re:occupants of CLOON TOWNLAND,adjacent to Cleggan.

Hi there,

If you go to the Ordnance Survey website, you can find historic locations such as schools and churches, etc. Here is the link: http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,591271,743300,0,10

School records can be found in many places (if they still exist). You could check this (limited) list for all of Ireland:

www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/Nat_Schools/natschs.htmlYoiu might find the UCD National Folklore Collection of interest.In 1937 the Irish Folklore Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Education and the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, initiated a revolutionary scheme in which schoolchildren were encouraged to collect and document folklore and local history.Over a period of eighteen months some 100,000 children in 5,000 primary schools in the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State were encouraged to collect folklore material in their home districts.

The children collected this material mainly from their parents and grandparents and other older members of the local community or school district. Now known as the Schools' Manuscript Collection, the scheme resulted in more than half a million manuscript pages of valuable material. The topics about which the children were instructed to research and write included local history and monuments, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, songs, customs and beliefs, games and pastimes, traditional work practices and crafts, etc.

Sometimes school records are kept privately, sometimes they have been donated to local museums or libraries. You could contact a local history society for assistance here.

Perhaps John was a teacher in the school. If so, the National Archives of Ireland is the place to contact about documents related to teachers in national schools in Ireland.

Many of the estate records have not yet been catalogued. Again the two places to check (amongst others, but these are the two to check first) are the National Library of Ireland and the National Archives of Ireland. Please ensure to state that it is the parish of Ballynakill (Ballynahinch) as there are two other Ballynakills in County Galway.

Have you checked the immigration records in Australia? You have the name of the ship and a date, so this will help a lot. Generally, more information was given at the port of arrival rather than the port of departure. The University of Woolongong has produced, on microfiche, a complete index and transcript of all information concerning immigrants of Irish origin recorded on ships' passenger lists between 1848 and 1867. These are useul for finding out an exact place of origin as well as parents' names. The Public Record Office of Victoria has good online databases of settlers at www.prov.vic.gov.au Otherwise, other records may be found in the Colonial Office Papers of the UK National Archives, class reference CO 201. This class contains a wide variety of records, including petitions for assisted passages, emigrants' lists, records of emigrants on board ship, peitions from settlers for financial assistance and much more.

You clearly have carried out a lot of research already. If there is other specific information that you require, please feel free to post another message here.

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)