Irish Geography 101

Want to do genealogy in Ireland? First you need to brush up on your Irish geography - and I don't mean modern day cities and villages. Genealogical research in Ireland requires a familiarity with not only present day geographical names, but administrative divisions from various periods in the past history of the country. Consider the fact that not only are there provinces and counties to become familiar with, but townlands, civil parishes, baronies and even poor law unions.

Photograph of Lough Cowey by Jordan McClements of Irish Views

I remember the moment very well when I learned that my great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney hailed from County Tipperary. It was a thrill be able to say, "He was from Tipperary!" as opposed to just knowing that I had Irish ancestry.
After the excitement died down from the news, I realized that this fact opened up more questions for me than I might have imagined. Not only was it the largest county in Ireland but it was actually made up of two parts: North Tipperary and South Tipperary. My realization: If I was serious about tracing my roots back to Ireland, my work had just begun.

You may be feeling the same way. Here is a good place to start: a review of the basics and some further resources to get you familiar with Irish geography. Hopefully this little course will give you an advantage when it comes to searching for your roots in the Emerald Isle.

Before you start, you may want to check out The Family History Library's Ireland, How to Find a Place Name and Ireland, How to Find Information About the Place Where Your Ancestor Lived. These webpages offer some suggestions on narrowing down your search to a specific locale in Ireland and then using the microfilm gazetteers in their collection to learn more about the specific area.

Also see my series of articles at Small-leaved Shamrock on how to find your ancestors' places of origin. Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 1 provides suggestions on how to locate your ancestors' counties, and Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 2 offers help for finding the more specific areas where they originated.

Once you know at least the county of origin, it's necessary to familiarize yourself with Irish geography. You can't get much further into Irish research without understanding how Irish records are organized geographically.

Irish records can be broken down into various divisions:

Provinces & Counties - The four provinces of Ireland are the largest divisions of land in the country and may be the ones you are most familiar with. The counties date back to the 12th-century with the last one being added in the early 17th-century.

• Ulster lies in the northeast, and is made up of counties Antrim, Arnagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. (Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan became part of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949. Antrim, Arnagh, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone are today part of the United Kingdom's Northern Ireland.)
• Connaught in the middle western part of the country includes Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo.
  
• Leinster in the southeast is made up of counties Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, West Meath, Wexford and Wicklow.
• Munster in the southwest includes Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford.

Poor Law Unions - Established in 1838, these areas were typically named after a local town and were used for tax purposes to support the local poor.

Baronies - An old administrative division no longer in use, a barony is made up of a group of civil parishes within a county, although their boundaries do not always match. There are 273 baronies in Ireland.
Church Parishes - This term usually refers to Roman Catholic parishes, since the Church of Ireland parishes most often conform to civil parish boundaries. The Roman Catholic church parishes are usually larger than the civil parishes.
Civil Parishes - Not the same as church parishes, these divisions normally contain a couple dozen townlands and are important to know when searching for records in Ireland. There are more than 2,000 civil parishes in Ireland. Civil parishes often cross over county and barony boundaries.

Townlands - The smallest of Irish land divisions, these do not necessarily contain towns or residents at all. There are thousands of townlands in Ireland.

When I first started looking to understand the geographic regions of Ireland, I was excited to find Brian Mitchell's A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, 2nd Edition. Not only does his book explain the various administrative divisions of the land, but it provides an extensive assortment of maps covering each county. Large counties, such as Tipperary, are broken down into two sections. The maps break the county down into baronies, civil parishes, church parishes/dioceses and poor law unions. This is a true treasure of a book for those of us who appreciate visual aids.
A nice companion resource to place on your desk along with Mitchell's atlas is James Ryan's Irish Records: Sources for Family & Local History, Revised Edition. Ryan's book is a sort of encyclopedia of source listings for Irish records, arranged county by county. Take your county of interest and you can use this book to learn what records are available, where they are held, and even what dates the records cover. Listings include census and census substitutes, church records, commercial and social directories, family histories, gravestone inscriptions, newspapers, wills and more.
Found the name of the townland your ancestor may have come from but wondering about its corresponding barony, civil parish and poor law union? Try a search using the IreAtlas Townland Database. A similarly helpful online resource is this Irish Times search page for the 1851 General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland.
Digging deeply into places, maps and records can get tiring after awhile. A nice break might be to take some time to read up on the interesting backgrounds of Irish placenames. Ever wondered what a bally, dún, croagh or lough is? This page has a nice listing of the original Gaelic meanings in common elements in Irish placenames. The list is taken from the book Handbook of Irish Genealogy: How to Trace Your Ancestors & Relatives in Ireland. Another online assortment of Gaelic place meanings can be found here. If you want to look for a familiar location in particular, try looking it up within this alphabetical list.
I hope that my little introductory course in Irish geography and the recommended resources above will help to get you further into your search for roots so that you can make an A+ in Irish family history!
The image of Lough Cowey above is courtesy of Jordan McClements.
Map of Irish provinces and counties courtesy of mike.eire.ca.
This article originally appeared here at A light that shines again on December 27, 2007. I've reposted it here in honor of Geography Awareness Week.

