The Irish Census: Finding my family online

Most of the records were burned in a fire in the Four Courts during the Civil War --But the two saved census records, 1901 and 1911, are now online

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Census of Ireland 1911

Photo by Census Archives

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It’s a strange thing to sit at my desk in New York City to look out the window and see Sixth Avenue stretched out far below and in the distance the Hudson River, and turn and look at my computer screen and see the signature of my great grandfather Patrick Harty on the 1901 census form.

(Most of the records were burned in a fire in the Four Courts during the Civil War. But the two saved census records, 1901 and 1911, are now online.)

Patrick is 73 in 1901 and his wife Mary is 68. Their son William, who would become my grandfather, is 35 and still living at home with his brothers John and James and his sister Johanna. English is listed as their spoken language. They can all read and write. Roman Cathilik [sp] is listed as their religion. I don’t know if the misspelling of "Cathilik" is my great grandfather’s or the census taker, Constable William James Hughes.

In the neighboring town land, Mary Seymour, who would become my grandmother, is 17. She is living with her mother, Mary, 41, her father Stephen, 53, her sister Fannie, 21, and five brothers. They can all read and wright [sp] and they too are Roman Catalick [sp]. Ten of the 12 residents in the household are listed -- one is a servant Michael Furley, 24.

The two missing names are my grandmother’s sister, my great Aunt Agnes who immigrated to Australia (I’m in touch with her descendants who still live there today), and her brother, great uncle Martin who immigrated to America. Martin never married. He returned to Ireland late in life, lived out his retirement in our house and was known to one and all as “The Yank.”

The information on the census forms is not a whole lot, but yet it is.

It’s like splashes of paint that form a picture of the people whose DNA I’ve inherited. Ancestors who are buried in the graveyard where my father and mother are now buried, just a field away from the house I grew up in – the same house that my grandparents lived in and my great grandparents would have visited.

I can tell from the census records and some mental arithmetic that my great grandfather Patrick was 17 in 1845 -- the year the blight first hit the potatoes.

I can picture Patrick as a young man, the way I can picture my brother Patrick at 17, checking the potato rows and reporting back to his father.

In 1847, the worst year of the Famine when the potato crop failed completely, 55 thousand families were evicted in Tipperary.

Patrick’s family was evicted from their 10-acre holding sometime during or after the Famine. I recall my mother telling me that fact.

In 1901, according to the census, Patrick and his family are living on a farm in Ballyanny, which is across the fields from the farm that I grew up on, a farm that was once owned by the Kingsley family.

I find, what I believe to be, their census records too.

William Kingsley, 65, and his wife Mary, 50, are Church of Ireland. He is a retired Infantry colonel who was born in Westmeath. His wife was born in London. They have two Catholic servants. Mary Egan, 35, is listed as “a personal maid” who can read and write. Norah McGrath, 40, “a domestic servant” cannot read and write. Both Mary and Norah are single.

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