Civil Parishes - you'll find different lists of these. There are a number of resources to find the names of Civil Parishes in any county - the first for all of you will be the Sean Ruad IRL-Atlas hosted on the Roscommon-Leitrim web site. The parishes listed in that are as the parishes were named and spelled officially in 1841.............at least I think it was 1841 - it is, if the on-line database comes from the 'General Alphabetical Index To the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland' 1851......... Then, or, before that time, we have the Lewis Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, published 1837 in which Lewis names the parishes and then perhaps speaks of a 'Union' that the Church of Ireland parish was part of - he also speaks of the Roman Catholic parishes and any unions involved there - and this is where Lewis is most handy - he can be describing a Civil parish and he will tell us the name of the Roman Catholic parish for that civil parish. When he says that a parish is 'co-extensive' with the Established Church - then he means that all the townlands in the R.C. parish are the same as those of the Church of Ireland parish. He also tells us whether there were Methodist or Presbyterian Meeting Houses in those parishes and usually names the town/village that any such meeting house was in. Same for Society of Friends or Quakers. Then, 185/1889 gives us a series of booklets published by the General Registrars Office in Dublin - this lists all the townlands in the various places that made up each Civil Registration District in Ireland - the Civil Registration Districts were the Poor Law Unions. Now, Civil Registration Disctricts come with all their own different, each one can take in more than one county, each has it's 'sub-districts' - the sub districts are divided up depending on the civil parishes that are part of each sub-district. One parish can be covered by a number of 'sub-districts'. Don't let all of that confuse you - because these sub-districts or District Electoral Divisions only have any importance when you are searching for census information - that is the 1901 or 1911 census. After that, we have the Genealogical Atlas of Ireland..............and the parishes as named in this are not the same as those listed in Lewis in 1837 - the spellings of parishes that are listed don't always co-incide with the earlier spelings either The main point that I want to try and get across here, is that a civil parish that existed in 1820 may not have existed in 1841 - you won't find it mentioned in the Irl-Atlas.............you won't find it anywhere else. A civil parish that existed in 1841 may not have been in existace in 1885.............you'll find no mention of it anywhere. The name of any civil parish in 1820 - well, that might be spelled differently in 1841 - it may be spelled more differently in 1885. Check Lewis to find out the name of Catholic parishes - for all records, when you can't find anything for the parish that you are interested in - then always check the parishes that were around it. Jane