Page 28 - O Mahony Society Newsletter December 2024_Neat

register at the correct time so that the child would be stronger for the medication.

Protestant marriages were legally registered from 1845, and if researching at the county
registration officers [sic], remember that in any one area, there will be separate marriage books
for each denomination – because marriages usually take place within a religious building, and
the minister is the registrar. Births and deaths are recorded in the one volume for the Dispensary/
Registrar’s District. An alternative to searching in the county registers is to consult the annual indexes
in the General Registrar’s Office (G.R.O.), Joyce House, Lombard, St., Dublin, 2. (1) This office provides
a research area, charges a small fee to consult the indexes and is open Monday – Friday, 9:30 pm
[sic] – 4:30 pm with a closed lunch-hour. The advantage of working here is that one volume contains
an alphabetical list by year and that a photocopy of the actual entry is available @ £1.50.

Church Registers: Having located the area, and the parish, the best place to search pre-1864 are
[sic] the church registers. County Cork has three major dioceses, Cork, Cloyne and Ross. Fig 2 shows
the Roman Catholic boundaries. These dioceses are united in the Church of Ireland.

Church of Ireland Parishes: The civil parish is usually the same as the church [sic] of Ireland parish,
but there has been much amalgamation of parishes into Unions. For example, the Bandon Union is
comprised of the parishes of Kilbrittain, Rathclaren, Ballymodan, Kilbrogan, Innshannon [sic], Brinny,
Knockavilla, Leigmoney – and once included Killowen. The choice for research is to consult the local
rector – or two Dublin-based archives. The Representative Church Body [RBC] Library, Braemar Park,
Dublin, 14 (2) and the Public Record Office at the Four Courts, Dublin (3). The latter National Archive
will be located at Bishop Street, Dublin by the end of 1991.

Roman Catholic Registers: All RC baptisms and marriage registers, up to 1880, are on microfilm
in the National Library, Kildare Street, Dublin, 2. However, only those of the Cork diocese may be
consulted without written permission from the relevant parish priest. Therefore write to the local
clergy for this permission in advance of your research. There is a general belief that church registers
were destroyed in the Four Courts fire of 1922. This is not true of Roman Catholic registers, which are
always in the custody of the parish priest. Those that were burnt were Church of Ireland registers, but
many of these were not lodged in the Fourt Courts and therefore not damaged.

Many church registers in county Cork are being indexed and computerised. At present, the
diocese of Cloyne area is covered by a few centres, such as the Mallow Heritage Centre, 27/28
Bank Place, Mallow, Co. Cork (4) and the Duhallow Heritage Group, James O Keeffe Memorial
Centre, Newmarket, Co. Cork. There are already 400,000 Cork and Ross BMD entries indexed by the
centre at Bandon, but there will be two centres, one Cork city-based, established in the near future
to complete this computerisation. County Cork has over 100 Roman Catholic parishes, and it is likely
that there will be over 6M BMD records to computerise.

Once you have located your parish register, there is a limit to the information you will find. One
limit is that of the dating. Cork city parishes, St. Mary’s Cathedral (North Parish), St. Peter & Paul’s
(Middle Parish) and St. Finbar’s (South Parish) have registers which began in the mid eighteenth
century. The registers of other areas begin much later and two, Castlehaven and Timoleague/
Clogagh, do not commence until 1842. County Cork Church of Ireland registers are also variable in
dating – and so is the information. On one page there may be listed six or seven sponsors for a child;
another baptismal entry might read ‘A soldier’s child.’ Unfortunately addresses are rarely written in
the registers.

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