Hi Ron, Northern Ireland has only existed since 1922. It's like asking "what census exists for the USA in 1641??" Haha!! None, of course! We Americans don't care, but our British and Irish cousins go to better schools and have higher standards. It's kinda insulting to them to not know a wee bit of their history. As you would feel insulted if they said "Whose this George guy everyone talks about? King George??" Hahaha,...no, not quite.... All the censuses for the kingdom of Ireland (Ulster being one of its provinces since primeval times), before 1901 have been totally or partially lost. You can find yourself a good book on Irish genealogy to learn about the fate of every single one if you like. Falley "IRish and Scotch- Irish Ancestral Research" will give you the blow by blow. What happens then in Falley and other books like the very affordable and readible "Discovering your Irish Ancestors" by Dwight A. Radford and Kyle J. Betit is they launch into a county by county description of what survives for that county. In most all cases of census fragments, the WHOLE one does not survive for the whole county, just certain parishes or townlands. I recall a partial for 1851 that's on the Internet somewheres....part of Antrim. In order to make use of these you must know at least the county you are interested in. If you had hoped to learn the county that your ancestor lived in by viewing a census, you must use a different strategy for Ireland. To learn how to do that, you consult one of the books or take a course, etc. You were not born knowing how to do this. None of us were. You also cannot learn how to do a good job of it on an Internet list. It's too complicated and too hard. Betit does summarize for us that the most important fragments to survive are the transcripts of the 1831 census of L'Derry and much of the 1821 census of Cavan. Both are filmed and in LDS. Even better, both are on a CD. However as tehre is always at least at 10% error rate in transcriptions, ALWAYS consult the original, which you can do for $5 by ordering the film. Betit dedicates in his chapter on Censuses and Name Lists exactly ONE paragraph to pre 1901 censuses and one para for the 1901 and 1911. The latter two are largely unusuable because of sparce indexing. You have to know the address of the person you are looking for and then wade through hundreds of film to find the film that might have the dude's address on it. I have successfully used the 1901 from the USA but since usually you want to find the address, forget it. Use Civil Registration to find the address. (A strategy for Irish genealogy--we all need about 20,000 more!) Then hire someone on location in Ireland (not Dublin for Ulster: the dude needs to know the local area). So what's in teh rest of Betit's chapter? Census substitutes. If you have not heard this term yet, you are need a headstart program for Irish genealogy. You would be expected to have heard this term in Irish genealogy first grade <grin>. That's beause it is used Ennndddlllesssllly. Unlike the word 'census'. Thank the good lord, we got a lot of these census substitutes. He deals with a handful of the obvious like religous censuses, spinning wheel surveys, old age pension applications, etc. He refers us to Ryan "IRish Records" and the FHL's 'Register of Irish Census and Census Substitutes". You can also use Grenham "IRish Ancestors". These all are by cou nty. For a list of census substitutes, etc, by county, slanted towards Protestants, see William Roulston's "Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors". ALL the census substitutes, however, are slanted towards Protestants including the Catholic qualification lists (of Catholics converting to Protestantism). Catholics get short shrift except for the one religious census. There's another one with just Protestants. So hopefully you know the county. If not, fire us the surname and maybe we can help narrow down the search with a lookup in Bell "Book of Ulster Surnames". However first check the archives at www.rootsweb.com (scroll to Mailing Lists, click on "Interactive Search", type in Scotch-Irish and search away....). That's because we've done a lot of this and burnt out every volunteer but me. I refuse to type in info a second time. I say this because 200 people will want me to look up "Wilson". Ain't doing it, folks! Have mercy. Buy this book and volunteer here to do lookups. Then you can get carpal tunnel typing in where WILSON is in Ulster. My spirit is willing but my flesh is weak. Actually my spirit is off doing more fun things as well <grin>. We need another martyr, eh, volunteer. We cannot even promise sainthood to the poor wrists that volunteer selflessly to destroy themselves on this important task but maybe a nice plug on a webpage we can do! Also google for FIANNA, our cousins at rootsweb. They have great help pages, as good as the books almost. Check www.genuki.org for links to free surviving census fragments and census substitutes on the 'net. LOTS are there. The 1651 or 3 (forget) census, called "Pendar's" really sucks big time as a census. Pendar was an Englishman. He knew little about Ireland. He did get the surnames right but he was not good at detecting ethnicity. He confused Scots with Irish (ie they speak funny language. In the mid 1600s many Scots spoke Gaelic). He found ONE Scotsman outside of Ulster. He identified a colony of Flemish as Irish (speak funny, must be Irish, right?). It has to be used cum grano salus (with a grain of salt) and only if you read up on it so you can correctly interpret what you find. If the name is not too common (first and last only) I can check the CD for you if your ancestors were in L'Derry or Cavan. Mine were! I found some. Amazing.... It was NORRIS from Swatragh in L'Derry, moved to Western PA in a steady stream in the early 1800s.... To share a story....a distant cousin descended contacted me and shared the story of her immigrant ancestor who arrived via Canada. While stopping over he fell in love with the waitress at his hotel and married her and brought her along. No doubt the rellies in Western PA were QUITE surprised. From him she inherited a Orange sash, I believe the oldest found. A newspaper article on him in his old age tells how he was an Orangeman in Ulster in the early 1800s. The cousin is almost as Catholic as the Pope. She married a first generation Irish immigrant who is now a banker and a very nice man. Their children attend Catholic colleges and visit the relatives in Ireland in the summer. To descend from this man is for her an extremely uncomfortable thing, I am sure, but she and her husband were very warm and nice to me when we met. We found we had a lot in common besides NORRIS from Swatragh (navel of the universe that it is). There's more on the NORRISes in the archives too...it's my memory, which is fading. Hope Rootsweb does good backups! Linda Merle ---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: VistaRon96@aol.com Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:49:53 EST >Speaking of census, what is available for Northern Ireland around 1831? > >Ron >Vista, CA, USA > >Searching for John (William) HAMILTON > > ________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at mail.fea.net