• Ireland
  • Mar4

    3 Comments

    First a TL;DR: At the bottom of this post is a table with links to the listings of all cemeteries in each county of the Republic of Ireland.

    The last few years have been relatively kind to Irish genealogy researchers – especially after the Catholic Parish Registers went online at the National Library or Ireland.

    However, when you don’t have a specific location in Ireland to look for family (or even if you do) it can still be a frustrating and fruitless slog. And that’s on a good day.

    At some point in every researcher’s work, they’ll find they need to cast a wider net to try and find more clues to work with. One terrific site to look for clues can be Find A Grave, regardless of the location in the world you need to look.

    A technique I’ve used there when there is no memorial for the specific people I’m looking for is to simply check all of the cemeteries in the area for people of the same surname. If you are looking for cemeteries in the United States, you can use their Browse Cemeteries by US County page, first select a state and then select a county and Voila! a nice listing of all the cemeteries for you to look through.

    However, if you want to do the same thing for Non-US cemeteries, there is no ability in the form to select a county (or whatever subdivision that country uses.) So, you end up with a giant list of all cemeteries in that country sorted alphabetically. In Ireland, that means you have 3,820 results to go through!

    Sure, the cemetery entries do list the county they reside in, but At 20 results per page, that is 191 pages of clickety-clicking. So, I looked for a better way.

    Wanting to find all of the cemeteries listed in Find A Grave in County Offaly, I Googled “findagrave cemetery offaly“. In the results you’ll see links to many individual cemeteries in Offaly, which is great. But will you find all of them? You’ll also see at the top of the results one that starts with “1 to 20 – Find A Grave” – Hmm. That looks like a listing, doesn’t it? And sure enough it is a list of ALL the cemeteries in Offaly.

    But, what about all of the other counties? One could perform the same Google search for each county, but I noticed there might be an easier way.

     Find a Grave Ireland County URLIf you look at the URL in the address bar, a pattern emerges. There are 3 parts of it that look like location fields: CScntry, CSst, and CScnty.

    In this example, one can guess that “country” 35 is Ireland, “state” 1222 is Offaly and “county” is not used. So, it appears they haven’t entered any county fields in the FaG database, which explains the lack of ability to select it on the search page.

    So, I asks myself, what will happen if I, say, change 1222 to 1221. Well, 1221 gets you County Monaghan!

    So, as a public service to all of you who have actually read to the bottom of this post, I have a gift. I have worked my way back and forth to find all of the Republic of Ireland codes on Find A Grave and created direct links to them. As one might expect – the county IDs are numbered in order relating to their alphabetic order – EXCEPT looks like someone made a mistake and entered Laois and Leitrim out of order.

    I have not found a method to determine the URL for Northern Ireland counties – yet.

    Below is a table with links to the cemeteries of each county in the Republic of Ireland on Find A Grave. Enjoy!

    County IDCounty Name
    1204Carlow
    1205Cavan
    1206Clare
    1207Cork
    1208Donegal
    1209Dublin
    1210Galway
    1211Kerry
    1212Kildare
    1213Kilkenny
    1215Laois
    1214Leitrim
    1216Limerick
    1217Longford
    1218Louth
    1219Mayo
    1220Meath
    1221Monaghan
    1222Offaly (Kings)
    1223Roscommon
    1224Sligo
    1225Tipperary
    1226Waterford
    1227Westmeath
    1228Wexford
    1229Wicklow
  • Jul22

    No Comments

    If you aren’t following the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland on Flickr, you should be.Linenhall Library, Belfast

    Aside from a seemingly never ending flow of cool historical photos, they also post interesting things like architectural plans from Crumlin Road Prison/Belfast Gaol, melds of old photos with current ones, and even the occasional weird clown. (Pretty sure we’re related.)

    But, some real gems that genealogists might find even more exciting are a collection of full color 17th century barony maps.

    I’ve selected one randomly beautiful one to display here (“Tyrconnelle, etc.”), but there are quite a few to page through.

    PRONI 17th Century Barony Maps Tyrconnelle, etc.

  • Apr8

    No Comments

    I am only a couple of generations removed from my Irish immigrants to the United States, so my own direct Irish ancestors were not here during the American Revolution.
    But, while scanning Chronicling America for interesting things, I happened upon a 1919 newspaper article in The Sun entitled Irishmen In Our Revolution, which is a review of Michael J. O’Brien’s (then) new book A Hidden Phase of American History.

