Harveys of Donegal Town

Karen:

Welcome to Ireland Reaching Out!

What was the religious denomination for your Harvey ancestors?

I did not find any baptismal records on Roots Ireland and the Church of Ireland records are included on Roots. RC and Presbyterian are not there back to your timeframe.

The 1857 Griffiths Valuation head of household listing for Donegal civil parish does show a Thomas Harvey on Water Lane in Donegal town. Possibly this is your ancestor.

http://www.failteromhat.com/griffiths/donegal/donegal.htm

I did not locate a death record for Thomas Harvey.

Let me know what questions you have.

Roger McDonnell

Hi Roger

Thanks for getting back to me. The denomination was/is RC. I guess one of my main questions is whether it was common from people from Donegal to emigrate to Canada rather than the US. Also which port would they typically sail from in Ireland or England ( or elsewhere?)? There are not a lot of records from Canadian ports from that time but it might help to know that there was a higher likelihood of someone emigrating from Donegal would tend to go to Canada.

Thanks

Karen 

Karen:

People leaving Ireland tended to go to the country where they may have had a family/friend connection. I have two different great-grandparents who left from different parts of Donegal and both ended up in South Philadelphia where they married in 1873. Many people from Donegal would have left from Londonderry (now Derry) port but other ports were also used.

Roger

Thanks for that.  I have another question not directly related to this thread.  I've always been kind of confused about civil registration indices.  When people were required to register births, marriages and deaths, did they start doing that from the date the law was effective or did they register people who were born before that law went into effect?  The reason I ask is that it seems that when you look at the first registrations, all the registrants have the same date attached to the record. Was the purpose just to register all the people who were, say, alive at that point?  If you know of any explanation of the civil registration indices online that I could read that would also be helpful.

Thank,

Karen Danielsen

Karen:

Full civil registration of BDMs started with any event January 1, 1864 or later ( As an aside, non-RC marriages from 1845 on were civilly registered).  If someone was born December 31, 1863, their birth did not have to be civilly registered. I'm sure the process was slow to start and many people in the rural country may not have complied in the early years.

Here is some background from Claire Santry.  https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/Irish-civil-registration.html

Roger