The various Civil Registration Districts of the General Registrar's Office (GRO) are what used to be called the Poor Law Unions (PLU's). So - if you came from this PLU then any descendants will be found (maybe ) in the Civil Registration District of the same name I've being asked this again and again in all those mails I've received over the last few days - have you any pointers or clues as to where I should look next - how do I find this family or that, where they came from - be it a county or just somewhere in Ireland. In a way - this is a repeat of what I've said so many times over the last few years - but with bits added from what I've learned since I first began with my 'geography' and homing in on 'bulls eyes' on a dart board bits and pieces. We learn from experience, and when I made my first post back early in 1998 I think it was re the usefulness of the Irish Birth Marriage and Death indices in finding ancestors - I was only brushing the top of the pile. So many of you search for 20 years or more - and from what I read you're just going around picking up evreyone of that surname from the whole country. Anything I say here is really not going to apply to those common names for the whole country, it won't really apply either to those common names for a county - it's if you have an uncommon name or a reasonably uncommon one from the same place - then you can home in on somewhere at least. and remember these are only ideas and pointers - no matter what I say you will fnd most names somewhere in Ireland even if it's only one or two people in a whole county - that might be where your family came from and not anywhere you'll end up because of listening to me or any others. They came from Ireland and you haven't got a clue where from, and/or everyone tells you the surname is not Irish......and on top of that they left this country way back then - when there were no Civil Records - pre 1845 or 1864..... and you spend your timne reading through Parish records for everywhere and anywhere looking for some reference to that name. Or, they came from a county and you haven't got aclue what part....... There are a few things you can do. 1. You can go to one of the free look up groups on the net and ask them if someone could check the surname on a Griffiths CD...or you can buy the CD. Yes, I'm critical of the CD - the places names can be wrong - usually the county is right, sometimes the parish is listed as being in another county - but if you check out that parish you find that it spreads across two county borders...*but* if they find the surname or a variation on it - then this gives you a pointer of a place or places to begin searching to see if there are any parish records available....or now i see that the Tithe records are on CD....someone will eventually begin to offer look ups on that - have a check done as well..... The best thing though - is once you have that placename for your surname - go check out the Tithes yourself on the films wherever you are in the world.....and find out what Civil parishes were around the one you are interested in - if they spread into another county or are even in the county next door - check those as well. These people moved about - they may have lived in one parish for the Griffiths but their family may have come from the parish next door.....Civil Parishes. They may have been of a religion other than catholic, their closest church may have been in the next county - a different county, different ecclesiastical parish, different ecclesiastical Diocese. and again - they may not have leased or owned land when the Griffiths and Tithes were carried out - the bit of land they did own may bot have fitted into the categories for either valuation - so they may have been missed out. Some of you just know htat your family owned land in this place or that and have and still do since time began - and say how the Griffiths is wrong - but this may be the reason - 'outside' the terms for Griffiths. and then what do you do if they are not in griffiths - whether they should or shouldn't be....they will only have been if they had land and do any of you realise how many other occupations there were in this country - how many other people lived and worked and died here? and for no. 2 'died' is the operative word....if it can be called that. Almost everyone who left - they had family still living here, regardless of whether or not in the same place as they came from nad regardless of the fact that they moved - someone willl have lived close by.... and maybe just maybe you will be one of the lucky ones whose families actually registered a death, marriage or birth in those early years. even if the person died n the workhouse - then you are so much luckier than so many others - because workhouses - they made sure to obey the law and register those deaths! I find the GRO registers - Births,Marriages and Deaths to be the handiest things on earth to home in on an area - doesn't matter when Tom or John left.......so long as the surname is not O'Brien/Ryan/Murphy/Sullivan or a few others from Ireland the register indices will point you to somewhere - even if it is a whole county - that's smaller than the whole country.... A bull's eye on a dart board - where to begin that search - the rest of the places you find the surname - they are the other rings on the dartboard. And even with a surname which you find in a few places in Ireland - take a look at how it is spelled in the early registers - for lots of them you find that in one registration district it's spelled one way and in the other another.....and those two districts, you'll find that they are counties apart..maybe even provinces - and why are the names spelled differently? Because of phonetics and how the name was pronounced. Me - I'd home in on the place that the name was spelled same was as my original ancestor wrote it down - or whoever else heard that first person say it.....that's where I'd go - or as close to that first spelling. because - as the years go by if you are looking through all those registers you eventually begin to notice that the surnames take on a common spelling through the whole country no matter what district they