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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Between the census of 1901 and 1911, my grandfather William came into the Kingsley estate -- 189 acres of prime farmland. He was probably the first Catholic to own the land in hundreds of years.

By the year 1911, William’s father Patrick is dead. His mother Mary, 75, is listed as head of the household. His brother James, 40 and single, is still living at home, as is his sister Johanna whose age is listed at 28 (she would have been 32).

The census records for 1911 show that my grandfather William Harty (45) had married Mary Seymour (26). They have two of what would later become a family of nine children. My father, Patrick, is one year old and his sister Mary is two months. (I grew up with a portrait of Mary “Maureen” over the fireplace. She died of a burst appendix when she was 10).

Two servants, Bridget Healy, 16, and John Quigley, 66, are also listed. Bridget is as yet unmarried. John is single. They can all read and write.

According to the 1911 census my grandmother Mary can read and write in both English and Irish. This fact gives me pause. Most of the Irish language died out with the Famine and emigration. Mary’s father would have been born in 1848; did she learn Irish from him or her mother who was born in 1860?

I stare at grandfather William’s signature on the census form -- the way he writes “Harty” looks like it’s been penned by my own hand.

I wish I knew more about how my ancestors managed to cling on to life and land when so many died and emigrated during and after the Famine or what is more aptly called the Great Starvation.

I can tell from these two census records that the men in my family married late in life.

My great grandfather and his brothers worked hard to buy up land -- driven by a determination, or so I imagine, never to go hungry again. Only when there was a farm for each of the brothers, did they then did look to marry. The women they married were much younger. It was a practical matter, not romantic. A “made match.” I have a photograph of my grandmother on her wedding day. She does not look very happy.

My grandfather William died before he was 60, leaving my grandmother a young widow. He suffered from diabetes, which scientists now link to the “thrifty” gene that allowed people to store fat in times of plenty to prevent starvation in times of Famine. Today, my brother suffers from the same disease.

At fourteen, my father Patrick was in charge of the farm and responsible for his eight younger brothers and sisters. I believe that handling so much responsibility at such a young age shortened his life – he died in his 60s.

Part of the old Kingsley house that still survives as our “back kitchen” was a soup kitchen during the Famine, if I have the story from my mother right. I remember, too, though the memory is faint and “hushed” that when I was a child and workmen were digging the foundation for a new cow house, they found the skeleton of a young woman. My mother said she was from Famine times and had a mass said for her soul.

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