William Porter went to New Zealand

NEW ZEALAND: Do you know much about their emigration? The dates, the reason why they left,who they might have travelled with?..etc.? Generally, more information was given at the port ofarrival rather than the port of departure. If you knew which city they arrived at, this could be a goodplace to find more information -and perhaps even find out an exact place of origin. There are lots ofbooks and documents available about the Irish emigration to NZ. There is a website you could lookat: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/irish/2 for information about the Irish in New Zealand. The next thing you could do is find the counties and places in Ireland your family names are mostprevalent. Look at the website http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/ and perhapssomething will match some other clue you may have found elsewhere? If nothing turnsup ? it is advisable to try different variations of the spellings of the names. If you have a possiblefirst name you could try the Irish Census 1901, 1911 at www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ or the landvaluation record called Griffiths Valuationhttp://askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml Births/Baptisms/Marriages/Deaths ? pre1790-1800 ? The reality of finding documentationpertaining to births/baptisms/marriages/deaths in Ireland prior to 1800 ? particularly in rural areas? is that they simply may not exist. Some registers for urban areas pre-dating 1800 may exist ?though often these can be fragmented- as there was an increased need in cities or larger towns todocument the population. Please also note that the Church of Ireland was the official church of thecountry and therefore the bulk of information that does survive for earlier periods is often fromthese registers. ROMAN CATHOLIC: Most Catholic records are held locally - One site which might be of use is -http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/ - where you can ?browse? an overview of availablerecords per county. If you have any difficulty, you could try writing to the parish priest for possibleassistance.