William Henry and Sarah Greer Henry

Henry,

Statutory birth, death and marriage registration (in some jurisdictions called Vital Records) only started in Ireland in 1864, save for non RC marriages which were recorded from 1845 onwards. So you probably won’t find statutory birth, death or marriage certificates in Ireland for this family. For earlier years you usually need to rely on church records, where they exist.  Ideally you need to know the precise denomination and have some idea of where the person was born in order to search the correct records. Not all churches have records for that period and not all that do are on-line.

RC records are mostly on-line on the nli site:  

https://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

For other denominations, the churches usually hold the originals but there are also copies in PRONI, the public record office, in Belfast. A personal visit is required to access them. Access to the records there is free. This link explains what records exist, parish by parish:

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/publications/proni-guide-church-records

If you are unable to go yourself, you could employ a researcher. Researchers in the PRONI area: http://sgni.net

If William Henry was a farmer, then he would normally be listed in the tithe applotment records. There were 6 William Henrys farming in Armagh in the early 1830s:

Henry, William-- Townland : Liveleglish Year : 1828-Loughgall-Armagh

Henry, William-- Townland : Teemore Year: 1834-Mullaghbrack-Armagh

Henry, William-- Townland: Armaghbreague Year: 1832-Lisnadill-Armagh

Henry, William-- Townland: Ballybreagh Year: 1833-Kilmore-Armagh

Henry, William-- Townland: Teemore Year: 1834-Kilclooney-Armagh

Henry, William-- Townland: Tullyvallon Hamilton Year: 1830-Newtownhamilton-Armagh

If you don’t know where your William lived those parishes might be somewhere to start researching.

We didn’t routinely record deaths in Ireland before 1864 so if he died pre 1833, as you suspect, there may be no record to find, unless he was Church of Ireland. That was the only denomination that usually kept burial records at that time.

You ask about political events in Ireland in the 1830s. They are unlikely to have been the reason for William’s death or the family’s departure. I am sure they left for the same reasons that millions did. To find work, or better paid work. Ireland has very few natural resources (no oil, coal, iron ore etc) and so did not benefit from the industrial revolution in the 1800s, the way Scotland, England, the US, Canada & Australia did, which created hundreds of thousands of comparatively well-paid new jobs in new industries (coal mining, steel making, railways, ship building etc). So that was a big pull factor. There had also been a huge population explosion in Ireland going up from about 3 million people in 1750 to 8 million in 1830. There simply weren’t jobs for all those people. In much of Ireland the only employment was subsistence farming topped up in Ulster and one or two other areas with a bit of linen weaving. And then the straw that broke the camel’s back, along came the famine, numerous times throughout the 1800s. The worst period was when the potato crop failed almost completely 3 years in a row in the late 1840s, and then partially several more years after that.

Approximately 8 million people left Ireland between 1801 and 1920 - the equivalent of the entire pre-Famine population. The population today is only around 6 million.

Other factors encouraged emigration, eg early mechanisation on farms. With new machines to turn the soil and plant seed, farmers no longer needed an army of agricultural labourers to help on the farm. So those jobs were rapidly disappearing. Likewise mechanisation had led to linen factories being set up in places like Belfast. These made home weaving uneconomic and so also upset the labourer’s family economy. Agriculture was the biggest single employer in Ireland, but it was mostly a barter economy. Few people had any ready cash save what they could make from weaving or any government sponsored work such as building new roads. So when the opportunity arose to get jobs with a regular wage packet, as opposed to a few pence from your father each week, the decision to migrate wasn’t really all that hard to make. So it was as much about economic betterment as anything.

In addition, the British Government often placed adverts in the press encouraging people to migrate to take advantage of land that was available overseas. (I have attached as an example an article from the Belfast Commercial Chronicle of 1^st November 1828 offering lands in Upper Canada).