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Ancestry Daily News
12/23/2003 - Archive
Voters and Freeholders in Ireland
The secret ballot and universal suffrage are of comparatively recent origin. In 1872 the secret ballot was introduced across the British Isles and it took a series of acts of Parliament to advance from a very limited electorate to what we take for granted today.
It is not easy to set out the qualifications to vote that existed in Ireland at different times. Because of politics and religion, eligibility changed many times and voter requirements in Ireland before 1885 were not the same as elsewhere in the British Isles. The basic qualification was to be a forty-shilling freeholder (20 shillings to the pound). This person held a “lease for lives” valued at 40 shillings after rent and other charges had been paid. A lease for lives was based on the longevity of named persons; in many cases as one named person died, another could be named in replacement, effectively making the lease perpetual.
In boroughs, and there were five different types, those who voted could be the freemen of the borough, or “potwallopers” (a word that referred to anyone who controlled his own front door and cooking facilities), or forty-shilling freeholders, or some mix of these. At Trinity College in Dublin, two members of parliament were elected by the fellows and the students.
From 1727 until 1793, Catholics could not vote. From 1793 to 1829, all who met the forty-shilling qualification, Catholic and Protestant, were entitled to vote. Full Catholic emancipation in 1829 came with a catch; the basic qualification for voting was raised to ten pounds. The electorate in Ireland, roughly 200,000, fell by 80%. Legislation in 1884 created a uniform qualification to vote that was everywhere the same and included most adult males.
Lists of Voters and Freeholders
That brief summary of who could vote gives essential facts for understanding what you are consulting when reading a list of voters or freeholders. The lists are obviously limited to a small proportion of the population. Even so, freeholders and voters lists have value, enhanced by the lack of census returns in the 1800s and the loss of many church records. They are definitely a good resource for those with Protestant ancestors in Ulster, especially now following the launch of the Freeholders database at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) website.
PRONI has digitized the voter registers and poll books (lists of those who voted and the candidates they voted for) surviving from the north for the years before 1840. There is a names index and it is possible to view images.
The records in some cases supply much useful genealogical data. You may find some or all of the following: the name of the freeholder, address, location of the freehold, name of the landlord, address of landlord, names of lives, value of the freehold, date and place of registration, and religion of the freeholder.
The names of lives referenced in a lease can be especially useful, for they were often members of the freeholder's family. If you find more than one reference over a spread of years, you have confirmation of a period of time at one location. A change in first name of the freeholder can be the clue to the death of one member of the family and succession of another. There are ways to manipulate the search tool as well. A wild card symbol is available and, whether using the simple or advanced search form, you can use any criteria or mix of criteria to vary, expand, or contract the search. One thing I find interesting is to select the county, townland, and year, without mentioning names; this results in a list of qualified voters in the same townland and allows for a comparison of names cited as the lives in any of the leasehold properties.
Finding Other Lists
If your ancestors were not from the north, then you must look elsewhere. Begin the hunt in the Family History Library Catalog to see whether any lists are available through LDS facilities. Also check the county lists of census substitutes found in Irish Records: Sources for Family and Local History (Ryan, 1999) and Tracing Your Irish Ancestors (Grenham, 2000), and check for record lists at the county sites within GENUKI. The source lists within Tracing Your Irish Ancestors can be found in a different layout using the “browse” and “county” features in the free part of the Irish Times website.
Conclusion
Everyone knows the importance of establishing a place of origin for Irish research and then of discovering surviving records that point to relationships and to how long a family remained in a parish. Lists of freeholders and voters are one resource that can help. For those researching in Northern Ireland, the Freeholders database at the PRONI website is a wonderful new online resource.
Further Reading
Oxford Companion to Irish History. ed. by S.J. Connelley
Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot) is an author, teacher, and lecturer specializing in English and Scottish family history. She is the author of Your English Ancestry (2nd ed, 1998) and Your Scottish Ancestry (1997) and she is a regular contributor to several journals including Genealogical Computing. Since 1996, she has been a study tour leader, course coordinator, and instructor for the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research at Samford University. She teaches online for the family history program of Vermont College and has lectured at conferences in Canada, the United States, and Australia. She is the president of the Association of Professional Genealogists.
Copyright 2003, MyFamily.com. All rights reserved.
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