The World Immigration Series CD-ROM disks require Windows 95, 98, ME, NT or Windows 2000 as well as a Pentium processor (100-MHz or faster), at least 16 megabytes of RAM memory and a 4-speed or faster CD-ROM disk. I used a 600 MHz Pentium III system running Windows 2000 with 128 megabytes of RAM memory. The World Immigration Series CD-ROM disks use Heritage Quest’s proprietary CD-ROM viewer software. Installation was easy and only required a minute or so.

The World Immigration Series software operates a bit like a Web browser: you click on icons or links to navigate around. The menu bar across the top has buttons (icons) for Forward, Back, Home, Index and Help. A tiny user’s manual is included with the CD-ROM, but I never had any reason to open it.

The opening screen shows a map of Ireland and then has links to a lot of textual information, including articles on:

• The Pre-Famine Years

• The Famine Years

• The Post-Famine Years

• The Irish of America

• Irish Genealogy (an overview)

Next, the CD-ROM has a variety of articles published in past editions of Heritage Quest magazine, ranging from how-to articles to get you started to the histories that have already been compiled about the Irish people. That is followed by information about the various ports of entry commonly used by Irish immigrants, including Philadelphia and Boston. The disk also contains numerous maps of Ireland and several pictures of interest.

The "heart" of the "Irish in the 1870 U.S. Federal Census" CD-ROM, however, is its database of all 1,103,549 Irish households listed in the 1870 U.S. census. Each entry was extracted from the US Federal Census by Heritage Quest's team of professional Document Extraction Specialists. Information for heads of household, all males over 50, all females over 70 and anyone with a different surname includes: name, age, sex, race birthplace, locality, and county, along with film number and page reference, so you can easily identify your ancestor.

Keep in mind that these are indexes, not the original records. You can use the CD-ROM disk to quickly locate an entry that probably contains information about your ancestor. That entry will also list the Roll Number that the National Archives has assigned to this specific roll of film and the page number (on the microfilm) on which the person listed will be found. The page numbers are the printed numbers (usually with part A or B) assigned by the National Archives prior to filming. For example: In the number "T623-116/46A", T623 refers to the 1900 U.S. Federal Census, 116 is the roll number, and 46A is the page number. Armed with this information, you can easily rent the microfilm to view the original record, which often has more information than what is shown in this index.

The original 1870 schedules contained 20 columns with the following headings:

• Dwelling houses numbered in the order of visitation.
• Families numbered in the order of visitation.
• The name of every person whose place of abode on the first day of June 1870, was in the family.
• Age at last birthday. If under 1 year, give months in fractions, thus 3/12.
• Gender - Males (M), Females (F).
• Color - White (W), Black (B), Mulatto (M), Chinese (C), Indian (I).
• Profession, Occupation, or Trade of each person, male or female.
• Value of Real Estate.
• Value of Personal Estate.
• Place of Birth, naming State or Territory of U.S.; or the Country, if of foreign birth.
• Father of foreign birth.
• Mother of foreign birth.
• If born within the year, state month (Jan., Feb., etc.).
• If married within the year, state month (Jan., Feb., etc.).
• Attended school within the year.
• Cannot read.
• Cannot write.
• Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic.
• Male Citizens of U.S. of 21 years of age and upwards.
• Male Citizens of U.S. of 21 years of age and upwards, whose right to vote is denied or abridged on other rounds than rebellion or other crime.

From this information, Heritage Quest has extracted and indexed the following information: name, age, sex, color or race, birthplace, locality, county, series, roll, and page number. Only Heads-of-Household are extracted, with the following exceptions:

1. Someone residing within the home who has a different surname, regardless of age.
2. Any male 50 years of age or older.
3. Any female 70 years of age or older.
4. Any color or race change (where the surname stays the same). In this case the oldest person listed is extracted.
5. All individuals living in an institution such as an orphanage, hospital, or poorhouse.

The searches were quick and simple to conduct. I found that I could search by any combination of first name, last name, age, gender, race, locality (town), county or state. The searches could include "wild card" searches such as entering "MA?E" would match "MADE," "MAKE," "MACE," and "MATE," among others. Entering "MA*E" would find the above matches as well as "MAE," "MACKIE," "MARTE," "MARITIME," and "MADDIE," among others.

I was not able to use the Windows "cut and paste" commands to copy data to another Windows program, nor could I find a method of printing data to a local printer. This will not be an issue when searching for individuals. However, it could be significant if you want to export all the entries for a given name or perhaps for a certain town or county.

The "Irish in the 1870 U.S. Federal Census" can be valuable for anyone researching families of that time period. The CD-ROM sells for $39.95 plus shipping and taxes.