    Irishmen In Our Revolution
    The review itself is an interesting read from a historical perspective – both the role the Irish played in The Revolution, and the 1919 perspective of it all.

    However, perhaps more interesting than this to those researching their Irish family that may have been in America that early is that the book itself has an Appendix entitled Officers of the American Army and Navy of the Revolution of Irish Birth or Descent – with a very long list of names and assignments. And a bonus: he has marked all of those born in Ireland with an asterisk. You can find a full copy of Irishmen In Our Revolution over on The Google Books.

    Who could asterisk for anything more?

  • Mar11

    No Comments

    I’ve just finished watching the documentary One Million Dubliners, which at it’s simplest is a study of Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, the “home” to 1.5 million people of all sorts, including people like Michael Collins and Daniel O’Connell.

    One Million Dubliners PosterWhile I am sure some may find the delivery of the film to be slow, I found the the pace of the film and the multifaceted approach to telling the story were very well done, incorporating both historical and everyday figures, the creation and restoration of the cemetery itself, and perhaps most importantly the inclusion of the more mundane aspects of running a cemetery and the thoughts of those involved.

    While this latter information may fare only slightly higher on many peoples’ lists than watching paint dry, the people interviewed in these daily roles of the cemetery each show a different angle of the goings-on and in sum provide an almost surprisingly philosophical treatise on the process of death and the power surrounding one’s final resting place.

    However, the thread that holds this film together, without question, are the stories and perspectives of the cemetery’s historian Shane MacThomáis. His love of the historical subject matter and of Glasnevin itself is apparent. His wonderful interactions leading cemetery tours for both young people and adults truly draw us in with humor and pathos.

    As you are reading this review on my genealogy blog, it is highly likely at least part of many a day’s thoughts are taken up by the interaction of history, family, lost stories, loss itself, and the task of trying to find meaning in their conjunction. If so, I highly suggest your taking the time to find and watch this film.

    A word of warning: I began watching without any prior knowledge of the film beyond a recent mention online. When soon after I found it available on Hoopla Digital (streaming offered free via my local library), I thought that I had to give it a shot.

    As I got to the end of the film, I truly was more than a bit M. Night Shyamalan-ed. I do not want to say more.

    I would suggest if you know no more than I did, Do Not research the cemetery and names I mention here – just watch. You can always go online later and learn more.

  • Aug28

    2 Comments

    Recently I have been trying to get back to my research to both tie up loose ends and tighten up the documentation. My hope is that another go-through will help me notice some clues I may have missed in prior passes. In particular, I’d like to get my Irish half of the tree back a generation or 4.

    Egan Family, Creggan, Kings, IrelandEven though I’m only 2 or 3 generations removed from Ireland and even with some excellent cousin contacts in Ireland to help answer questions and discuss things with, those parts of my trees could use some real leafing up.

    Peeking at my family in the 1901 Irish census, I again noticed my 2x-great-grandmother living with them. She is 88 years old at the time and (unsurprisingly) is not there in the 1911 census. I realized I had never looked for her death certificate! I had been unsuccessful in finding her marriage earlier in time, so thought perhaps I’d get lucky and find her maiden name included.

    With a name like Mary Egan, finding the right record can easily be a daunting task. But, with some calculated searching of the Civil Registration Indexes in the correct parish I came up with a likely death record for her in 1902. I faxed in a request for a photocopy to GRO Ireland (only 4) using the free online Hellofax service, and Voila! I received the certificate via email within a week or so.

    It is definitely the correct death certificate, as it mentions the Townland and my great-grandfather as the informant. Sadly, no maiden name was included. (I didn’t really expect it as it would be atypical I think.)

    Mary Egan, Cause of Death Detail, 1902, Creggam, Ferbane, IrelandBut, her cause of death is startling: “Severe burns, 6 weeks, no medical attendant.”, and her death was registered about 5 weeks later than the event.

    Jeepers. I suppose open hearths and aged people are not a good mix. I wonder if anyone else has any interesting stories of having been surprised by how people have died?

    Is gaire cabhair Dé ná an doras.

    UPDATE: As usual, after I received this certificate I forwarded a copy to one of my cousins in Ireland who is a 1st cousin from my Dad’s generation. He recalled that when younger, his mother told him that the family’s thatched house burned down. So, once again – it pays to keep in touch with family AND talk to them about your findings!


    Death Certificate, Mary Egan, 1902, Creggan, Kings, Ireland