Catholic marriages
English Catholic baptisms seldom list addresses, or fathers’ occupations, but during the 19th century many marriage registers from areas influenced by Continental priests, especially in London, started listing parents’ residences, many of which were back in Ireland. Numerous Catholic marriages in Liverpool are indexed at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/˜hibernia/mar/mar.htm. The late Fr. Godfrey Anstruther’s Catholic Marriage Index at the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, Canterbury, has been fully transcribed by Peter Steward of the Parish Register Transcription Society. It covers mainly London and Essex, from the earliest date of the registers (c. 1700) to about 1880, with some entries up to 1942. It is full of Irish families, for example:
12 June 1859 at Commercial Road, London, by W. Kelly Phillip Noble of 42 Berner Street, son of Henry and Mary Noble of Scherwin, Germany, married Joanna McGonigle of 161 Georges Street, daughter of James and Mary McGonigle of Kilrush, Clare, Ireland, witnesses Joseph Noble and Margaret Hughes.
Registers are usually with the relevant church. All are catalogued by M. Gandy, Catholic Missions and Registers 1700–1880 (M. Gandy, 1993) in six volumes covering England, Wales and Scotland, and his Catholic Parishes in England, Wales & Scotland; an Atlas (M. Gandy, 1993). The major 19th century ones, such as those in Lancashire (where Catholicism had survived more comprehensively, and to which vast numbers of Irish immigrants came), have been published by the Catholic Record Society.
In 1853, municipal cemeteries were established and many Catholics chose to be buried there rather than, as hitherto, in Anglican graveyards. Catholic priests could perform their ceremonies there, recording details in their own burial (or, more correctly, death) registers. In addition, look out for confirmation registers, lists of prayers for anniversaries of deaths, and lists of parishioners, called status animarium (‘state of souls’).
Newspapers
Newspapers started in 17th-century London and became widespread on a local level in the 19th century. Local papers are best sought in local archives where they are sometimes indexed. The best collection of local, national and foreign papers, including Catholic ones, is at the British Library Newspaper Library, catalogued at www.bl.uk/collections/newspapers.html. Announcements concerning everything from medal recipients to bankrupts appear in the London Gazette (1665-present), Gentleman’s Magazine (1731–1868) and The Times (1785-present), the latter indexed in The Times Digital Archive, available in several good libraries including Guildhall Library, London.
Catholics newspapers include The Tablet (1840) and The Universe (1860). In addition, James Peter Coghlan (1732–1800), a London printer, filched The Laity’s Directory publishing title from its founder, James Marmaduke, in 1760. Coghlan, who was Lancashire-born but clearly of Irish origin, maintained this vital organ of English Catholic life throughout the time of the Gordon Riots (1780), and when he died he left it to his wife’s nephew and employee Richard Charles Brown (1776–1837), brother of the first Catholic bishop of Liverpool. Brown, my 4 x great-grandfather, ran it in partnership with Patrick Keating, styling themselves ‘Brown & Keating, printers to the R.R. the Vicars Apostolic’. They continued The Laity’s Directory until his death, and Brown’s widow Jane (née Hemsworth) took it on for a few years. She gave up in the face of the rival Catholic Directory, that continues to this day. These publications list many births, deaths and marriages for Catholics in England, including many of Irish origin.
Biographical dictionaries
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004) is the best, covering all of Britain and Ireland up to independence. Also useful are the broader volumes of Who’s Who. For prominent Catholics, Irish or not, see Joseph
Catholic children
Thanks to the great influx of Irish families, charitable institutions for their children proliferated. By the 1860s there were Catholic children’s homes, orphanages and schools in most dioceses. Details are in the Laity’s Directory and its successors, with records in diocesan archives.
Gillow’s A Literary and Biographical History, or Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (Burns & Oates, 5 vols, 1885–1902).
Wills
Back to 12 January 1858, wills have been proved centrally at the Principal Probate Registry (PPR). Searches can be made there: indexes forward to 1943 are also on fiche at many archives and Mormon FHCs.
Before 1858 wills were proved in church courts, as mapped in The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers (Phillimore, rev. edn, 2003) and www.genuki.org.uk, and described in J. Gibson and E. Churchill, Probate Jurisdictions, Where to look for Wills (FFHS, 5th edn, 2002). Those with property in more than one jurisdiction, or with the social pretension to be the sort of people who might, had wills proved in the next most senior court – usually the local bishop’s – rising ultimately to the Prerogative Courts [of the Archbishops] of York and Canterbury. The latter – the PCC – included people, usually the wealthier sort, from all over the realm, including those with property in both Ireland and the mainland, money in the Bank of England, or who died abroad (‘in foreign parts’, often abbreviated to ‘pts’) including soldiers and sailors. Between 1653 and 1660, under Cromwell, all wills in England and Wales were proved at the PCC too. Most Welsh wills are at the National Library of Wales. Those for York are at the Borthwick Institute and are largely covered by published indexes. All wills proved at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) are indexed and accessible at www.documentsonline. nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Shipping lists
The journey across the Irish Sea was a domestic one, so virtually no passenger lists between Ireland and the mainland exist. Those that do are arranged by port and date, and don’t state places of origin anyway, making searches impractical and largely fruitless.
Other sources
Naturalisations: see p. 136 (naturalisations in Ireland).
Armed forces : see p 126.
FURTHER READING
A. Adolph, Collins Tracing your Family History (Collins, 2005).
M. Hartigan, The History of the Irish in Britain: a Bibliography (London, 1986).
Irish roots revealed
My cousins Dominic and Ruth Cassidy are a perfectly ‘normal’ British couple: he was born in West London and she in Newport, South Wales. Digging into their roots, however, reveals recent ancestry from Germany, Scotland, Nigeria and Ireland. Dom’s father, who sounds entirely English, is a Cassidy (Ó Caiside, a Fermanagh family, originally physicians and ollamhs – court poets – to the Maguire Princes of Fermanagh), whilst Dominic’s equally very ‘English’ great-grandmother was a Kilduff (Mac Giolla Dhuibh, descended, coincidentally, from the Princes of Fermanagh themselves). Dominic’s mother’s family of Bohane, long-since synonymous with Tunbridge Wells, Kent, were originally Ó Buadhacháin, traceable far back to his 3 x great-grandfather Patrick Bohane, born in Co. Cork about 1804, who became a marine store dealer in Pembroke, Wales. Ruth’s mother’s father was a Nigerian sailor who settled in Newport, whilst on her father’s side her great-grandmother