Ellen Connolly

Hi there,

County Cork has a huge number of parishes, so the first thing you will need to do is to try to narrow this down.

The family Bible is a good place to start and is well worth checking. There are a number of other places you could also check for information.

Have you tried checking the Ellis Island records (www.ellisisland.org) or the Castle Garden records (www.castlegarden.org)? Generally, more information was given at the port of arrival rather than the port of departure. If you knew which city they arrived at, this could be a good place to find more information, and perhaps even find out an exact place of origin.

Civil registration records are available from the General Register Office (GRO). These start from 1864 however. You can access the website here: http://www.groireland.ie/research.htm

You could also try checking the land records called the Tithe Applotment Books (1823-38) or the later Griffith's Valuation (1848-64). Griffith's is freely available here: www.askaboutireland.com or here: www.failteromhat.com Failte Romhat has lots of other useful links you could try looking at. This is particularly good for County Cork.

Once you find out which parish they were connected to, then we can start suggesting church records to look at.

There is also a book by Tim Cadogan called Tracing your Cork Ancestors (1998).

If you find out more information, please contact us again.

Please make sure you link anyone else in your family who is interested in their Irish heritage to our site - and indeed anyone else you know of Irish heritage.

Kind regards,

Sinead Cooney

Genealogist (Ireland XO)