Phelan

Births/Baptisms/Marriages/Deaths ? pre1790-1800 ? The reality of finding documentationpertaining to births/baptisms/marriages/deaths in Ireland prior to 1800 ? particularly in rural areas? is that they simply may not exist. Some registers for urban areas pre-dating 1800 may exist ?though often these can be fragmented- as there was an increased need in cities or larger towns todocument the population. Please also note that the Church of Ireland was the official church of thecountry and therefore the bulk of information that does survive for earlier periods is often fromthese registers. ROMAN CATHOLIC: Most Catholic records are held locally - One site which might be of use is -http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/ - where you can ?browse? an overview of availablerecords per county. If you have any difficulty, you could try writing to the parish priest for possibleassistance. Do you know much about their emigration? The dates, the reasonwhy they left, who they may have travelled with?..etc..Generally more information was given atthe port of arrival rather than the port of departure. If you knew which city they arrived at (e.g.Liverpool, New York, etc.), this could be a good place to find more information. -And perhaps evenfind out an exact place of origin. Ellis Island: http://www.ellisisland.org/search/passSearch.asp Castlegarden: http://www.castlegarden.org/ US National Archives/Immigration info: http://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/ The Boston Pilot; From October 1831 through October 1921, the Boston Pilot newspaper printed a?Missing Friends? column with advertisements from people looking for ?lost? friends and relativeswho had emigrated from Ireland to the United States. This extraordinary collection of 40,743 recordsis available here as a searchable online database, which contains a text record for each ad thatappeared in the Pilot. http://infowanted.bc.edu/