Finding Herstories in your Family Tree
In September 2019, the children of Ireland were asked to nominate their heroines, and this inspired many of them to look to the women in their families and in their family trees. Family tree research can be very rewarding and with every day that passes, more and more records are being made available online – many for free! It is the perfect activity to get into right now as we social distance and remain in our homes.
For those of you interested in conducting family tree research, but not sure where to start, we’ve compiled a list of websites, and advice, that can help you forward.
Who might you find in your family tree?
1. Talk to your family
This has to be your first port of call. If you’re lucky enough to still have your grandparents in your life, ring them and ask them questions. Here are some useful questions to ask them that could lead you further back in your tree and give you a better understanding of what life was like for your ancestors:
Where and when were you born?
Who were your parents?
When did your parents get married?
Where were your parents from?
What occupation had your parents?
What was life like for you as a child?
What were your grandparents called?
Do you remember where your grandparents lived?
What occupation had your grandparents?
What do you remember about your grandparents?
Ring your grandparents and ask them about their childhood, parents and grandparents.
Answering these questions should help you when you begin to look for records. You should also ask your grandparents or older relatives to see old family photos as it’s great to be able to put a face to the people you’re finding out about!
2. The National Census of Ireland, 1901 and 1911
This is a free resource compiled by the National Archives of Ireland and it is really invaluable to family historians. This is where the questions you asked your grandparents (or older relatives) come in handy. To start, you need to know some details of an ancestor who would have been alive in 1901 and/or 1911. I would recommend starting with 1911 - search using the name of your ancestor and the county they lived in. If your ancestor had an unusual surname, then you might be in luck when it comes to narrowing down the results. However, in most cases, you could get multiple pages of results all for the one name – so how do you narrow it down? Knowing the townland or street where your ancestor lived will really help here. If you know the names of other family members who you’d expect to be living with your ancestor, then this will also help you to narrow down the household.
Knowing the names of your ancestors’ siblings can help you to narrow down the households when looking for your family in the Census, particularly if you have a common surname.
Knowing the names of your ancestors’ siblings can help you to narrow down the households when looking for your family in the Census, particularly if you have a common surname.
What information will you get from a Census? Hopefully, you will find out more about your ancestors’ family – who they were living with the night the Census was taken in 1911. You may even get another step back in your tree if your ancestor is living with their parents, or even their grandparents! You will find out the ages of each member of the household – although beware, our ancestors’ ages often fluctuated from record to record and may not have been accurate for a multitude of reasons, so don’t place too much trust in this! You will also find out their religion, birthplace, occupation, whether they could read or write, whether they could speak Irish, their marital status, whether they had any illnesses, how many years they were married, how many children they had and their relation to the head of the household.
When you find your ancestor and click on their name you will be brought into a page that has been transcribed and is very easy to read. But, if you’d like to view the original document, then scroll down to the section ‘View census images’ and click on ‘Household Return (Form A).’ To find out about the type of house your ancestor lived in, click into ‘House and Building Return (Form B1)’ and to find out if your ancestor had out-houses such as a cow house or stable, click into ‘Out-Offices and Farm-Steadings Return (Form B2).’ This last form might seem a bit daunting when you go into it first because there are no names and a lot of numbers – it lists the out-houses of not only your ancestors, but also your ancestor’s neighbours. In order to find out which line relates to your family you must go back and check Household Return (Form A) and on the top right-hand corner you’ll see a number. You then find that number down the left-hand column in Form B2 and follow the line over to see what out-houses your family had.
And now that you’ve found your ancestor in 1911, you should be able to find them ten years before that in 1901. Bear in mind that they may have been living at home with their parents in 1901 or in the case of those living in cities, they may have had a different address. This is where knowing other members of the family can come in handy.
Don’t know when a photo was taken? Pay attention to the clothes and hairstyle of your ancestor and that might give you an idea of when it was taken.
3. Birth, Marriage and Death Records
Don’t know when a photo was taken? Pay attention to the clothes and hairstyle of your ancestor and that might give you an idea of when it was taken.