For the love of history: Save the Massachusetts state library!

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is at the heart of America's history, not to mention my personal family history and that of many other Americans. It is unreal to think that its state library may be in danger of closing, but that is the concern in the news this week.

According to Dick Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, "At a press conference on Thursday, October 29, the Governor's Office announced that Governor Patrick is considering closing the State Library of Massachusetts as a cost-saving measure. This closure will have a monumental impact on the cultural heritage of the Commonwealth." Not only the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but the nation itself.

To read more about the possible closure of the Massachusetts State Library also visit Diane Haddad's Genealogy Insider article on the subject and the State Library of Massachusetts blog.

Please take time to sign the online petition to save the library. You can also help to publicize the petition by posting Thomas MacEntee's Save The State Library of Massachusetts Badge on your blog or website.

Massachusetts Archives works to put Boston passenger manifests online

Researchers looking for information about their immigrant ancestors' arrival in Boston have access to a free online resource that is currently a work in progress: Boston Passenger manifests from 1848-1891. This is the period during which many of the Irish immigrated to the United States, including many of my ancestors.

The huge collection of these passenger lists are currently being placed online thanks to the Massachusetts Archives. According to their website, "Massachusetts officials started recording the names of immigrants who arrived by ship in 1848, a procedure that continued until 1891, when federal record-keeping programs superseded those of the state." Passenger lists for ships arriving into the port of Boston are being added to this online database in stages. The completed database will eventually include the over one-million immigrants who arrived through this port during these four decades.

I haven't yet found an ancestor there, but I plan to keep searching the database as more lists are added.

Thanks to Jerry Reeds' Free Genealogy blog for highlighting this online resource.

For map lovers: New England historic maps online

I am a lover of maps, so you can imagine my excitement when I learned of the University of New Hampshire Library website's Historic USGS Maps of New England and New York. Dating from the late 19th-century to 1950, this topographical collection is a treasure for anyone researching the New England area. According to the website, "This online collection of over 1,500 USGS topographic maps includes complete geographical coverage of New England and New York from the 1890s to 1950s." The digital collection was placed on the internet because of the difficulty that researchers experienced trying to access historic maps of the area. In particular, one map enthusiast interested in locating abandoned railroad right of ways in New Hampshire began the project after finding that no single New Hampshire library had a complete collection of historic maps of the state.

The digital map collection now includes images from many research repositories in New Hampshire covering various areas of New England and New York. Digital maps from the Harvard University Map Collection are also included.

I found a gem in this 1941 survey of the Quincy, Massachusetts area which includes a view of the Fore River shipyard where many of my Tierney family ancestors worked.

Also researching Massachusetts? You might want to start with the Historic USGS Maps of Massachusetts Alphabetic Town Listing.

Thanks to Dick Hillenbrand of Upstate New York Genealogy for mentioning the map collection at Old Maps of New York Towns Online and to Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings for spreading the news about the Historic USGS Maps of New England and New York.

On sale now: your DNA

Actually, your DNA is not quite on sale. What is on sale is the ability to read your DNA through Y-DNA and mtDNA testing at Family Tree DNA.

I've written previously about the Tierney Clans Y-DNA project which is looking for Tierneys to participate in learning more about the surname's genetic history. If you've been waiting to check out your DNA (Tierney or not) now's as good a time as any. Check out the Tierney Clans Society DNA Project webpage or other surname project webpage of your choice and contact the group administrator for details on the limited-time reduced prices for DNA tests (offer expires August 31). Maybe you'll even find that your Irish ancestry includes a connection to Ireland's famous Niall of the Nine Hostages.