are found in. and whether or not the person handing in the information could spell and read or write is irrelevant - it's how the person who writes the official registration either spells the name or hears it that counted back then. Your family came from Ireland pre the dates for civil registration - 1845 for Protestant marriages and 1864 for birhts deaths and marriages of all others.....and so you never bother with those civil indices..they're of no use to you. *But* they are, I always go for the deaths index for 1864 and the few years afterwards when I'm looking for someone. The deaths index gives the age of the person who died - and if I find that more older people died in one registration district than young people for the same surname - then I go looking for parish registers for that area. If it's all children - then that area is not my bulls eye but one of those outer rings.....the families probably moved in there from somewhere else - somewhere around there...... ----------------- If you know they came from this or that county but don't know where in the county - then the GRO indices may tell you what part. There are usually pockets of names - districts where a suname turns up more than others - and each county has more than one district associated with it. Every county has it's main district - the one you immediately think of as you run through the registers......but what about those registration districts which border counties , spread from one over to the other....... Strabane in Donegal and Tyrone - most people immediately only think of Tyrone Limerick in Clare and Limerick Carlow in Laois and carlow Ballyshannon in Leitrim, Donegal and fermanagh Lismore in Cork and Waterford Youghal in Waterford and Cork Shillelagh in Wexford and Wicklow Naas in Wicklow and Kildare i could be going through the lot for the rest of the day picking out what is common to one or more counties and that we ignore those registrations becasue we don't think of that spread from county to county in general. Using the registration indices - we can home in on a registration district, we can find out what ecclesiastical parish recrods exist for that district, we can begin to check out those. Then, we can find pocket sof the surname in different registers.....and so it works its way from there. --------------------- now - if you have two surnames from Ireland and they went to whatever part of the world together and you either don't know what part of the country or what part of a county...and you're not sure of the spelling because it is different in different documents. then even if one of those surnames is a common one - O'Brien/Ryan/Murphy from Ireland - you forget that name for the moment and home in on the not so common surname - that's what will point you to somewhere and then you try to find all those other people of the common surname in that area. if you have that unusual name - USE it You don't go to these records that I'm talking about and just because you have Tobias Sullivan - take all the info only for someone of the name Tobias - you take all the references to anyone of that surname and you list them all down, whether you are interested in the whole country or just a county. You take all people of that surname from the Death indices, the Marriage indices and the Birth indices for the first few years after they began being written up. if you have two surnames - you do the same thing with the second. Then, you sit down and look at all these peoples names, and place names that you have - the registration districts. and you look at a map of Ireland and you work out counties if you can, and if you have a decent map - then you'll see the way the counties connect...... and with one surname you begin by looking for anything you can find on the place where you have most references for. if you have two surnames - people who are supposed to have met in Ireland - then you cross off all those people who come from districts that you have only found the one surname mentioned - but before you do, you take a look at whatever map you ahve and make a guess as to whether distric A might be beside District B and if so - then these districts become the ring ourside your bulls eye - which is the district that you've found both surnames in. Now - very many of you will never find that place of origin - when you are only beginning with a surname from Ireland or a county. You will find lots of people with the same names and surnames born about the same time as the person you are looking for - and it is up to yourselve to decide whether or not to believe or adopt that person as your ancestor.....there will never be any proof either way that they were or weren't..... That sounds awful to say but it is the truth - your best bet then is to find a county where the surname was common and from there find out as much about the lives of those people as you can...... Maybe some day you will come across a reference to a really unusual first name in your lineage and maybe some day that first name will turn up somwhere that you have begun to learn about - or someone will say something like if I had a Fintan in my family tree from the mid 1800's - then county Laois is where I would home in on - regardless of where else you think that common surname is from - 'Fintan's' - they're almost all from Laois.... All small things in the jig saw puzzle which is genealogy. Lots and lots of work, little return - ah, but when you find that something, that link no matter how long you have been looking - that makes it worthwhile. Some day - someone will work their way through all the penders' 1659 survey , and the COI 1766 'census' and that shows surname distribution as well, someone else they will combine that and Griffiths and the Tithes and all the graveyard transcriptions for the whole of Ireland and all else that there is - and then we'll know more about surnames and where they were during different periods..... But until someone sits down and does all that - the rest of the someones are left wandering hither and thither around Ireland looking for those elsusive ancestors......and we'll all be someones ancestor by the time the other someone sits down Jane