New resources and databases

Over the past year, Foundation staff and volunteers have been developing new resources and databases which are accessible through our website. Some of these are available to everyone, while others are exclusive to our members.

‘A Sense of Place’

A major new addition to the Discover section on the website is called ‘A Sense of Place’. This was created in response to the regular comments made to us by visitors to these shores of the strong ‘sense of place’ that they encounter – that sense of connection to a particular locality that results from an intense familiarity with it.

The ‘A Sense of Place’ section on our website includes a range of resources that can help browsers discover more about the locality in which their ancestors lived. These include the Ordnance Survey Memoirs (OSM), compiled in the 1830s, which detail the landscape and situation, buildings and antiquities, land-holdings and population, employment and livelihoods of the parishes. The surveyors recorded the habits of the people, their food, drink, dress and customs.

Only one volume was published when the compilation of Ordnance Survey Memoirs was ongoing. This was for Templemore parish, Co. Londonderry, which includes the city of Derry on the west side of the River Foyle, published in 1837 (a link to this volume on the Internet Archive is included). In the 1990s, the remaining memoirs were published in 40 volumes by the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. Usefully, we have included coloured maps for each of the Ulster counties indicating the OSM volume in which a particular parish is found.

We have also uploaded flipbooks of each of the volumes in the Place Names of Northern Ireland series produced by the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, based in Queen’s University Belfast. Each volume examines the cultural and linguistic history of the region and meticulously documents the rich heritage of the county, offering invaluable insights into the landscape and serve as indispensable guides to understanding the significance of place names in shaping the locality.

Another sub-section includes resources for studying townlands in more detail. These include indexes of townlands (as well as parishes, baronies and poor law unions) prepared as part of the Census of Ireland. Two other volumes are also included here as flipbooks. One is Townlands in Ulster: Local History Studies, edited by Bill Crawford and Bob Foy, published by the Ulster Historical Foundation and the Federation for Ulster Local Studies in 1998, which included a series of case studies of individual townlands.

The other volume is The Heart’s Townland: Marking Boundaries in Ulster, edited by Brian Turner, published by the Ulster Local History Trust in association with the Cavan-Monaghan Rural Development Co-Operative Society in 2004. This book includes a series of essays deriving from a conference organised by the Trust and held in Monaghan in November 2003, which brought together participants from across Ulster and beyond to explore the significance of townlands.

Bringing old websites back to life

In 2011, the Foundation was involved in a project in the Co. Antrim village of Doagh, which involved collating details on the history of the village and surrounding district and building a database of genealogical records. A website – Doagh Ancestry – was created to host this information, but eventually the software supporting this became obsolete and the website ceased to be accessible. The Foundation’s offer to rebuild the original portal as part of its own website was accepted. The history of Doagh and its hinterland can now be found in a special section of our website.

The genealogical databases have been incorporated within the Foundation's own online datasets, but remain freely accessible. These databases comprise: baptisms for Doagh Methodist Church and Kilbride Presbyterian Church, 1848–1900; 1901 and 1911 census records; names from the First Valuation, c. 1835, and Griffith’s Valuation, c. 1861; subscribers to building works at Kilbride graveyard, 1831 and 1873; wills and administrations, 1858–1943; and miscellaneous PRONI references for the Doagh area, 1760–1951.

Arising in part from the Doagh Ancestry project, the Foundation was also involved in the South Antrim Living Memories project (SALM). This was a community-driven project that brought together enthusiastic and committed volunteers and local people in Doagh, Toome and Whitehead who were willing to share their memories and so paint a clearer picture of life in their respective communities in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As with the Doagh Ancestry website, the software became redundant and so we rebuilt the original SALM site within our own website.

New databases

Some 50,000 new records have been added to our online databases in recent months with a focus on more unusual or harder to find datasets. These include the 1861 census for the parish of Bangor, County Down, which is available as a copy among the local authority records for Bangor. This provides the names of residents in each household by townland, with the name of the landlord and other remarks. Researchers will be well aware that virtually nothing of the 1861 Irish census survives making this resource all the more valuable.

