by
Janet Cassidy-Stroh
To search
successfully for records in Ireland, you must be
familiar with the below terms. All of these
administrative units will be important in your research,
but your ultimate goal is to find the townland where
your ancestor came from. If you have a name
of a place and do not know whether it is a parish
or a townland, or want to know what district a townland
is in, try the
searchable database of townlands.
I.
Civil Divisions
Counties
-- Ireland has 32 counties, forming its four
provinces. 26 counties are in the Republic
of Ireland and 6 (Antrim, Armagh, Fermanagh, Derry,
Down, and Tyrone) fall in Northern Ireland.
Townland
-- This is the smallest unit of land area.
Townlands vary from less than ten acres, to thousands.
There are about 64,000 townlands in Ireland.
If you have the name of a townland, and want to
know what parish it is in, then use the searchable
data base at the Public
Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) site.
Go to the PRONI page, click on Geographical Index,
click on Townlands, and scroll down to the Alphabetical
Index.
Civil
Parish -- The next level up is the
civil parish, which usually contains about twenty-five
to thirty townlands, as well as towns and villages.
There are about 2,500 civil parishes.
Barony
-- A barony is an old administrative unit
(now obsolete), consisting of several civil parishes.
There are 273 baronies in Ireland. Fermanagh
has eight: Magheraboy, Clanawley, Knockninny, Coole
East, Clankelly, Magherasteffany, Tirkennedy, and
Lurg. The baronies of Ulster were set up
at the time of the Ulster Plantation, in the early
1600s. See also John Cunningham's commentary
on the barony names of County Fermanagh at the Letters
of John O' Donovan.
Provinces
-- There are four in Ireland; Connaught, Leinster,
Munster, and Ulster. Of the 9 counties which
make up Ulster, 6 are in Northern Ireland and 3
(Donegal, Monaghan, and Cavan) are in the Irish
Republic.
Cities,
Towns, Boroughs, and Wards -- These
are separate administrative areas of varying size.
Many have several civil parishes, some civil parishes
have several townships. Cities may also have
boroughs and wards.
Poor
Law Unions -- There were set up in 1838, originally
to help look after the poor. They usually
encompass an area of about a ten-mile radius around
a local town, where the poorhouse was located.
Rates (land-based taxes) were collected in these
areas to maintain the poor. They don't always
conform to county boundaries. These districts
later became General Registrar's Districts.
General
Registrar's Districts -- These are
the areas where births, deaths, and marriages were
compiled. Even today, these records are kept
at the district level.
II.
Ecclesiastical Divisions
Church
Parish
-- This is the area a minister or parish priest
serves. Boundaries of Church of Ireland parishes
are usually the same as the civil parish boundaries.
Roman Catholic boundaries generally are larger.
Diocese
-- Parishes are organized into dioceses, with
a bishop. The dioceses contain a certain number
of church parishes and do not conform to county
boundaries. The Diocese of Clogher, for instance,
contains most of Fermanagh, all of Monaghan, parts
of Donegal, Tyrone, and even a small piece of Louth.
Additional
Resources
Janet Cassidy-Stroh has also created a concise primer
on Tracing Your Irish Roots,
with website links, and a summary of terminology
to assist your search. The researcher will
also find of interest the lecture by County Fermanagh
historian John Cunningham on how
emigration affected Ireland.
Irish
Genealogical Links
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