On Feb 9, 2012, at 9:47 PM, lmerle@comcast.net wrote: > > The way one figures out who the immediate lessee was is to check Griffiths and then trace that man (and his landlord) back in time. Griffiths is NOT too late. Griffiths is important to us all. If you can't learn to use records in Ireland created after your ancestor left, you can't do very much Irish genealogy. Learning to use 19th century records to find 18th century Irishmen is a key skill. For example: Mullin's Families of Ballyrashane (North Antrim) references an 1859 transfer of land rights which were first of family record (discounting their initial transfer from the Earl of Antrim in 1735) with indentures involving my Nevin ancestor in 1763. He crossed to America in 1786, at which time another set of Memorials in the Registry of Deeds shows the leases being passed to the grandfather of the local family member receiving them in 1859. Strong presumption: since the 1763 indentures only became a matter of record in 1786, this was likely done to insure the rights of the receiver at that time. Enter Griffiths: in 1860 there is a record of a subleasing of the lands by the 1859 recipient, complete with a map of the townland showing their location therein, something otherwise unavailable as the original maps of 1763 were with the indentures; the Memorials in the Registry of Deeds only indicate that they existed. Today, using Google Maps, I can look at the photo of that townland and see the same outline of fields that existed in 1763. Big disclaimer: all of this evidence is only circumstantial; still, it leaves me feeling reasonably close to what appears likely to have happened. Hugh Nevin