Graham/Doyle

Hi Robert,

How lovely to get the Irish salutation! Dia dhuit!

It would be great to have a more preice place of origin, but it is still useful to have a county to check. That at least will help to narrow it down a bit. There are a number of records you could check to get you started.

You can check for information about the frequency of the name in the mid-19th century and any other variant spellings of the name here: http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/

Civil registration records are available from the General Register Office (GRO). These start from 1864 however. You can access the website here: http://www.groireland.ie/research.htm

You could also try checking the land records called the Tithe Applotment Books (1823-38) or the later Griffith's Valuation (1848-64). Griffith's is freely available here: www.askaboutireland.com or here: www.failteromhat.com Failte Romhat has lots of other useful links you could try looking at. Tithe Applotment Books (1823-38). Microfilm copies of the books for all of Ireland are available at the National Archives of Ireland (NAI) http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy1/genealogy-records/tithe-applotment-books-and-the-primary-griffith-valuation/ or the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS).

Have you checked this website? http://infowanted.bc.edu/

The Tithe Applotment List might be of use to you, or at least interesting for you. These lists constitute the only nationwide survey for the period, and are valuable because the heaviest burden of the tithes to the Established Church, the Church of Ireland, fell on the poorest, for whom few other records survive. The information in the Tithes is quite basic, typically consisting of townland name, landholder's name, area of land and tithes payable. Many Books also record the landlord's name and an assessment of the economic productivity of the land. the tax payable was based on the average price of wheat and oats over the seven years up to 1823, and was levied at a different rate depending on the quality of land. For Parishes where the registers do not begin until after 1850, this information can be useful, as they are often the only surviving early records. They can provide valuable circumstantial evidence, especially where a holding passed from father to son in the period between the Tithe survey and Griffith's Valuation.

Please make sure you link anyone else in your family who is interested in their Irish heritage to our site - and indeed anyone else you know of Irish heritage.

Kind regards,

Sinead Cooney

Genealogist (Ireland XO)

If you check this pay to view site I think they may have transcripts of the childrens baptisms.

http://wicklow.rootsireland.ie/

To get info without paying you can search for childs name using parents names, and by adjusting the date parameters you can find the year they were born - you can't get the full details - but if you want to locate all the children of a given family this is an easy and free way to do it. Search for the child just by surname and parents names and using the date range you can get an idea of how many children were born. Then by reducing the date range you can work out which year each child was born. To get the child's name just work through the alphabet - child firstname J will get you John, James, Joan, Jason, Jean. Then Jo narrows it down to Joan or John and so on. It can be a bit time consuming but can give great results. Once you know the names of the children you can decide whether or not to purchase the transcript.

Bob Graham