Note: I receive no financial cut from Family Tree DNA. Just trying to spread the word to those interested in tracing their roots.

Now free to researchers: Griffith's Valuation online

Great news for those researching their roots in mid-19th-century Ireland: The Library Council of Ireland (An Chomhairle Leabharlanna) has recently completed digitization of Griffith's Valuation. It can be accessed online for free at this Ask about Ireland webpage. Although Griffith's has been on the web for awhile, it has been accessible online at fee-based sites. The council's digitzation efforts have resulted in an online archive searchable by name and place, and includes printable images of the original documents. It also includes access to mid-19th-century maps and modern-day maps from Google Earth.

As this Irish Times article states, "One of the most important surviving genealogical sources from the era after the Famine, the valuation is likely to be of use to family history researchers in Ireland and throughout the world." Me included.

Not familiar with Griffith's Valuation? Read the Irish Times articles Property valuation of 19th century Ireland free online or Tracing ancestors for a brief introduction to these documents that became a valued census substitute after the destruction of other post-famine Irish records.

As the Irish Times states, the completion of this €230,000 project by the Libary Council of Ireland is a "long-term investment in the tourist industry" and "represents an important gesture of solidarity with the Irish diaspora". Thanks, Libary Council of Ireland. I for one hope to be buying my plane ticket as soon as I make a few more family history discoveries on this end.

Thanks to Margaret Jordan, the Cork Genealogist, for announcing the completion of the Griffith's Valuation project.

"Dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books"

Don't you just love the library? It is truly irreplaceable, as Anthony Grafton mentions in his November 2007 article on The New Yorker website entitled Future Reading: Digitization and its discontents. I've written about his article and my own love for libraries on 100 Years in America within my post entitled: On libraries: "the narrower path".

As far as libraries go, the Boston Public Library is one of the best. It has an extensive number of genealogy resources not to mention its other collections.

As you may have learned if you read my "Mazes, windings and turnings": a little digression on maps, I appreciate a good diversion into the world of cartography. The Boston Public Library's Norman B. Levelthal Map Center is currently displaying an exhibit entitled Boston and Beyond: A Bird's Eye View of New England. As the BPL press release states:

As the high-flying observer looks down as though from 2,500 feet on the mapped area, the town “below” appears in a kind of historical snapshot, revealing factories, homes, parks, churches and cemeteries, and even architectural details. The story that unfolds is of the growing economic vitality and urbanization of Boston and the New England region while America matured into a late 19th century global giant. The Boston area craftsmen who made these elaborate images were the leaders of the bird’s eye view vogue and the exhibit will showcase their diaries, field sketch notes, and manuscript drawings.

Take a virtual tour of Boston and Beyond via the Norman B. Leventhal website. The city has changed alot over the years, as I mentioned in my earlier post Boston's Big Dig: another one for the history books. This map exhibit will run through June 2008. Hope you'll get a chance to visit!

Whether or not you're in the Boston area, take some time this summer to enjoy a few "dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable" written treasures from your own local libraries.

Image of the vintage Boston Public Library postcard courtesy of USGenWeb's Penny Postcards website. The site also has many more vintage Massachusetts postcards.

Return to your Tipperary roots: August 2008

Back in the 16th and 17th-centuries, Ireland's County Tipperary was a much different place than it is today. The county had come into existence under the reign of King John as far back as 1210 A.D. Its name is Tiobraid Árann in Irish, meaning the "well of Árann" (Árann was an adjoining territory).

Four-hundred years ago Irish chiefs and chieftains still ruled as overlords in Tipperary. The O'Kennedys, in particular, were a powerful military clan and ruled over underchieftans such as the O'Tierney clan, who paid a fee to receive protection from the O'Kennedys while they ruled their own small territory.

This summer that time period in Tipperary's history will be remembered by a reunion of the various clans mentioned in the several hundred year-old Ormond Deeds, a set of documents which sheds light on the lives of those who lived in Tipperary so many centuries ago.

