When gathering an initial understanding of your basic Family History, researchers should record all family addresses of relevance. These details should not just be considered as places of interest to visit at a convenient time. The identification of an ancestral address could well be the key to unlocking much more hidden history involving your forefathers.

For a start, the address will enable you to locate the ancestor’s parish of residence. Assuming that he/she had a religious leaning, as earlier generations often did, you can investigate the local church records and burial grounds for more clues about your genealogy. Refer to the Parish Records section for more guidance on this topic and how Irish Ancestry Research can help your Family History quest.

In this section we concentrate on how the dwelling or surrounding land itself can expose more historical records to expand your ancestral knowledge base. Many countries measured and valued their land mass in olden times by using surveyors to determine the size of the property of each landowner or tenant. Then all the results were added together on a parish, township or county basis. In carrying out this extensive task, the names of the land occupiers and their unique addresses were inevitably recorded. This data can be retrieved using specific legal or civil archives in many regions of the world. In towns and cities, it is possible to identify landlords of properties throughout the ages, and also to assess the value of land or buildings at specific times in history.

In Ireland, the lack of comprehensive BMD documents and the loss of decades’ worth of census records have promoted the significance of the land registers. The initial exercise to measure the rateable value of all Irish land was conducted over the years 1848-64 overseen by Richard Griffith and is referred to as Griffith’s Primary Valuation of Ireland. Every property was mapped, measured and listed on records which still exist today. A much overlooked archive of further information of great interest to Irish ancestry researchers is the Valuation Office’s repository of Cancelled Land Books. These documents chronicle any and every change to the original Primary Valuation, thus the exchange of property ownership or the re-sizing of landholdings from the 1850’s to the present day can be detected and transcribed as appropriate complete with names and dates.

Oddly enough, Ireland has other useful and fairly complete census substitutes from times before the Griffiths Valuation, indexed by address and/or family name. Examples of these are the Tithe Applotment Books (1823-38) for all rural areas and the Flax Growers list (1796). Irish Ancestry Research is ideally placed and experienced to research your ancestors in these specific documents or similar additions to national censuses worldwide.

We have our own unique collection of historical maps and we would be pleased to supply plans and maps of ancestral residencies on request.

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