Finding the birth, marriage and death records of your ancestors can be really exciting and there has never been a better time to search for these than now because you can access them totally for free on IrishGenealogy.ie. This is where finding your ancestors in the Census prior to this can be helpful. As I said, your ancestors ages aren’t always correct on the Census but if you don’t know when exactly they were born, then the Census can give you a basic idea. On this website I’d recommend clicking on ‘Civil Records’ as the ‘Church Records’ aren’t fully there yet. Once you do that, you’ll be asked to input the name of your ancestor, and the year range of when they were born/married/died. So, if in the 1911 Census your ancestor said they were 30 years old that would make them born in 1881, so I would input a year range of maybe one or two years either side of 1881, effectively searching between 1879-1883. You also have the option of inputting a Civil Registration District, but I tend not to use this.
On marriage certificates, the couple’s father’s names were recorded, so checking this record can be a good way to verify a birth record (which records the child’s mother and father’s names) or vice versa.
There are limits to these sources, in that you can’t access recent records online - this is to protect people’s privacy, and most only go as far back as 1864, but if you get back that far, you’ll be doing well.
The records available are as follows:
Birth records : 1864-1920
Marriage records : 1845-1944
Death records : 1878-1969
4. Extra Help
Rootschat.com is a very good website if you have questions about your ancestors or the process of family tree research. It is free but you have to create an account. Once you do this, you will have access to over 6 million posts by other family historians and you’ll be able to ask any questions you have, from advice on where to go next to what life would have been like for your ancestor at a particular time.
If you stick at researching your family tree, you’re bound to come across a record/records that are very difficult to read – but you can use this website to ask for help in interpreting handwriting! You can also ask for help in restoring old or damaged photographs (see below). I cannot state enough how useful this website has been to me in my own family tree research. There are over 270,000 people signed up to this website, making it one of the busiest and largest free family history forums out there, so do make use of it!
The photos below are an example of the kind of photo restoration that I was helped with on RootsChat.
Before
After
5. Military Archives
The Irish Military Archives website is a brilliant resource for anyone with ancestors who were in the military or who may have been involved in the 1916 Rising, War of Independence or Civil War. The Military Service Pensions Collection is particularly brilliant as it contains a lot of handwritten personal accounts of what each applicant did during this time, as well as reports and recommendations from people they worked with. The website is very easy to use, and it’s free!
Even if you don’t have any ancestors included in this resource, it’s still worth perusing because the stories, as told by the people who lived them, are incredible. Some of the herstories on our website are based on the testaments given by women in their pension applications. For example, why not read Helena Hegarty’s application; she was involved in keeping a British spy barricaded in her local workhouse for a number of weeks in 1921. Or read about Donegal girl Mary Kane, possibly the youngest Cumann na mBan member, who joined with her mother when she was just ten-years old. These are the kinds of stories you can find in the Military Service Pensions Collection.
Another free resource is the Griffith’s Valuation which was a valuation of every taxable piece of agricultural or built property in Ireland and was published county-by-county between the years 1847 and 1864. All you need to know is your family name and the area your family lived - and you could find out about the type of land/amount of land your ancestor had. Unfortunately with this source, only the head of the household is named, so where you have a common surname in an area, it can be difficult to pinpoint your ancestor.
7. Further Research…
Go through old photo albums and when it’s safe to spend time with your grandparents again, ask to see their old photos
If you’ve got this far and you’re eager to find out more about your ancestors, I would suggest signing up to Ancestry.co.uk and FindMyPast.ie - both of which are quite expensive, but really worth it if you’re very interested in continuing your family tree research and wanting to understand more about your ancestor’s lives. You can also physically create your family tree on both of these sites, making it easier to follow different lines.
Laura Geraldine Lennox was nominated by her great-great grand niece Kate as part of the Who’s Your Heroine? project on RTÉjr.
Photo cred: Karen Fitzgerald
Ancestry has millions of records, from military and church records to the Census records of the UK and USA. You can also connect with other people who may share common ancestors with you. Ancestry also do DNA tests. I had my own grandfather do a DNA test because his father was an orphan and we did'n’t know where that side of our family came from. Through DNA, we have managed to track our family tree back many more generations and confirm where my grandfather’s father came from. Doing a DNA test can be a very personal decision, but in my particular case it was vital to confirm where we came from. If you’re interested in doing a DNA test, or want to further understand how a DNA test can help in family tree research, then you can read my own story here.
