that the surname is Taylor and I'm sure it's as common as anything!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post.
ReplyDeleteMy mother's side of the family is shrouded in secrecy.
Unfortunately, it looks as though Carr's are ten a penny in Dublin.