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Ancestry Daily News
12/30/2002 - Archive
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The 1766 Religious Census Of Ireland |
The 1766 Religious Census Of Ireland
Concerns about the loyalty of Irish Catholics declined through the 1700s; they
did not support the Stuart cause led by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 and many
served loyally in the army during the Seven Years War (French and Indian War),
1756-63. The authorities nevertheless retained an interest in religion and took
a long time to relax the Penal Laws. In 1766, the Irish Parliament ordered all
Church of Ireland ministers in their respective parishes to prepare a list of
householders and their religious affiliation (church of Ireland, Catholic or
Presbyterian). In addition the ministers were required to include information
about any Catholic priests or friars active in the area.
The work was done in the spring of the year with varying degrees of diligence.
Some ministers made a numerical summary listing only total numbers for each
religion in the parish. Others took great care, making the list townland by
townland, showing the name of each householder and his religion. Still others
fell somewhere in between; e.g., listing only the Catholics or omitting the
townland.
The whole of the original set of returns was lost in the Four Courts fire in
Dublin in 1922; fortunately a good many transcripts survive. Areas well represented
in the surviving copies are north Cork, Limerick, Londonderry, Louth, and Wicklow.
Some of these have been printed, some are in the Genealogical Office in Dublin,
others in the National Archives and the Representative Church Body Library.
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast also has copies. Transcriptions
by Tenison Groves and other miscellaneous copies can be found in the Family
History Library in Salt Lake City.
It is fairly easy to discover what survives for a particular area. On the Web,
visit the genealogy part of the Irish Times website
(http://scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/browse/counties/index.htm
). Amongst the free resources is information about surviving records; find your
way to the 'counties' area, select a county and under the list of sources select
'census.' This heading includes earlier census substitutes. Go through the dates
(they are in chronological order) looking for 1766 because record titles are
not given. In print, you can find similar information also arranged by county;
look in Irish Records: Sources for Family and Local History (James Ryan,
Ancestry, 1999) and Tracing Your Irish Ancestors (Grenham. GPC, 2000).
If you are an Ancestry subscriber you can find many of the 1766 nominal lists
within the Irish databases. The list of roughly 11,000 names is taken from those
originally copied by Tenison Groves and subsequently filmed for the Family History
Library in Salt Lake City. Most of these are from the north of Ireland. Facts
you can discover in complete records are names of the head of the household,
religious affiliation, the diocese, the county, the parish and the townland.
There are few women mentioned—mainly widows or those living alone. To search
this list and no other, first select the Search Records tab on the main Ancestry
page, then click on the little map of the UK and Ireland, and finally select
Ireland on the larger map that appears. This brings up a list of sources. Under
Census, at the top, you will see the 1766 Religious Census. By the way, anyone
curious about what Irish records are within the subscription databases can look
at the list of sources.
The page that appears next has a search box and some background information
on the source. You can search by a person's name, by a surname alone, or by
parish or townland (to see all the names in one limited area).
The genealogical value of this list is two-fold. One is the discovery of an
ancestor's religion, or what he stated to be his religion at the time; the other
is the confirmation of the presence of an individual or a family surname in
a particular place. With this information, pause to review your facts, check
the results form other sources consulted so far and then go looking for additional
records that fit the details of your problem—the span of years and the geographic
area in particular. You can find these using the same sources listed above (Irish
Times website, Irish Records by Ryan and Tracing Your Irish Ancestors
by Grenham).
If your area is not covered by this database first check the other miscellaneous
returns that are in the Family History Library and then find the location of
the copies—most likely in Ireland. If you did the search at the Irish Times
site or looked in one of the books mentioned above you will know already what
and where to look.
When church and probate records are scarce it is very important to have a means
of confirming easily that a family was in a particular location, before you
put a lot of effort in to more complex research. For this reason, census type
lists, generally called 'census substitutes' are an important component of Irish
research.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Subscribers with access to the UK & Ireland Records Collection
can view the 1766 Religious Census of Ireland database mentioned in the article
here.
Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot) has been researching her British ancestry
for thirty years. She is an instructor and study tour leader for Samford University's
IGHR, and teaches for the online family history program of Vermont College.
Sherry is President of the Association of Professional Genealogists. She is
the author of:
Your Scottish Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans
www.ancestry.com/rd/prodredir.asp?sourceid=831&key=P1046
Your English Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans
www.ancestry.com/rd/prodredir.asp?sourceid=831&key=P1045
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