Looking for origins of great grandfather Thomas Henry Steele. Born May 12, 1837. Emigrated to Coxsackie, New York, USA in 1857. Married Margaret J. Gibson December 26, 1871. His obituary lists a brother John S. Steele, and a sister Martha Steele Hulse also living in the U.S. His death certificate lists father as Robert Steele and mother as Margaret Doole.
County Antrim is named in his obituary as his county of origin, but I have no furhter Irish details.
I do know that he was married in, and all his children were baptised in, the Second Reformed Church in Coxsackie, NY, a protestant church. So it would be likely his family in Ireland belonged to the Church of Ireland or the Presbyterian Church.
Friday 22nd Feb 2013, 09:21PM
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Hi,
Emigration / Immigration ? An article at https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Ireland_Emigration_and_Immigration will help explain the Emigration / Immigration aspect on records for the two countries.
This is going to require some digging. As Thomas emigrated from Ireland to U.S. in 1857, the only records would be U.S. held or on a ships list. Unfortunately, many records which used to be available as open, available and free on the internet have been bulk site purchased by a large company with the corresponding links disabled. This includes transcription indexes for a lot of small sites used as resources a decade ago; as well as some governmentally held records at the U.S. National Archives. http://www.genesearch.com/newyork/index.html can be used to access the site that currently holds the lists for your time period. A trial subscription can be utilized, just make sure you cancel before the ?free? period is up and realize that many ?trees? showing at the site contain errors, so proof everything and if it is only ?site typed? data with no image, use it only as ?possible lead?.
There is however the Immigrant Ship Transcribers Guild http://www.immigrantships.net as well as sites that are created by persons whose hobby is ship lists. These can be found through random searches altering the variety of terms used for the search.
Irish civil registration of birth, death and marriages started in 1864, before that it was the local parish registers. There are two types of parish in Ireland: the civil and the religious. Only a select few types of records are held at PRONI http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/research_and_records_held/records_not_held_in_proni.htm
With Thomas born in 1837 a birth / christening might exist in a local parish record only. You will need to locate the parish. https://familysearch.org can be a help but use wider ranges in dates. Sometimes a number that looks like a 7 is actually a 1, a 8 is actually a 9 and so on. Variants in name spellings also affect the results, so keep that loose as well.
Irish Times .com http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor has some free resources that will help in how you are going to have to approach the Ireland end of tracking because of the dates falling between record dates. I would suggest a blanket/net approach to locate existing family descendants and working from them backwards. I have had to use this approach with some of my missing family and it serves a couple values. Proofing your work as you go and uncovering cousins who might have data, pictures, etc? as I did (She had 2x &3x great grandparents pictures and data that no one else had) makes it all worth it. Try to trap Thomas?s father Robert, but remember the mother listed on a death cert. might very well have been the ?mother? to the family, just not the ?mother? that gave birth sometimes.
The surname link at Irish Times .com can show you localities of persons in a census substitute (The Griffiths Valuation) http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/. Plotting the locations on a map will help your efforts.
Just a couple other links to help you forward on your quest: http://www.from-ireland.net/genealogy/Research-Hints#display & http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/index.html Both contain very useful hints.
Good Luck in your search! Jeanette
Sunday 24th Feb 2013, 06:55PM