If the baptism record tells you both parents’ full names, you can seek their marriage with confidence. If it just states the mother’s forename, then you must seek the marriage ‘blind’, looking, for example, for any Thomas O’Briens marrying a Joanna. If you find Thomas O’Brien marrying Joanna O’Flynn, you won’t know for sure that this is the right wedding. You therefore need to make fairly broad searches, to make sure there are no other possibilities, and look for any other pointers that will help decide. If occupations and places of residence are known, for example, you can see if these match up. And you may recognise names from the list of the next generation’s godparents. There are no hard and fast rules, and you seldom get 100 per cent proof – your aim, though, is to seek as high a percentage of proof as you can.
Some baptism registers state dates of birth, but many don’t. Most children were baptised soon after birth: infant mortality was very high, and an unbaptised child could not enter Heaven. However, for many reasons, such as practical difficulties or religious indifference, it could take weeks, months or years for parents to present their children to the font. So never record a date of baptism as a birthdate, and when looking for someone born in 1810, you may need to search several years or more further forward before finding a baptism.
Some marriage registers give parents’ names, sometimes in full, whilst others just name the fathers. The burial registers usually just state the name, date and age – thus indicating when people were born: occupations and places of residence sometimes appear.
A useful finding aid is www.familysearch.org. Compiled by the Mormons, it is an index to many baptism and marriage registers. It is by no means complete: not all existing registers are indexed (its coverage of Catholic registers is relatively low) and some of the registers included have only been partially indexed. Therefore, you will not always find your family here, and finding someone of the right name in FamilySearch does not automatically mean it’s the right person! Nonetheless, it is a formidable tool, always worth checking, and if you find what appear to be the right people, always check the original registers from which the index references came.
Associated with burial records are gravestones. These often mention more than one member of the family (‘…beloved wife of X’, for example) but their great use in Irish genealogy is that migrants’ graves sometimes state the place of origin. Many gravestone inscriptions have been transcribed and these are available in archives or on the Internet.
Newspapers
Newspapers have been published since the 17th century, and proliferated in the 19th century, around the time of the Irish Diaspora. They can provide fascinating background material on the causes of migration, the establishment of new colonies and settlements, the departure and arrival of ships carrying migrants, and much else.
Newspapers, both secular and those produced by religious denominations (often to be found in denominational archives), frequently
Pedigree conventions
‘=’ indicates a marriage, accompanied by ‘m-’ and the date and place.
solid lines indicate definite connections: dotted lines indicate probable but unproven ones.
wiggly lines are for illegitimacy and ‘x’ for a union out of wedlock – important on old pedigrees but I think it’s time to dispense from this distinction and use straight lines, though ‘x’ instead of ‘=’ seems reasonable enough.
loops are used if two unconnected lines need to cross over, just like electricians’ wiring diagrams.
wives usually go on the right of husbands, though only if that doesn’t interfere with the chart’s overall layout.
Common abbreviations are:
| b. | born |
| bpt or c. | baptised or christened (same thing) |
| bach. | bachelor |
| spin. | spinster |
| unm. | unmarried |
| d. | died |
| bur. | buried |
| d.s.p. or o.s.p. | died without children |
| d.v.p. or o.v.p. | died before father married |
| lic. | marriage licence |
| w.wr./pr. | will written/proved |
| m.i.w. | ‘mentioned in the will of…’ followed by f. for father, gf. for grandfather and so on. |
| inft | infant |
| MI | monumental inscription |
| wid. | widow or widower (as appropriate) |
carried announcements of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, obituaries and burials. Such announcements can be very terse – ‘to the lady of Michael O’Brien Esq., of Newgrange, Co. Meath, a son’ – but many are far more detailed. They very seldom include the illiterate poor (for obvious reasons), but poor people may be mentioned retrospectively, say, as parents of people who had risen in the world thanks to migration.
You may also encounter advertisements concerning bankruptcy, business partnerships being made and dissolved, and even notices placed by husbands disclaiming financial responsibility for wives who had eloped.
Newspapers are valuable for tracing ancestry and also for adding colour and detail to your ancestors’ stories. Many Irish immigrants and their descendants came from poor backgrounds in Ireland, yet made great successes of themselves in their places of settlement. The rise to prosperity of families of farmers, businessmen and politicians is often well chronicled in newspapers. Especially useful are obituaries of Irish migrants, or their children or grandchildren. American newspapers are very good for this, and may state the Irish place of origin of the parent, grandparent or even earlier ancestor of the deceased. So if you have no American ancestors but know of cousins who settled there, you might discover your Irish roots by seeking their American newspaper obituaries.
Biographical dictionaries
The first great national biographical dictionary was the Dictionary of National Biography, whose initial editor was Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), father of the novelist Virginia Woolf. The project began in 1882, encompassing the whole of the British Isles, thus including much Irish material: in fact, the first person under ‘A’ is Jacques Abbadie, the Huguenot dean of Killaloe, Co. Clare. Since then, most countries have produced biographical dictionaries. For small or newlyemerged states, such publications have become important symbols of nationhood. Biographical dictionaries also exist for many fields of endeavour – painters, architects, naval officers and so on, and for smaller geographical areas, such as counties, provinces and cities.
Some dictionaries were very selective, but many, aimed at widest possible sales, including almost anyone involved in business, local politics, the professions and arts. Most state date and place of birth, so are often useful as genealogical