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 tools. Many Irish migrants who made successes of themselves often appear in local biographical dictionaries, with their places of origin clearly stated.
Wills
Wills were usually written towards the end of peoples’ lives, specifying who was to inherit what. Besides the obviously interesting details of personal possessions, paintings, books, land and so on, they help tie family trees together, sometimes providing details of people who missed being recorded in church, civil or census records. People generally named spouses and children, but you may also find parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and so on.
Wills tended to be written by people with property. The poor tended not to bother, but this is not always so: if your ancestors were illiterate labourers, they probably didn’t leave wills, but once in a while you might find one.
Wills are a key source for establishing migrants’ origins. You may not be able to find your migrant ancestor’s baptism in Ireland, but if they wrote a will mentioning brothers and sisters, you can look for their baptisms instead. Sometimes, migrants were kind enough to us to leave bequests to relatives still living in Ireland. In these cases, their wills actually tell you where to look for their origins.
To make a will a legally-binding document, it was taken, after the testator had died, to a probate court to be ‘proved’. This usually happened immediately after death, but in some cases it was put off for several years, so a wide search is always advisable. Sometimes you’ll find other records attached to wills, such as inventories of personal goods – wonderful material for broadening the family’s history.
When seeking wills, you will also encounter administrations. When people died ‘intestate’ – without leaving a will – letters of administration could be granted to the next of kin. Administrations give minimal genealogical information, but are still better than nothing.
Naturalisations
Each country had different rules, or a lack of them, governing who was allowed to settle there. In many cases, people were allowed to enter and live in a country freely, with little or no interference from the state. If they wanted full legal rights, however, particularly in respect of bequeathing property, they had to become naturalised. Naturalisation records will certainly tell you where your ancestor lived when they were naturalised, and where they came from – stating perhaps just ‘Ireland’, but sometimes a precise place of origin will be given.
Ché Guevara and Zorro
Ché Guevara, the epitome of South American revolutionary spirit, was the son of Ernesto Guevara Lynch. In Spanish culture, people generally add their mother’s maiden name to their own surname, so in this case Ernesto’s mother’s family were Lynches, descended from Patrick Lynch, born in Galway in 1715. Ernesto once said of his son, ‘The first thing to note is that in my son’s veins flowed the blood of the Irish rebels.’ Ché visited Ireland in 1965, enjoying an evening out at Hanratty’s Hotel, Limerick, sporting a sprig of shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day. He was less Irish, however, than that other great Latin-American maverick, Zorro, ‘the Fox’, whose amorous adventures brought him to an untimely end in 1659. The great swashbuckler had in fact been born William Lamport in Co. Wexford in 1615.
Shipping lists
International air travel is a new phenomena, and most people whose ancestors migrated by plane will know where they were from anyway. For genealogical purposes – and because Ireland is an island – the best records of migration are lists of passengers on ships.
These seldom give much detail, merely who migrated, when, and between which ports. They may state ages, and other helpful details, but won’t give either the ultimate destination or original starting point of the journey. They are still interesting, especially if you can find contemporary pictures of the ship and the ports,
Ships’ passenger lists
The best sources for ships’ passenger lists are in the country of arrival. TNA’s lists (BT 32, described in information leaflet 71 and S. Colwell, The National Archives: A Practical Guide for Family Historians, National Archives, 2006) cover 1890–1960 but are arranged by date and port of departure. www.irishorigins.com
