Beverly A. Hannon <bahannon@netins.net> wrote; > WHS sent baptismal information on the parents and > their children, one of whom is my gr-grandmother, all baptized at > Portlaw & Ballyduff parish. however, the man I'm meeting, a more > immediate Houlahan descendant, says he's been to Ireland 3 times, > had his dad's birth certificate(?) so knew which parish to go > to. He talked to the priest at his father's parish, and looked > at the records. he says the Houlahans I mentioned were all > baptized in Rathgormick parish. ___________________________________________________ Hi Bev, Very few lists of RC Parishes in any given Irish diocese will exactly list another list of RC Parishes. The difference is usually attributable to which time period or year is refernced. As you know, the parishes of Rathcormuch and Portlaw & Ballyduff share a long common border. For a period of time they were the same parish. Indeed, Waterford Heritage does not even list Rathcormach ( or as you spell it, Rathgormick) - even the spelling is not fixed in stone - as one of the parishes for which they have records. See the Waterford Heritage Service Web Page; http://www.iol.ie/~mnoc/ I think you could e-mail Waterford Heritage for their take on this situation. Here is my theory; tell me if I'm wrong after you check with Waterford Heritage: Their list reflects the time when the parish had different boundaries, and probably included both churches in the same parish, called Portlaw & Ballyduff. Remember, most R.C. "Parishes" in Ireland are larger than C. of I. parishes, and have more than one church. In the US we tend to assume that a Parish has only one church and when the church is gone, so is the parish. Not so in Ireland; parish boundaries are dynamic, and may include or exclude different churches as they may come and go through history. Your Waterford Heritage records will not show the church at Rathgormuch, since the list with which Waterford Heritage identifies parishes does not have such a parish. It does not have such a parish because their frame of reference is for a period of time when there was no such separate parish of that name. Your Houlihan relative is probably ALSO right. He indeed saw the records at the "church" at Rathgormuch, but at some time in it's history it was not the synonimous with the "Parish" of Rathgormuch. They likely are the same Houlihans, and indeed they probably are the same records; only called by Waterford Heritage the Parish of Portlaw & Ballyduff. Best wishes, Tony Riordan triordan@msn.com _________________________________________________________ http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~irishchurchrecords/index.html Search Irish Church Records; Tipperary, Limerick, Waterford, Clare.