What sort of information can one expect to find in the House and Field books that some list members are mentioning? Is the information historical, geographical, or biographical? Does anyone know if they are kept at any Dublin repository? Deb **************** DEBORAH LARGE FOX www.deborahlarge.com member, Genealogical Speakers Guild http://www.genealogicalspeakersguild.org/member_details.php?member=FoxD

Deb, the house and field books are part of the manuscript Valuation records connected with the more well-known printed "Griffith's Valuation". They are the notes made by people in the field concerning the valuation of land and buildings. Like anyone's field notes, some are better than others! A lot of preparatory work went into the printing of Griffith's. In some cases, the notes cover a period of a few years before Griffith's was printed, so you can see the change in land tenure over that period in the late 1840s, during the Famine. For more on this topic, see my post to the Tipperary list of 8/9/2008, subject: using the Field and House Books: the England family in Bourney & Corbally parish. It is in the Tipperary list archives at http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/IRL-TIPPERARY/2008-08/1218332987. Here is part of what I wrote there: ----- Many people are familiar with the printed version of "Griffith's Valuation" (online at the subscription site Origins or the new free version at "Ask About Ireland" http://griffiths.askaboutireland.ie/gv4/gv_start.php ). The Field Books and House Books also contain valuation records, but they pre-date Griffith's by 3 years or so in some areas (as in this case). During that time, the books were updated in much the same way as the Valuation Revision lists, which carry the Valuation forward into modern times: names were struck out and replaced with other names (or not, especially during era of the Famine and evictions). Field books are concerned with the land, and house books with the buildings. This pre-Griffith's material has not been indexed. Much of it is very hard to read. You just have to get the films for the area of interest to you and look through them. They are available through the Family History Library (FHL). Sometimes (as below) there are gems; sometimes not. The better you understand Irish valuation records (not just the printed version), the more you can get out of them. There was an excellent article by David Ouimette about this set of records (House Books, Field Books, etc.) in Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan 2006) of The Septs, a publication of the Irish Genealogical Society International, based in Minnesota, USA. If you are doing Irish research and aren't a member, you should be, just to get their fine publication, which recently received an award. I also recommend the book "Richard Griffith and His Valuation of Ireland" by James R. Reilly, a preview of which (not the complete book) is online at Google Books: http://tinyurl.com/5v8ku8. ... There is additional information in the house books, such as the dimensions of each building. This particular house book [FHL Film 2355162, it. 1 County Tipperary, Barony of Ikerrin, Bourney parish, Bonagortbaun p. 31-35] is dated 26 July 1847 and therefore pre-dates the published version of Griffith's for this area by about 3 or 4 years. The information in this book was updated by striking out names, rewriting lot numbers, etc., and the final version used to compile the printed version of Griffith's. It is a valuable but little-used resource for tracking people in this area of Ireland during the crucial Famine Years, when many died or emigrated. In this case, just the addition of the word "Widow" for Ellen England can suggest that one look for a marriage record. ----- I then went on to describe in detail what I found for the England family of northeast County Tipperary, near the Laois border. Someone on the list had asked about them, and I happened to have copied the house and field books for the area in which they lived in Tipperary, so I checked and reported what I had found. You can see there the type of material they contain. I might add that in my own family, the name of my ggg-gfather Daniel Kavanagh appears in Griffith's with just a house (in Clonbough, civil parish of Killavinoge, Co. Tipperary). But the manuscript material shows that in the few years prior to that, he held several larger parcels of land in nearby townlands, probably running cattle on them. When he came to the US, Daniel was a tailor, but I had wondered if that was what he did in Ireland, or whether he also farmed. So this information gives me a very different picture of my family than I had from just looking at Griffith's. It leads me to believe the family was preparing for emigration by disposing of their leases, and lets me know that Daniel probably did both farming and tailoring in Ireland, since I had wondered about that when I saw him with only a house (no land) in Griffith's Valuation... His eldest daughter Julia and her husband John Murphy emigrated during this very period, so it is interesting to have this confirmati on of preparations for emigration in Irish records also. I also wrote this to someone else privately in March 2006: ====== An article by David Ouimette in the January 2006 issue of The Septs (a publication of the Irish Genealogical Society International in Minnesota) mentioned that the manuscript Valuation books, including Quarto, Perambulation (aka Tenure), House, Rent and Field Books, are now available at the FHL. The books were filmed 2001 - 2004 and just released. Many of them appear to be still in the vault. The film series (365 films) starts with FHL #2262960. They are arranged by County, then alphabetically by Barony and then Parish or Townland (some are out of order). It is not always clear what is on each film. I ordered two of the house books from Laois in at my local Family History Center last month because they mentioned parishes of interest to me and found that they included only the larger towns in the parishes mentioned in the catalog, not all townlands. ===== Veronica, note what I wrote 3 years ago, after I had just looked at the filmed Laois house books. So perhaps you will not find Garranbaun after all! Or perhaps I just missed the part with the rural areas... or perhaps the descriptions in the FHL catalog are lacking. So you should certainly check the films thoroughly yourself, since I was not looking for Garranbaun in particular, or for anything in the barony of Tinnahinch. I will see if I can find my old notes from when I looked at those particular films... Also, keep in mind that the actual content of the manuscript Valuation books varies quite a bit from location to location. Sometimes the records do not even list names of people, but rather just the land parcels. The only way to know what is true for the area of interest to you is to check the records thoroughly yourself. (Ouimette's article in The Septs does mention certain areas where the records do contain names of people, but I do not think his list complete.) I have to make another plug for the IGSI (Irish Genealogical Society International, website at http://www.irishgenealogical.org/): If you are a member, you can now view and download any of the issues of IGSI’s quarterly journal The Septs since the beginning of its publication in 1980! It is a great publication, with many articles written by well-known Irish researchers. So you can read David Ouimette's excellent article yourself online if you join. They are also running a special on membership just now - get 2 others to join with you and you get your membership free! See their website for details and how to go about it. There are many other reasons to join beyond receiving The Septs. They have a wonderful library in Minnesota, and the staff will do lookups for members at a nominal charge. Perhaps several people on the list will want to get together and join... Deb, the original manuscript books are certainly in Dublin at the National Archives, but I don't know where the films might be in Dublin. If you check the FHL catalog for the film numbers above, you can see the following note: "Microreproduction of original manuscript records at the National Archives of Ireland, Dublin. These are the original notebooks used when making valuations of property. They are basically arranged by county, then alphabetically by barony and then parish or townland. Some are out of order. The surveys include maps of the areas surveyed. A printed and indexed compilation of these valuations, known as "General Valuation of Rateable Property in Ireland, 1847-1864" or "Griffith's Valuation" is also available." Geralyn Wood Barry in Oregon, USA Deborah Fox wrote: > What sort of information can one expect to find in the House and Field books > that some list members are mentioning? Is the information historical, > geographical, or biographical? Does anyone know if they are kept at any > Dublin repository? Deb