Jane, Thanks for the "visual" with the different colored papers; it makes it clear because it's so simple. Too bad there aren't some maps (on-line) for County Galway similar to the wonderful ones for Leitrim-Roscommon that show locations of civil /Catholic parishes, baronies, poor law unions, AND townlands. WOW!! They are really awesome, and a big help to us visual learners, and those of us who are attempting to come to grips with the various division categories in Ireland. While I'm busy dreaming, wouldn't a map with (acetate-type) overlays of the various locations on them be great? And , of course, the appropriate indexes to go with them. Aw, well..... Regards, Sheila REYNOLDS/ANDERSON REYNOLDS/MOONEY REYNOLDS/ CONNOLLY REYNOLDS/WALSH KENNEDY

Sheila, I've often thought of one main map with acetates to go over it - *but* - it's not as simple as I made it out to be in the long run. Maps are great for the visual effect - and to show where is in relation to everywhere else - but the thing is, that the boundaries of different divisions, plus placenames changed. So, any map you see, is exactly as things stood at a particular point in time. The maps of todays R.C. parishes with townlands named are of the RC parishes as they are today. The townlands didn't move, but at different times, townlands were re-assigned to other parishes - civil and religious - depending on population, presence/absence of a religious person to administer to the people. Lots of things like that. BUT - something like I've mentioned above, should only ever be taken into consideration by people who can find no record of their ancestors in a place that they should be for which records exist - and then, they begin to work their way through outlying parishes from the one they thought that they would find records in. I've spent a lot of time putting the various descriptions of civil parishes as they were in 1837 (Lewis Topographical Dictionary of Ireland) on my web site - and the reason for that is because he names parishes that no longer existed by 1851, plus, a lot of the names that he gives parishes are spelled differently or there is an alternative name for the civil parish. Also, he names the Catholic unions for any civil parish - and all these things, can be very helpful to any person looking for the 'elusive' parish. The one that all their ancestors said they came from but everybody in the present Irish Genealogical WOrld will tell them does not exist. The thing is - many of these parishes don't exist today - and maybe had been dissolved by 1851, but that's not to say they never existed. Sorry - rambled a bit there. Thanks for your comments. JAne ----- Original Message ----- From: <Sheilaploof1@aol.com> To: <IRL-GALWAY-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 4:05 AM Subject: [GALWAY] Civil/Religious Parish > Jane, > > Thanks for the "visual" with the different colored papers; it makes it > clear > because it's so simple. Too bad there aren't some maps (on-line) for > County >