Searching for Ward family

Dear daleward

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out and apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I have forwarded your query to a volunteer in a neighbouring county. I hope she will be in touch shortly

Best wishes
Clare Doyle
Genealogy Support

Daleward,

A point to bear in mind regarding the 1841 census (only) is that adults ages were rounded down to the nearest 5. If you can find the couple I later censuses you may get slightly more accurate years of birth for them.

If the couple died in Scotland after 1855, then their death certificates should have their parents names, which should be helpful.

Statutory registration of births didn?t start in Ireland till 1864 and marriages weren?t registered before 1845, so to find marriages and births prior to those dates you need to rely on church records. To do that you need to know what denomination the family were. Do you know that? It?s also fair to mention that not all church records from the late 1700s and early 1800s have survived.

Some church records are on the rootsireland site (pay to view). It may be worth looking to see if you can trace them there. Without some idea of where in Armagh they came from the search could be tricky. Ward is a reasonably common name in the county with about 50 of them in Griffiths Valuation, spread evenly across the county. Graham is even more common with over 200.

If the family experienced financial difficulties in Scotland then they may have made a Poor Law application. If they did, then the papers usually contain the applicant?s parish of birth. Dundee Poor Law records from 1856 onwards appear to have survived:

http://www.fdca.org.uk/Dundee_Poorhouses.html

Elwyn