My ancestors were Mathew O'Brien and Ellen Falvey. They had 8 children, two of whom came to Australia, Jeremiah and John. Jeremiah came to Melbourne, Australia in 1864 and in 1873 married Bridget McGurk who had come from county Armagh in Northern Ireland. They had 6 sons and 1 daughter, who unfortunately died in infancy. However, 5 sons had families, mostly in Victoria, of which I am one. I would be interested in finding out more of the family and the way they lived back in the 1800s until they left or died. I have photos of the farmhouse where they lived, but I believe it has now been demolished to make way for more housing.
Any information would be helpful.
Annette Fischer
Thursday 27th Dec 2012, 10:11PMMessage Board Replies
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Hi,
Thank you for your message.
You could try doing a search for the family in church records. Sometimes church records can give you more information rather than just the event being recorded. For example marraige records may sometimes give occupations, fathers' names, the residences of the couple and the witnesses etc. so they may be a good place to find out more about the family.
Most Catholic records are held locally. One website which may be of help to you is the irishtimes website. Here they give an overview of what records are available in specific parishes. For Dromcollihier follow this link:
For Church of Ireland records check http://ireland.anglican.org/about/42 and http://www.nationalarchives.ie/
You could also check the two land records pertaining to Ireland in the 19 th century.
The first are the Tithe Applotment Books. These were compiled between 1823 and 1837 in order to determine the amount which occupiers of agricultural holdings should pay in tithes to the Church of Ireland. You can search these here:
http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/home.jsp
The second is Griffith's Valuation which was carried out between 1848 and 1864 and was used to determine the amount of tax each person should pay towards the support of the poor within their poor law union. This can be found here:
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/
A good place to try and find out information about life in Limerick at the time is the Limerick County library at the following website:
http://www.lcc.ie/Library/Local_Studies/
Someother websites which may help you in your search for information are the National Library and National Archives of Ireland found at http://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx and http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy1/genealogy-records/introduction/ respectively.
I hope that this helps. Remember to post as much information as you can with regard to the people you are researching. The more information you post, the more likely it is that one of our volunteers will be able to advise or assist you. Also include information concerning which sources you may have already used so others may further your search.
Kind regards,
Genealogy Support
Monday 18th Feb 2013, 01:27PM