According to the webpage of the Clan Gathering 2008 on the website of the Tierney Clans Society (Cumann na gClann Ui Thighearnaigh):

This time we are departing from the ‘traditional’ format and are hosting a ‘joint venture’ Gathering with a number of Ormond Clans who are linked in history by references in an historic body of documents titled ‘The Ormond Deeds’. These documents describe transactions and contain transcripts of deeds and agreements between the leading families of the Baronies of Upper and Lower Ormond. They were maintained in Kilkenny Castle by the Earls of Ormond. The documents contain transactions between The O’Tierney, O’Kennedy and O’Meara Clans and are witnessed by members of the MacEgan and O’Meagher Clans. It is these Clans that are now cooperating in the organising of this great Gathering.

The Clan Rally will take place August 22-24, 2008 in the Nenagh area of County Tipperary, Ireland.

For more info go to the Clan Gathering 2008 webpage. You may register to participate via this registration form.

Irish public records online

A little research goes a long way...

I was doing some research on my Hungarian side of the family when I came across a great resource for genealogy and history in all European countries: the European public record portal. Not only does it have some nice resources for my Hungarian research, but it has even more links to Irish records and other resources online (some I'd seen and some I had not). Here are a few that I'll be visiting in the near future:

Irish Baptism & Marriage Record search
Ireland's Golden Pages directory
National Archives of Ireland
National Library of Ireland

There are also some links to various counties' census records. Check out the entire list at the European public record portal.

Wanted: brother, sister, daughter, son

Boston College's Irish Studies Program has given us an online window into the world of Irish immigrants to America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its website entitled "Information Wanted: A Database of Advertisements for Irish Immigrants Published in the Boston Pilot" is an index of the 31,711 ads placed for missing family members and friends during the years 1831 to 1921.

As the website explains, "The advertisements contain the ordinary but revealing details about the missing person’s life: the county and parish of their birth, when they left Ireland, the believed port of arrival in North America, their occupation, and a range of other personal information. Some records may have as many as 50 different data fields, while others may offer only a few details. The people who placed ads were often anxious family members in Ireland, or the wives, siblings, or parents of men who followed construction jobs on railroads or canals."

The Information Wanted column pictured above (published in the Boston Pilot in 1858) reads as follows:

"Advertisements under this head are inserted three times one dollar. The immense circulation of the Pilot in every city, town, and hamlet on the American Continent, renders it the best medium through which to make inquiries about lost friends. More than three-fourths of those advertised for are found. Persons wishing their friends advertised, can send us a dollar inclosed in a letter, with the advertisement written as legibly as possible, in order that no mistakes are made by the printer."

It is one thing to study the era that saw the heavy flow of Irish immigration to America. It is another thing altogether to look one by one at the names of those immigrants sadly yet hopefully seeking their missing loved ones.

A round-up of Tierney family history resources

If you are a Tierney and you have a link to the family that I've written about here at A Light That Shines Again, I would love to hear from you!

Even if you haven't found such a connection, if you have Tierney (Ó Tighearnaigh) ancestry, chances are we are related in some way - although it might a very-very-distant-cousin kind of relationship (there were three main septs of the name in ancient Ireland, according to Irish Names and Surnames by Patrick Woulfe).

If you have a Tierney connection, or are interested in all things Tierney, you may find the following resources helpful.

Want to get a nice overview of the history of the Tierney surname, learn more about the family's coat of arms, learn about distinguished Tierney family members and more? Check out the official website of the Tierney Clans Society. Their stated goal is to "safeguard the heritage of Tierney descendants worldwide through research and education". Now that's a goal that I would like to support! The society is open to all that can show that they have Tierney ancestry. The good information on the website, however, is available to all visitors - Tierney descendant and member of the society or just plain interested websurfer.

While you are visiting the Tierney Clans Society website, you may want to stop by the Tierney Clans Society Y-DNA project info webpage. As I discussed in my posts Mr. Tierney, I presume? and Where Science Meets Family History, DNA testing is the newest source for information about family history. Not only is it new, but it is unique in the information that it can provide for those researching their heritage and the history of a particular surname or family line. The link to the actual project for the Tierney surname is located at the Family Tree DNA Tierney Clans Society Y-DNA project webpage. If you'd like more information about genetic genealogy in general, including the most up to date news about the subject, check out Blaine Bettinger's informative blog The Genetic Genealogist.

