Always and ever on every list I see people looking for a family - giving all the names and ages where they can - looking for connections - the descendants of these people. How many of you ever realise that at many of those you seek will have left no record of themselves - there may be a birth record in the General Registrars Office and then you may see that marriage or death record and will never find one - perhaps for the men, maybe - but for the women - no............. Or, at least I don't think so.............they had taken new names, their surname will have stayed the same but they became someone else. My Auntie Nun went from being Mary Jane to Mother Columcille............she was still Gallivan but she was not buried as Mary Jane - and I imagine her death record will show her religious name as when she died. Mother Columcille Gallivan. I imagine Mother Malachy, Sister Patricia and all those other nuns will have gone also unrecognised to their graves. Sounds hard to say unrecognised - they were recognised by their living families - those who knew them - but back then, there were very few ancestor seekers.........and so, it comes to be that I never see or rarely see anyone looking for the nuns or priests of their families........particularly the nuns. It's not anyones fault - it just happens that most don't realise how it truly was. No family had enough for dowries and so daughters went into the convent - no family had enough land to go round and so sons joined the priesthood.......... Then again - maybe these days no-one wants to admit that they had a priest or nun in the family............... I think of the little nuns graveyard in the Loreto in Kilkenny - small simple little plaques. The convent is no longer and I wonder what happened that graveyard......... and also so many other graveyards by so many convents that I know are gone. Today, what was the Loreto Mother House in Rathfarnham in Dublin is no longer - it was sold a few years ago. I remember it as one fine building with huge grounds and it must have had a big graveyard. I remember the other small grraveyard down in Gorey too - that convent is no more also. I was home recently and was looking at an annual publication for my home town. Every year they do a few write ups on families in the area - those that have disappeared - those for whom the descendants of those who left have come looking - and every year they have photos - old photos, some that you can barely see - and ok, so photos weren't taken pre 1900 in Ireland or very rarely - but in these photos every family group has at least one nun and/or priest.......... to tell the truth, the photos really struck home this year because of all the nuns - two - four per family I'm being very conservative with my 'at least one' here. I'm going to jump now from the lost nuns and priests to the lost records - regularly I see queries on the lists as to where this or that priest was back in the 1840's or 50's because he married this or that couple........... and then to the lost parishes - my ancestors came from this or that parish - and who ever is loking will never, ever find that parish - one reason may be that they are looking for a Catholic parish and not a civil parish - different names and then the other reason may be that the Catholic parish they are looking for 'disappeared' or was united with another. Lost records - maybe the parish your ancestors were married or baptised in was split up into two - so you find one set of records in one parish and spend the rest of your life wishing there were earlier records for that parish - but there may be - all listed in an ealier parish that got too big to be handled and so townlands were handed over to another close by one. This applies not just to R.C. records but to those of other religions. For some religions there were so few people that the local meeting house was in the county next door. So, you come along looking for John from Co. Cork but his parish records are actually in Co. Waterford. Ah you can say - but sure all we have to do is check the web sites of the vatious Dioceses (religious) and then we'll see the names of the parishes in that diocese and we'll be able to know whether or not our parish is there - Not so.................the parishes as listed on any Dioscescan web page today are the parishes as they stand today - not as they stoot in 1900 and not as they stood ten years before that or forty years before that............. When I first created my web site I had this idea to list parishes and priests and vicars and all of those from 1836 or thereabouts - comparing the parish listings every ten years - only then, it was too much work and I couldn't type as fast as I do now and people didn't seem particularly intersted in those pages anyhow so I gave up............... To my mind it was very important - but back then almost two years ago now, other things took over. This last week - I've been thinking again about all those parishes - about all the religions in the world today and how more than likely few understand the structure of their own religion let alone that of ancestors who came from Ireland 150 years ago - civil and religions parishes are confusing - townlands are confusing - and by golly parishes that were like the water in a stream with townlands changing regularly enough are probably more confusing.......... One of the things that I have read is that priests were ofetn sent back close to home once they finished their trraining. I know that the names I see in the Dioscescan listings are usually those are are found in that county or the counties that these Dioceses cover. Each Dioscescan listing has the closest post town for the parish listed also............I think that's probably a great help 'cos it gives you an area - if you find your parish listed in 1836 for example and it's not there nowadays - then at least you have a closest post town to work from and if you home in on that and check all the records for the area around there then you've probably done as much as you can. So, back to business..............first of all, I'm going to post some pieces I have from where-ever I got it in the first place on the structure of the various religions - and then I am going to begin posting lists of Parish priests and curates and something on the state of religion (convents, friaries - ) in each diocese..........and then those of you interested in some parish records that you can't find might get a hint from these lists.......... and for all of that - I've still got no answer to the poor lost nuns - some orders are trying to get their records in order I do know that - some may even have finished...........but how much they would ever disclose to anyone and how close you'd have to be related to that anyone is another thing....... and what happened all those nuns graveyards and how they are named in their death certificates is something I'd like to know - maybe I should head off and try to find my Mother Columcille. Jane