Not an easy question Kate.................as most well know.............probably the most difficult to answer The elusive Catholic parish. There is no equivalent to the IRL-Atlas for that. We see lists of parishes on the various Catholic Dioscescan web sites today - but that's not to say that any of them will have the parish name that we are looking for. The fact that so many parish records ony give names and no place-names can make it all the more confusing for us. I can tell you how I go about finding - or - 'trying' to find a parish. I take the townland spelling as given to me and I check to see which Civil parish it's in - if I can't findit that way, then the next thing I do, is check my index to the places named in the Lewis Topographical Dictionary of Ireland to see if that name or a variation of it pops up as one of the other names that he gives a place...............if you look to parishes as he names them then lots of times he gives the old name for the parish, or an 'or' name for the parish............ If I can't find it there - then, I'm kind of stumped in some ways - except, I'm patient enough, so, I begin to read through all the descriptions of the civil parishes for that county as per Lewis.............hoping that somewhere in there I'll see mention of a Union that includes a name similar or exactly like the one I am looking for. Say I find that the 'parish' I am looking for belongs to some union or other...............and when I check the list of Roman Catholic parish records that exist on microfilm I can't find a listing for my parish - but.............I find a listing for the union or another parish in that union - well, then, that's where I'll begin. I'll go to that set of parish records and see if I can find any of the surnames I am interested in. One other place I will try is a listing of placenames in Irish that I have - I'll look there to see if there is anything that is phonetically similar to my townland name - that's if I've not found a mention of this townland in any of the other resources. Before that, I'll also have taken a look at my listing of Catholic parishes in every diocese in 1836 and then the ones for 1846 that I have - all I will be looking for is some clue that can point me to records for parishes that existedin the time frame that I am interested in - when I haven't found the townland name in any official index - then it'll just be parishes and closest post towns I'll want. I'll also check the listing of names in the 1885/89 Townlands in Poor Law Unions - 'cos soemtimes names in there are different to those in the Sean Ruad Irl-Atlas - 'cept, I don't use the on-line atlas, I use the book, because there are errors in the online atlas. Now - if push really comes to shove, and I can't find a parish to go with my townland at all..............and I'm told it was located in a particular county - then, I'll check or have checked the Tithe index and/or the Griffiths Valuation index (Tithes give you approx 10% of the population) to see if the surname is found anywhere in that county. I'll look at the parish names..........then I'll go back to my Lewis and I'll see what he has to say about those parishes, civil and religious........ and then maybe I'll be back to the Catholic directories to see what they have to say about parishes and closest post towns..........and then I'll head off to the National Library of Ireland and I'll check to see what parish records exist for eitehr parish names as I have them written down, or parishes as they are listed, but really towns........... and then, I'll begin to check out those films one by one to see if the surname I am interested in is found in them - and fingers crossed the records I find it in will have townlands listed as well - and one of those townlands will be the same as or phonetically similar to the one I am looking for. If the townland is found, listed in a civil parish and the civil parish name was the same as the Catholic parish - well, then, it's easy peasy..............if the townland belongs to a Catholic parish with a different name - well, then, it's not so easy - and if you can't find the townland name tying in to anything, then it's just a whole load of work. And in the end - no matter how many avenues you go down - you may just find nothing. Usually though, so long as one can be *very* open minded about how something is spelled...........well, you can come up with the right answer and find an 'almost' spelling to yours. With the difficult ones, it's literally a case of not giving up...............making sure you've gone through everything. Find yourself a middle and work your way out. Jane :-) Dublin, Ireland - http://www.from-ireland.net ----- Original Message ----- From: "fastmail Kate Dempsey" <katedempsey@fastmail.fm> To: <Y-IRL@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 9:13 AM Subject: Re: [Y-IRL] Civil Parishes > > > Thank you Jane for your discussion of Civil parishes. I wonder what is the > best way for finding which RC parish a particular townland is in. Is there > an equivalent of the townatlas for that? > > Thanks