Wanting to get in touch with other Tierney family descendants and researchers? The following message boards might be a good place to start:

• Rootsweb's Tierney surname and family mailing list
• Genealogy.com's Tierney Family Genealogy Forum
• Ancestry.com's Tierney message board

The Tierney Clans Society also holds regular clan rallies on both sides of the Atlantic that would be a great place to meet distant cousins.

Want to do some Tierney family research online?

Here are a few sites that you might find helpful:

• The Irish Times' Tierney surname search includes a breakdown of Tierney households as listed in Griffith's Valuation done during the years 1848-64; it also provides a link to the births distribution of Tierneys in Ireland during 1890 and a link to a list of family history publications focusing on the Tierney surname (although at this time only one is listed, it may be the one you are looking for!)


• Linkpendium's Tierney Family: Surname Genealogy, Family History, Family Tree, Family Crest offers a nice assortment of links to all-types-of-things-Tierney


• FamilyHistory.com's Tierney webpage is another good place to visit, as is...


• Cousin Connect's Tierney Genealogy queries webpage

If you are a Tierney and have some other good suggestions for sources of all things Tierney, please contact me and let me know.

In the meantime, I hope that this post has given you inspiration and practical suggestions on how to begin to search for your Tierney family tree and also to help the Tierney Clans Society to complete their goal: to safeguard the heritage of the Tierney family.

I'm doing my part. How about you?

You wouldn't miss a rainbow, would you?

Don't forget to take time to see the 2nd Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture entitled They say there's a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow...

Posted over at Small-leaved Shamrock, this carnival offers links to a colorful collection of posts on Irish research - everything from geography to genetics to loads of good books and online resources specific to genealogy in Ireland.

Check out the carnival to get a head start on your Irish family history projects in the new year. You may find some good starting points for your trip back to your roots in the Emerald Isle.

Irish Geography 101

Want to do genealogy in Ireland? First you need to brush up on your Irish geography - and I don't mean modern day cities and villages. Genealogical research in Ireland requires a familiarity with not only present day geographical names, but administrative divisions from various periods in the past history of the country. Consider the fact that not only are there provinces and counties to become familiar with, but townlands, civil parishes, baronies and even poor law unions.

I remember the moment very well when I learned that my great-great-grandfather Patrick Tierney hailed from County Tipperary. It was a thrill be able to say, "He was from Tipperary!" as opposed to just knowing that I had Irish ancestry.

After the excitement died down from the news, I realized that this fact opened up more questions for me than I might have imagined. Not only was it the largest county in Ireland but it was actually made up of two parts: North Tipperary and South Tipperary. My realization: If I was serious about tracing my roots back to Ireland, my work had just begun.

You may be feeling the same way. Here is a good place to start: a review of the basics and some further resources to get you familiar with Irish geography. Hopefully this little course will give you an advantage when it comes to searching for your roots in the Emerald Isle.

Before you start, you may want to check out The Family History Library's Ireland, How to Find a Place Name and Ireland, How to Find Information About the Place Where Your Ancestor Lived. These webpages offer some suggestions on narrowing down your search to a specific locale in Ireland and then using the microfilm gazetteers in their collection to learn more about the specific area.

Also see my series of articles at Small-leaved Shamrock on how to find your ancestors' places of origin. Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 1 provides suggestions on how to locate your ancestors' counties, and Getting to the roots of your Irish family tree: Part 2 offers help for finding the more specific areas where they originated.

Once you know at least the county of origin, it's necessary to familiarize yourself with Irish geography. You can't get much further into Irish research without understanding how Irish records are organized geographically.

Irish records can be broken down into various divisions:

Provinces & Counties - The four provinces of Ireland are the largest divisions of land in the country and may be the ones you are most familiar with. The counties date back to the 12th-century with the last one being added in the early 17th-century.

• Ulster lies in the northeast, and is made up of counties Antrim, Arnagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan and Tyrone. (Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan became part of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949. Antrim, Arnagh, Down, Fernanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone are today part of the United Kingdom's Northern Ireland.)
  
  
• Connaught in the middle western part of the country includes Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo.
  
  
• Leinster in the southeast is made up of counties Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Longford, Louth, Meath, Offaly, West Meath, Wexford and Wicklow.
  
