Ancestors of Owen Doyle

Hi, 

Thanks for your message and interest in Ireland Reaching Out.

Unfortunately, the reality of finding documents and records pertaining to birth/deaths/marraiges etc in Ireland prior to 1800, is that they simply may not exist. However, you may be lucky and find something that relates to the Doyles.

Firstly though, do you have any other information on Owen? Do you know the names of any siblings that he may have left behind in Ireland, as essentially this is who you will be trying to trace.

You could do a search of church records to try and find information on the Doyles with regards to births etc. The Church of Ireland was the official church of the country at the time, so if there are any records they wil most likely be in the C of I registers. A good place to start searching for such records is the following addresses:

http://www.ireland.anglican.org/index.php?do=information&id=63

and

http://www.irishgenealogy.ie

Most Catholic records are held locally. One website which may help you though is the irishtimes website where they give an overview of what records ar available in each parish. For Ardrahan follow this link:

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/fuses/rcparishmaps/index.cfm?fuseaction=showidrecords&CityCounty=Galway&CityCounty=East%20Galway&parish=Ardrahan&churchid=611

Unfortunatley, as you can see from this webpage the Catholic records don't start in the area untill the mid 19th century.

If you can find some names of possible descendents in the Church records, you could then check the land records pertaining to Ireland in the 19th century. If you can find them in the land records at least it will be confirmation that they were in the area during the relevant time period. There are two land records, and both are searchable online:

The Tithe Applotment Books, dating from 1823 to 1838 found at http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/home.jsp

and the Griffith's Valuation, dating from 1848 to 1864, found at http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/  

The latest record for Ireland that you can search online is the 1901 and 1911 census records, found here:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/

It may be quite difficult to trace the family from 1711 up until now, due to the serious lack of records. But hopefully some of the following websites will help you or give you some ideas of where to start:

The National Archives of Ireland http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy1/genealogy-records/introduction/

The National Library of Ireland http://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

The National Archives UK ? genealogy search: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/looking-for-person/

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/family_history.htm

and 

Family Search: https://familysearch.org/  

Perhaps it may be an idea to contact the East Galway Family History Society also for some help, however a fee will apply for this. Here are the contact details:

East Galway Family History Society,

Woodford Heritage Centre,

Woodford,

Loughrea,

Co. Galway

Phone: (090) 9749309   EMail: galwayroots@eircom.net

I hope that some of these help you to establish a connection before your visit in May. We have recently added a link at the top of our page for people who are planning on visiting in 2013. It is a quick form asking where you are viisitng from and planning on visit etc. We would greatly appreciate it if you could take a couple minutes to fill this out. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Genealogy Support