Hamilton/Mateer in Belfast

Hi Jill,

Thank you for your message and for sharing this information.

Just to clarify do you have a specific query that we may be able to help you with? If so, can you also please include what sources you have already used to find the information you already have?

Kind regards,

Genealogy Support

Hi Emma For some reason I missed your response.  My Hamilton family members born between 1826 and  1842 in Belfast were John, Mary (x2), Alexander (x2) RoseAnn, William, David, Annabella & I have their baptisms. I have no information about them or their families and I have tried to find them in the Civil Registers & the ifhf site without success as Hamilton is a common name at that time.I would love to find the marriage of John Hamilton and Mary Mateer/Mc Tier/McAteer which should be in c 1824 or 1825. I have had St Anne's Register searched with no result although there is a baptism there that could well be that of Mary the mother. I engaged a researcher to check the marriage records of the local Church of Ireland and Presbyterian churches on film at PRONI but some were so poor they were illegible (PRONI agrees) so I don't know where else to search. I have also tried to find  the burials of John and Mary at Clifton Street Cemetary or the online Belfast City Council cemetery site but there are no obvious helpful results.  I was hopeful that someone would be researching Hamilton and Matier and variant names in the area.   Many thanks, Jill in Sydney, Australia

Jill,

You won’t find any of the births or marriage in the Civil Indexes because they are all before the start of civil registration (1864 for births and deaths) and 1845 for non RC marriages.

You are right to have searched the rootsireland site but they don’t have all the possible records on their site.

Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church, and thereafter she’d attend her husband’s. So that could explain why you can find childrens baptisms in St Anne’s but no marriage. However the other factor to consider is that during the  early 1800s the rural population were pouring into Belfast to seek work in the mills, shipyards etc. So the parents might have come from, and married, outside Belfast and then started their family in the city.

Do you have any information on where the parents were living in Belfast or what John’s occupation was?