  
• Munster in the southwest includes Clare, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford.

Poor Law Unions - Established in 1838, these areas were typically named after a local town and were used for tax purposes to support the local poor.

Baronies - An old administrative division no longer in use, a barony is made up of a group of civil parishes within a county, although their boundaries do not always match. There are 273 baronies in Ireland.

Church Parishes - This term usually refers to Roman Catholic parishes, since the Church of Ireland parishes most often conform to civil parish boundaries. The Roman Catholic church parishes are usually larger than the civil parishes.

Civil Parishes - Not the same as church parishes, these divisions normally contain a couple dozen townlands and are important to know when searching for records in Ireland. There are more than 2,000 civil parishes in Ireland. Civil parishes often cross over county and barony boundaries.

Townlands - The smallest of Irish land divisions, these do not necessarily contain towns or residents at all. There are thousands of townlands in Ireland.

When I first started looking to understand the geographic regions of Ireland, I was excited to find Brian Mitchell's A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, 2nd Edition. Not only does his book explain the various administrative divisions of the land, but it provides an extensive assortment of maps covering each county. Large counties, such as Tipperary, are broken down into two sections. The maps break the county down into baronies, civil parishes, church parishes/dioceses and poor law unions. This is a true treasure of a book for those of us who appreciate visual aids.

A nice companion resource to place on your desk along with Mitchell's atlas is James Ryan's Irish Records: Sources for Family & Local History, Revised Edition. Ryan's book is a sort of encyclopedia of source listings for Irish records, arranged county by county. Take your county of interest and you can use this book to learn what records are available, where they are held, and even what dates the records cover. Listings include census and census substitutes, church records, commercial and social directories, family histories, gravestone inscriptions, newspapers, wills and more.

Found the name of the townland your ancestor may have come from but wondering about its corresponding barony, civil parish and poor law union? Try a search using the IreAtlas Townland Database. A similarly helpful online resource is this Irish Times search page for the 1851 General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland.

Digging deeply into places, maps and records can get tiring after awhile. A nice break might be to take some time to read up on the interesting backgrounds of Irish placenames. Ever wondered what a bally, dún, croagh or lough is? This page has a nice listing of the original Gaelic meanings in common elements in Irish placenames. The list is taken from the book Handbook of Irish Genealogy: How to Trace Your Ancestors & Relatives in Ireland. Another online assortment of Gaelic place meanings can be found here. If you want to look for a familiar location in particular, try looking it up within this alphabetical list.

I hope that my little introductory course in Irish geography and the recommended resources above will help to get you further into your search for roots so that you can make an A+ in Irish family history!

The image of Lough Cowey above is courtesy of Jordan McClements.

Map of Irish provinces and counties courtesy of mike.eire.ca.

Your Irish ancestors are online

...or they may be soon.

The Irish Times has announced the National Archives of Ireland's digitization of the 1911 census for Dublin, and is working to add all counties of Ireland for both the 1911 and 1901 censuses.

This is great news for Irish genealogists! Particularly interesting is the fact that, unlike census returns of the U.S. and other English-speaking countries, the records are actually the forms filled out and signed by the head of household, not the census enumerator.

Had your ancestors all emigrated before 1901? You may still find the project relevant to your search for family history. As mentioned by Megan of Roots Television, siblings and other family members often remained behind. Personally, I'm looking forward to searching for Patrick Tierney's family in Tipperary. Unfortunately, it is one of the last counties on the planned digitization schedule, but I'll wait happily. Thanks to the National Archives of Ireland for making research easier on us long-distance cousins!

Thanks to Chris Denham at The Genealogue for announcing this exciting Irish genealogy news in such a timely manner.

Now's your chance - free access to Ancestry.com

Want to try your hand at a little family history research? Take advantage of three free days of access to Ancestry.com. Free access to Ancestry is usually available at many local libraries (although there is no remote access for library patrons). Subscription prices for personal access, however, are quite steep. And personally, I prefer burning the midnight oil when my library's doors have long been closed.

Take advantage of this opportunity and take a look at some online records, including:

• U.S. Census records
• City directories
• Immigration records
• Marriage records
• Old newspapers
• Military records
• More, more, more...

Have fun! And please let me know if you make any exciting discoveries.