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Subject: Re: IRELAND - Charles & Mary Beattie (circa 1820?) What County?
Date: 9 Mar 2005 09:26:45 -0700

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Liz
No problem. I'm researching my Irish ancestors too and it's a nightmare when you've got a common Irish surname.
It appears that the Beatties are mostly found in County Cavan (Ulster/N.Ireland). If you have census info on John and Edna's children from 1930, they might have said their parents were born "Irish Free State" to indicate that they were from Southern Ireland. Sometimes enumerators wrote "Irish Free State" and other times just "Ireland". Whether this is because enumerators were lazy or the children of immigrants just didn't specify, it's hard to know. In earlier censuses, the distinction was not made because Southern Ireland (Eire) broke away from British rule in 1922 (The Easter Uprising). For awhile after 1922, Irish people generally referred to their birthplace/place of residence as either "Irish Free State" (the south) or sometimes Irish-English(meaning Ulster/Northern Ireland). Sometimes Irish people merely said "Ireland" when asked "where born" and that's when it gets tricky for those of us researching our Irish ancestors. I always thought my O'Neill gt. grandmoth!
er was from Southern Ireland, in all the US censuses from 1900 to 1930 she said "born Ireland". I only recently discovered that she was actually from Belfast (Northern Ireland)! Anyway, good luck! Oh, another thought - you might check the WW1 draft registration cards and see if you find John's son - as sometimes in the "where father born" section, the name of the actual town/city is recorded.

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