This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/0AC.2ACI/2617.1 Message Board Post: Patty, Thanks for the post and information on Marjorie Kohli's website as well as the books. The surnames you listed are found in many counties. Hester, Mann, Usher, Lucas and Pickett aren't as numerous as O'Brien, Kennedy, Murphy, Sullivan, Donnelly, Cunningham, Duggan and Flynn which are extremely common surnames. I'll post some information on locations of those surnames on the respective surname message boards later in the week and will let you know when the postings are available. You'd need to know not only which county the emigrant originated in but also the townland or civil parish within that county in order to research in Ireland. There's an explanation of these civil divisions at http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/2435.asp You'll also find in US civil and church records many phonetic spellings of the Irish placenames which can be difficult to interpret since the placenames as spelled in Ireland aren't generally pronounced the way they're spelled. Castle Coole may actually be Castlecoote which is a townland in Co. Roscommon. For names of the civil divisions in Roscommon as well as in all other Irish counties, see http://www.seanruad.com and just select whatever county you're interested in. There are generally no surviving census records for the 1800s for Ireland so the main research resource would be church registers in the specific location where the emigrant originated. You'd also need to know the emigrant's parents names in order to trace them thru the church registers. Many families had the same given names which can be extremely confusing. Civil records didn't start until 1864 but wasn't mandatory until 1880. I don't subscribe to lists at all. They generate too much e-mail on too large a variety of topics, there's no consistent thread in the postings and no search feature. If you click on the post header from the message board post in the list you can respond directly to the message board and the consistent topic thread for the particular message. Eilis O'Hara