Have
you got Irish people in your family tree?
If
you have, and they were Catholics, you may have been spending the
last few days the same way as I have, scrolling through the
newly-released images of parish registers from the National Library of Ireland.
And
going cross-eyed deciphering the handwriting, the abbreviated first
names and the just plain odd-looking ones.
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| National Library of Ireland, CC by YvonneM |
These
records are pure gold dust for those of us with Irish ancestors. And
they’re free to view, print and download. I’m very grateful to
the NLI for putting them online for those of us who can’t visit
their (wonderful) building in Dublin to look through the microfiches
there. It would be petty to grumble about the fact that they’re not
indexed. But just to make the job of scrolling through all those
pages easier, I thought I’d pass on some tips I’ve found useful
during my search for my ancestors, the Delanys or Delaneys in the
parish of Tomacork (also called Carnew), on the border of counties
Wicklow and Wexford.
I’m
going to use these Tomacork documents to illustrate my points,
because I’ve become familiar with many of their quirks. I hope this
will be a helpful starting point for your reading of similar
resources.
The
first tip is – keep going. I found that, as my eyes got used to the
handwriting of the various priests and the names which came up again
and again, reading the records grew easier. So don’t give up. Like
so many worthwhile things, reading these records can get easier when
you practise.
 |
| Patt (Patrick) Rossiter, with a long s |
If
you’re new to reading old documents, you might be confused by the
unusual shapes of many letters. The records I’ve been looking at
date from 1785 onwards, so they’re not from too long ago, but
they’re still old enough to take some deciphering if you don’t
know how to mentally transcribe them. Long or ‘leading’ s, for
example – the one that looks like an f without a cross-bar.
Or
the very curly capital letters that don’t look at all like print
ones. Here are a few:
 |
| Two examples of Anne (top L, bottom R) |
 |
| A curly H in Hugh |
 |
| Two examples of capital K in Kelly |
 |
| A capital B that looks like an M in Brislawn |
The capital A in Anne, with no cross-bar, takes a bit of getting used to, and capital H and K look similar. In fact the second Kelly takes some deciphering.
There are a few websites with old handwriting alphabets which can help with reading records. This one is a good place to start, and I've listed more at the end of this post.
Luckily,
when we read old records we’re not just reading a sequence of
letters. Though that is often the best way of deciphering words. It
takes me back to school... C, A, T, cat...
You may need to just write
down the letters you’re sure of and go back later once you’re
more used to the writer’s hand or have identified the letter
somewhere else in the document. That's how I was sure of the examples above.
Repeated
words or phrases can be helpful here, because we know what the
letters are and can work out quirky variations from them. And you can often work out what a letter is by its context.
What's Judy's surname here? Byron? I happen to know, and reading these parish registers confirms, that Byrne was a very widespread name in Tomacork. In fact it's in the old clan territory of the O'Byrnes. So I can work out that she's most likely a Byrne by comparing this word with many others on the same pages, written by the same person.
But
beware of doing what we all do – reading
what we think, or hope,
Is this crossed out sponsor a new relative, James Delany? I'd love to think so. But there's a Darcy on the same page.
And the descender from Lucy on the line above in the first image may or may not have merged with the l of Delany. In addition, the
registers are full of people called Demsey (a variation on Dempsey),
another local name. Though this priest usually writes it Dempsey.
I can't just assume the name here is what I'd like it to be.
What do you think? Delany, Darcy, Demsey or... impossible to decide?
And
then there’s image quality.The NLI registers are images from
microfiche, so some pen strokes are hard to read or invisible. These entries look like a bad photocopy.
You
can find some good tips on reading photocopied records here.
Sometimes
you’ll have all the letters worked out, but they don’t look like
any name you’ve heard of. There are two possible solutions: the
name could be an abbreviation, or it could be written as it sounded
to the scribe.
Abbreviations
first. In these Catholic parish registers they’re only used for
first names and a few stock phrases. There are lists of name
abbreviations on the web and I’ve put links at the bottom, but here
are a few of the most common found in genealogy records. A good rule of thumb is that the last letter of the abbreviation is the last letter of the name. Except for Jno.
Edwd = Edward
Elizth
= Elizabeth
Jno
= John (not Jonathan)
Margt = Margaret
Thos - Thomas
Wm
= William
And
some from the Tomacork records which may be helpful to Irish
research:
Anty = Anthony
Batt
= Bartholomew
Catt
= Catherine
Lau - Laurence
Mattw = Matthew
Michl = Michael
Patt - Patrick
I've used a smaller font to show letters which are usually written superscript (above the base line).
There are some other abbreviations in these registers, like SS for Sponsors (godparents), and Latin ones like Ills or Illa for Illegitimus/a (illegitimate), usually followed by (ut dixit), or 'it is said', referring to the father.
Plenty
of names in these registers are written as they sounded to the
priest. That can be confusing. Some are easier to read, like Onor for Hono[u]r, Annistice for Anastasia, Kavinaugh for Kavanagh.
Then
there are ones which ask more from us. One of my Delanys, Daniel, was
married to Mary Costolough.
That’s
a fun one, with a long s and no cross to the t. I only found two
other Costoloughs after a lot of genea-searching, and it seemed to be
a variant of Costello. Then the light bulb came on. Reading it out
loud, remembering that Irish names tend to be stressed on the first
syllable, and knowing that the priest used a silent gh in several
names, it became clear that, yes, /’kɒstələʊ/ (using the IPA transcription) worked for Costolough and Costello.
I'll be posting about my Delaney/Delany finds over on A Rebel Hand soon. In the meantime, good luck with your old records! And
finally – the genealogist’s mantra – don’t assume. But you
know that already...
Further online resources
Useful sites for reading old handwriting:
Alphabets:
Reading bad scans/photocopies:
Name abbreviations:
Irish surnames:
