BEGINNING IRISH RESEARCH You have an ancestor or ancestors from Ireland and you don't know which part, or you are lucky enough to have the name of a county. Where do you begin, what do you search through for information, what are the resources available to you. You've heard that all or most Irish records were destroyed in a fire in 1922 in Dublin, during the civil war. Is there any hope of ever tracking down where these people came from - of finding that elusive piece of paper which proves they came from this or that place? All records were not destroyed. Yes, a large number were, but not all. You just might be lucky. There are two main avenues/databases open to you to begin with. The Tithes and Griffiths Primary Valuation of Ireland and the records in the Civil Registration Office. (The General Registrar's Office). Forget about the fact that the Griffiths may have been carried out at a time after your particular ancestors left this country and if that is so then the records in the General Registrar's Office will have nothing on those particular ancestors either. The fact is that whenever your ancestors left - the whole family may not have gone. There may be siblings - brothers and sisters who stayed in Ireland, their parents may still have been alive. Think positively! The Griffiths Valuation of Ireland can give you an indication of the spread of a surname throughout the whole of Ireland during that period. Once you have that you can then move on to checking Parish Records for those areas. Begin with those places which have the surname as a common one and work your way through records to those places where it is a rare name. In the intervening search you may find other clues in parish records which will lead you to believe or know for certain that that parish is the place your ancestors came from. The least you will be able to do is pinpoint a county or counties which are a possibility, and even that in itself is better than knowing your ancestors came from Ireland but you don't know where. In the years before the Griffiths Valuation was carried out taxes were paid and these were known as 'Tithes'. The responsibility for the assessment and collection of tithes rested with the local Church of Ireland Minister. Lists were made of people (Tithe Applotment Books) who should pay these taxes and the value of the land which they held. However, these lists are not as useful as the Griffiths Valuation in determining who lived where at that time. Tithe Applotment Books Tithes were an income tax on farming, usually about one tenth of the annual income. These were used for the upkeep of the Church of Ireland and were paid from the time of the Reformation. Before the Composition Act of 1823 it was possible to pay them in kind instead of money. From the time of the Composition Act they were supposed to be paid in cash and Tithe surveys were carried out in each Parish to assess what the income for that parish would be. Two people were appointed by each parish to carry out this assessment. Both Catholics and Protestants resented this tax - Tax was not payable on all land, and there was even variation on the types of land from place to place. From 1736 grazing land had an exemption - this was usually land held by landlords. Certain crops were taxable, others weren't. Potatoes could be taxable in one parish and not in the one next door. Tithe books are not comprehensive, people who did not hold land are not listed and some types of land were passed over absolutely. Towns and cities were usually not assessed. They are arranged by townland and usually give the acreage held by each farmer. However, note here that the measurement used was the plantation or Irish acre which differs in size from the imperial or English acre used in the Griffiths Valuation. The information you get from the Tithe Books is simple, : townland name; landholders name; area of land and tithes paid. Some will list the landlords name as well. The original tithe books for the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland are held in the National Archives in Dublin. Those for the 6 counties of Northern Ireland were transferred to the PRONI in Belfast. Copies remain in Dublin in the National Archives and National Library. Tithe Defaulters: Both Catholics and Protestants objected to paying of Tithes. 1830 Catholic Parishoners in Graiguenamanagh in Co. Kilkenny withheld their tithes. During 1832 they were followed by those in most parts of south Leinster and Munster and violence erupted - The 'Tithe War'. Church of Ireland Ministers therefore ended up without this money during 1831. It was necessary for them in order to claim from the Clergy Relief Fund to draw up a list of Parishoners who had 'defaulted' on the Tithes. 499 Lists/Schedules of Defaulters were submitted in order to avail of the relief fund. 127 of these still survive. - Lists of Tithe Defaulters, not written up alphabetically, and it is necessary to go through each book for each county and for some there are a number of books. 53 of these books relate to Co. Kilkenny, 30 to Co. Tipperary; and there is some cvoerage of Laois; Carlow; Offaly (King's county); Meath; Cork; Kerry; Limerick; Louth; Waterford; and Wexford. Quaker records show lists of those who defaulted on Tithes also. Griffiths Primary Valuation This valuation records every landowner and householder in Ireland in a period shortly after the famine. An Act was passed in 1826 which allowed for a uniform valuation of property in all Ireland for levying of county cess charges and grand Jury Rates. Thus began an assessment f the whole country, county by county by Sir Richard Griffith.. Amendments were passed to the 1826 Act, the first in 1831 excluded those houses under the annual valuation of £3, another in 1836 excluded house under £5 The information given in the Griffiths gives: the townland address and householders name; the name of the person from whom the property is leased; a description of the property; the acreage and the valuation. If a surname was common in an area then the surveyors adopted the practise of indicating the fathers name to show the difference between two people of the same Christian name and surname..(usually) So Tadgh O'Brien (Michael) is the son of Michael O'Brien and Tadgh O'Brien (James) is the son of James O'Brien. However, here in Ireland people of the same name could/can be distinguished simply by indicating the colour of their hair (as gaeilge - thru Irish ) so it would have been sufficient then to indicate that one Tadgh had red hair and one Tadgh black - calling them respectively Tadgh (Red) O'Brien and Tadgh (Black) O'Brien The main difference between the Tithe Applotment Books and the Griffiths Valuation is that all householders were listed in Griffiths. Remember the different types of acres used in each, the Irish and English acre, this will account for difference in size of land held by a family from one valuation to the other if they appear in both. Remember also the fact that the house of less than £3 annual value were included up to the year 1831 in the Griffiths Valuation and excluded from that point forward, and those with an annual value of £5 were included up to 1836 and excluded from then on. There is a computer CD produced by the Family History ?????, which many refer to in order to find those areas of Ireland where a surname appeared, or those parts (parishes) in a county where the surname was found. However, this is a list of names for the area, there is no way of knowing if the six John O'Leary's listed for one county are one and the same or if all the land is held by John O'Leary and rented out to others when using the CD to identify those people. One problem I personally have noted with the Griffiths CD is that while it is suppposed to have been transcribed from the originals - the place names are not as they should be in many instances. There are placenames in there which while I know them from the originals Griffiths - are not the same as actually written in the Griffiths Valuation books. This I assume is because these were written up by people with little or no knowledge of Irish geography or Irish phonetics. So that while they transcribed what they thought they saw, because of faded ink or poor script - the actual name might be quite different. If it was someone with a knowledge of either Irish phonetics or the geography of the area they would have written a different word as the place name. This is not a huge error to anyone who does know the geography of the area they are enquiring about, but for anyone who hasn't got a clue it's a different story. There is an index to the surnames occurring in the Griffiths Valuation (The Householders Index). The indices are made up by county, divided into baronies, parishes, townlands. There are two sections to an index and some counties have a number of volumes covering the whole county.e.g. Co. Cork has three. The first section of an index being an alphabetical list of surnames occurring in the area the index covers and the names that occur in each Barony. The second section is an alphabetical list of surnames occurring in each parish within that barony. It doesn't matter if you don't know which Barony the parish you are looking for is in - you just check through the second section. It doesn't matter even if you don't know the parish you can just check the first section to see where the name occurred in a county. The index to the surnames tells you how many times a surname occurred in a particular parish and whether or not that surname also occurred in the Tithe books. It does not give you any more information than that. Should you find that the surnae you are looking for occurred in the area you are interested in for the Griffiths Valuation, then you read the original microfilms for that record. Should that surname have been recorded in the Tithe Applotment Books, you refer to the information on that parish. It may have been the same person or it may have been a relation. The Householders Index (Griffiths Index) with their LDS-FHC Numbers Laois (Queen's/Leix) Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath: LDS Film No. 0919005 Tithes: Laois (Queens) 1823-38 Griffiths : Laois 1858-60