MyHeritage Adds Millions of Irish Census Records
Looking for more information on the people from the Irish side of your family tree? MyHeritage might be able to help you with that. They have added millions of Irish census records to their SuperSearch.
The newly added records come from two Irish censuses: the 1901 census and the 1911 census. Each one covered all of Ireland’s 32 counties and enumerated the entire Irish population (at the time). Ireland began taking a census in 1821. However, the earliest complete census in existence is the 1901 census. The previous ones have been destroyed. The 1901 census was taken on March 31, 1901. The 1911 census was taken on April 2, 1911.
What kind of information can you find in the censuses? The 1901 census lists every member of a household. This includes the people’s names, ages, gender and relationship to the person who was the head of the household. It also includes information on each person’s religion, occupation, and marital status.
You can discover the county a person was born in (unless they were born outside of Ireland). Those born outside of Ireland had the country they were born in listed on the census. The census also noted whether or not a person spoke Gaelic and whether or not a person could read or write.
The 1911 census also lists out every member of a household. Again, this includes the people’s names, ages, gender and relationship to the person who was the head of the household. It also included each person’s religion, occupation, and marital status. It also noted the county a person was born in (unless the person was born outside of Ireland).
Interestingly, the 1911 census gathered more information than the marital status of a person. In addition, it recorded the number of years that a woman had been married to her current husband. It also counted the number of children that had been born to that couple, and noted the number of children who were still alive.
Genealogists who use MyHeritage, and who have Irish roots, can receive a notification about any record in the MyHeritage database that matches someone who is in your family tree. If an individual in your family tree connects to a branch in another MyHeritage user’s family tree, you will be altered via the MyHeritage Instant Discovery. This enables you to chose whether or not to copy that entire branch into your existing family tree.
The newly added information from the 1901 and the 1911 Irish census can be searched now. The collection includes every census from 1894 to 1901 for England, Wales, the Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man, in addition to the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses. There are also some extracts from the Scotland 1841, 1851, and 1861 censuses included.
Image by Eric on Flickr.
Related Articles at FamilyTree.com:
* Research Irish Genealogy at Library of Congress
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