FindMyPast is brilliant for newspapers. And newspapers are brilliant for understanding your ancestor’s life beyond what’s recorded in official records (if they made it into the newspapers). For example, one of my own ancestors was very active in the tenant right movement of the 1850s and through newspapers I was able to find speeches he made at demonstrations, letters he wrote to the public discussing the problems etc. It was incredible to be able to read the words he spoke and wrote all those years ago, and that was thanks to the newspapers. Newspapers can also hold information on deaths, marriages and funeral information - all of which could add a personal touch to the information you might already have.
Figuring out old occupations…
Have you found your ancestor in a Census but are unsure what their occupation means? This list can help you figure out what old or unusual jobs your ancestor held.
8. Your local library
When it’s safe to do so again, you should take a trip to your local library for further advice on how to proceed with your family tree. They can often point you in the right direction and sometimes they will have historical records that they can show you as well! The library was a great help to Kate and her mammy Karen when they were researching their ancestor Laura Lennox for the RTÉjr Who’s Your Heroine? project!
9. 1921 Census release for England & the 1939 Register
As of January 2022, the 1921 Census records for families living in England and Whales have been made available through FindMyPast! These records, at the minute, are pay-per-view so you don’t need a subscription to the website, but you will need to pay €4.10 for every Census record you view. This is a great resource and well worth the money if you did have family in England or Wales at this time. These records will give you your family’s names, ages, occupations and address of occupation, birthplace, and information on how many children a couple has.
Similarly, if you had family living in England in 1939 - the 1939 Register will be of interest to you. It was similar to a Census, taken on the eve of the second World War to get an idea of the demographics of the country. The information you’ll find on these records include: Name, Full date of birth, Address, Marital status and Occupation. You can find these records on FindMyPast.
10. Scottish Ancestors
Scottish ancestors? Then ScotlandsPeople is the place for you. On this site you can search Statutory Registers (Birth, Marriage, Civil Partnerships, Divorce and Death records) for Scotland as well as Scottish Census’ (1841-1911), Valuation Rolls, Church Registers, Poor Relief and Migration Records and Legal Records (Wills, Military Tribunals etc.) This is a fantastic site however, it can be costly. Each record is pay-per-view. You buy ‘credits’ (the fewest you can purchase is 30 credits for £7.50, the most is 160 credits for £40) and the ‘cost’ of records varies, however to view things like birth, marriage or death records will cost you 6 credits per record (so be sure the record you want to view is one relevant to you before you buy it!)
The 1921 Scottish Census will be released on this site in the second half of 2022.
Trying to find LGBTQ+ ancestors?
Because being LGBTQ+ was criminalized in many countries until very recently (and is still illegal in many countries) LGBTQ+ people had to be careful and secretive. But gay people have always existed and there are some tips and tricks available to maybe help you discover the LGBTQ+ members of your family tree.
Tips from Ancestry can be accessed here.
Tips from FindMyPast can be accessed here.
Other tips can be found here.
Common obstacles to be aware of:
Spelling. The spelling of a surname can differ from record to record and this can be very difficult when you’re trying to find an ancestor. This happened mainly because a lot of people used to be illiterate and so the person recording the information would spell the name however they thought it should be spelled, while another person may have spelled it another way again. For example, my ancestors had the surname ‘Donoghue’ but I’ve found records of it spelled as ‘Donohue', ’Donohoe', ‘Donahue’ and ‘Donaghue.’ It’s also worth keeping in mind that given names too could be spelled differently than what you might expect to find. For example, a person may have went by ‘Kitty’ or ‘Kate’ but used her official name ‘Catherine’ in official documents, or vice versa. Nicknames are not always obvious either. A common name in Ireland used to be ‘Nora(h)’ which actually derived from the name ‘Honora.’ So if you’re unsure, a quick google, for example ‘Nicknames of Sarah’, should give you ideas of what to search in records if you’re struggling to find your ancestor.
Ages. As already outlined, it’s quite common to see irregularities when it comes to our ancestors ages. There are many reasons for this, but it is important you keep it in mind when you’re looking through records. It is not completely uncommon, for example, to see your ancestor age twenty years in the space of ten years between the 1901 and 1911 Census! It’s also common to see some white lies when it comes to recording ages on marriage certificates.
Doing your own family history research is so rewarding. You’d be amazed by the stories you could uncover. It is also a fun activity to do with your children/parents and as outlined above, you can do a lot of it these days completely for free! So why not get started now, and maybe you’ll uncover a herstory like suffragette Laura Lennox!
List and photos by Katelyn Hanna.