Page 24 - O Mahony Society Newsletter December 2024_Neat

Thus documenting carefully as he works back, Ireland. They had learned not to trust government,
he will arrive at his immigrant ancestor. Then, before
seeking to extend his research to Ireland, he must
establish the immigrant’s date and place of birth,
parents’ names, and the date of leaving Ireland.
All genealogical investigation starts in the
home – a truism for any nationality anywhere
in the world. Most modern American families
will have among their inherited possessions a
family bible; letter; birth and death certificates;
marriage records; government papers such as
a naturalization certificate or military discharge;
deeds; photographs; newspaper clippings, or other
memorabilia that will yield invaluable information,
tracing perhaps several generations of a family.
Not all Irish immigrant families had a bible. Some
instead kept a “Lives of the Saints” which served for
recording important family events. Such a book,
whether bible or ‘Lives’ is the source most likely to
provide details of the birthplace and parentage
of the immigrant ancestor. Correspondence,
especially letters from Ireland, is another rich
source. The townland name generally appeared
in the address at the top of the first page, along
with the date, thus identifying the exact location of
the ancestral home in Ireland. Some 19th century
emigrants carried a photograph of a family
member with them to their new country. If the
photographer’s name is legible, he may be found
in an Irish directory of the period, and some idea of
the whereabouts of the family may be inferred.
However, the circumstances of the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants did not
allow them the luxury of keeping records and
preserving family mementoes. With the high
mortality rate for infants and women of child-
bearing age, it was an achievement for a family to
survive. For many an [Ed. Note: the remainder of
this sentence was deleted in the original publication
and is lost to history.]
One must remember, too that many of
the Irish settlers carried with them to their new
country an indifference – indeed, an aversion –
to governmental records because of the family
experience under English rule and landlordism in
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and felt that the less the authorities knew about
them, the better. The priest has remained the one
trusted authoritive [sic] figure in the lives of the Irish,
no matter where in the world they settled. So the
immigrant retained his devotion to the sacraments
and trusted the parish priest to keep the records.
Therefore, the next best source of genealogical
information is the parish church attended by
the family. Clergy made baptism and marriage
records, and burial records if there was a parish
cemetery. Diocesan cemeteries were established
in the heavy population centres of the United States
in the 19th century. There was also consecrated
ground for Catholics in public cemeteries.
Record-searching in a diocesan or public
cemetery for post-famine immigrants can be most
rewarding. There is usually a cemetery office where
records of interments are kept. Indexing of the
record and fees for searching may vary, but in the
absence of both the family bible and government
registration of births and deaths, the list of interments
in the family plot may reconstruct a family group
and provide clues for searching other records.
Transcriptions of tombstones from all over the
United States in published or manuscript form
are located in many libraries. Only the more
prosperous Irish, and often these were of the second
generation of the family, could afford a headstone
or an obituary in the local newspaper. Where a
tombstone does give data on birth and birthplace
in Ireland, it is apt to have mistakes or garbled
spelling of Irish placenames, since the information
was supplied second-hand and long years after
the birth, or even death, of the deceased.
Official records, i.e., public records made by
the government concerning its citizens, are the
next category for genealogical research. All levels
of government in the United States – county, state,
and federal – have records of genealogical value.
In tracing a family, therefore, a distinction must be
made between the kinds of records that are kept
at each level.
Each state in the United States is “sovereign,”
with its own unique historical development, own