CountyCork-L Archives

Archiver > CountyCork > 2003-12 > 1071364055


From: "Elizabeth W. Knowlton" <>
Subject: [Cork] Basic Irish genealogy
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 20:07:35 -0500


Message text written by INTERNET:
>I am astonished at how
often people begin research without doing some background reading first. A
book like John Grenham's 'Tracing your Irish Ancestors' or even just
looking
at some of the web sites like the GENUKI ones for Ireland, should give you
those basic facts.<

Hear! hear!
But please, new readers, do not take any of this advice PERSONALLY.
Those of us on here for a long time just want you all to enjoy the
search while having realistic goals. If you can get back to 1800
you are doing VERY VERY well. Congratulate yourself! That is 200
years ago.

Sometimes I see people posting whose ancestors went to, say,
Virginia, from Ireland in the 1600s or 1700s. If your name is common,
it is unlikely you can do anything with it. Be happy you have them
so far back in the USA.

There is a dreadful gulf in Irish genealogy in the 1700s when
old Gaelic lineages were lost forever, a kind of genocide of
records. As a descendant of Protestant Irish, I find that the story
is more and more complicated the longer I do research. Some of my
lines are Gaelic--they converted, usually in the 1700s and 1800s
in order to survive. There were many more mixed marriages
than I ever imagined then, especially in Cork.

If your people are Roman Catholic, then the records do not
go back very far; however, many from the 19th c do survive
and the wonderful computer indexing projects in each county
are proving. If your people are Church of Ireland, then the
records do go back further; but, hey, about half of them
were burned in 1922. So we have all lost in different ways.

A totally computer thing: Please be sure to put RETURNS
at the end of your screens rather than letting the type
wrap around automatically. When the messages go onto
the List, at least for Digest subscribers, the lines without
returns just go on forever to the right and are extremely
difficult to read. I often just delete w/o reading. THANKS.

Elizabeth W. Knowlton

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