Another is a census of 1852 of Christ Church, a former Church of Ireland place of worship in College Square North, Belfast. Running to nearly 3,500 names, the census is extraordinarily detailed.

It includes the name, address, age, and, where applicable, the occupation of those affiliated to the church. Additional details, include comments on family relationships (e.g. ‘cousin of’) or status (e.g. widow).

Other new databases include:

Abattoir Register of Licensed Butchers in Belfast, 1910–35, which includes the names, addresses and ages of butchers (including slaughtermen, shop assistants, and apprentices) to whom licenses were issued by Belfast Corporation; and Report on the State of Gaols of Ireland, 1802, which includes lists of names of persons tried at county assizes across Ireland in 1802, as well as lists of prisoners in county gaols on 1 January 1803.

In addition, significant improvements have been made to several of our key genealogical databases. These updates include adding locations to records where possible, correcting previously unnoticed small errors, enhancing details, and optimising over 100,000 records for easier and more accurate searching. This has unlocked over 60,000 records that were previously hidden in our archives.

Moreover, in several instances, we have amalgamated a range of similar datasets into a single database. For example, Electoral Registers and Voter Lists includes over 52,000 records and is composed of the following datasets:

• Electors of the borough of Belfast registered at the special sessions under the Reform Act distinguishing how each of them voted at the first election (1833)
• List of electors for Co. Antrim, 1857
• List of electors for Newry, 1868
• List of electors for the borough of Belfast, 1865
• List of electors for the city of Dublin election, 1865.
• List of voters for the Co. Londonderry by-election, 1697
• List of voters in Downpatrick, Co. Down, 1797
• List of voters in the general election for the city of Londonderry, 1868
• List of voters published in Newry Commercial Telegraph, 3 October 1839
• List of voters published in Newry Examiner and Louth Advertiser, 1 January 1840
• List of voters published in Northern Standard, 13 June 1846
• Polling register districts in Co. Waterford, 1880
• Register of voters in Armagh borough, 1859
• Register of voters in Armagh, 1856
• Register of voters in Belfast, 1876
• Register of voters in the baronies of Cary, Dunluce and Glenarm, Co. Antrim, 1856

We have also brought together various lists of subscribers for books into a single database: Index to Subscribers of Publications Printed in Ireland. This runs to nearly 23,000 individual records drawn from the following books:

• Historic Memorials of the 1st Presbyterian Church of Belfast, 1887
• Poems by the Late Hugh Tynan of Donaghadee, 1803
• William Crawford’s History of Ireland, 1783
• James Orr’s Poems on Various Subjects, 1804
• Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837
• Andrew McKenzies Poems and Songs on Different Subjects, 1810
• John McKinlay’s book on the Giant’s Causeway, 1819
• John Anketell’s Poems on Several Subjects, 1793
• John Corry’s Odes and Elegies, Descriptive & Sentimental: With The Patriot, A Poem, 1797
• Samuel Thomson’s Poems on Different Subjects, Partly in the Scottish Dialect, 1793
• John Searson’s A Poem or Rural Entertainment, 1795
• ‘Taylor and Skinner’s Maps of the Roads of Ireland, 1778
• John Cameron’s The Messiah, 1768
• Rev. James MacCary’s, The Sure Way to Heaven, 1797
• William Anderson of Saintfield’s Poetry Collection, 1830
• Heterogenea or Medley for the Benefit of the Poor, 1803

We would also draw attention to a database of Tenant Farmers on Different Estates in Ulster, which covers the period from the mid-seventeenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century and contains nearly 10,000 entries. The items included in this database include:

* This dataset includes the names of tenants appearing in notices published in the Belfast Newsletter advertising the letting of land which included the names of sitting tenants. This compilation is a work in progress and currently runs to over 1,100 entries. Most of the advertisements are for properties in counties Antrim and Down. Fuller information can be found in the original advertisement. Online access to the Belfast Newsletter is available through Ancestry and the British Newspaper Archive.