I did so much deep Irish research over the last couple of weeks and had such great luck with FindMyPast.com I decided to bite the bullet and buy a membership. They are often on sale (less than $200 annually), and they not only have Irish records, they also have UK records USA records, DNA matching, and searchable family trees.
They are very excited about the publication of the 1921 Census and if that would be of help to you in your research you can upgrade the membership for another $94.51 for full access. Otherwise, you can do "micropayments" to view individual records in the 1921 census.
I was able to get my mother's family back another two generations than I had been able to on Ancestry at FindMyPast. I had found that Catherine Clark was the widowed matriarch of the Traynor clan that migrated to the Catskills area of NY in 1848, but I had no idea who the father was.
One can assume from Irish naming traditions that one of the four sons was named after his father (Joseph, James, Peter, or Thomas), but what if they all hadn't come to the US? I had found some church records on Ancestry, but FindMyPast had more! Below is Peter's baptism record, showing his mother was Catherine Clark and his father was James! I found similar records for his siblings matching the birth years on the US Censuses.
I continued searching under church and civil records, and found father James's parents, Catherine's parents, and their marriage record! I was also able to figure out how some of these family members claimed to be born in Northern Ireland, and some claimed the Republic of Ireland as native land. They were born in County Louth, which is the smallest county in Ireland just northwest of Dublin, and it is on the border with Armagh in Northern Ireland. They are from the Catholic Parish of Ardee, which straddles both countries! This will clear up some confusion in additional research. Again we see that doing genealogy requires studying history and geography!
I can heartily recommend FindMyPast as a resource for research in the UK and Ireland, especially if you try it out during a two week free trial period.
It was easy to upload my existing tree from Ancestry, but it is a little annoying to have hints pop up for US Census records I had already verified. I check each one just to make sure I didn't miss anything though!
One huge caveat, it appears that every time you look at a record, FMP saves the image under "My Records." Besides the ones I have accepted, there are also the ones I decided were irrelevant. I will be spending quite a bit of time deleting these records now that I figured that out; it would have been easier to delete them at the end of every session.
I wish you the Luck of the Irish in your research this week! Please send me any questions you may have about your own tree, I am always happy to take a look for free. Please do like and share if you enjoyed this article.
Thank you so much!
Leslie Ryan
Not receiving any compensation from any link or reference. No copyright infringement is intended for any image used.