Gracey Catholic from Downpatrick

[Butterbean]

Hi, I am new on here, but have been trying to research the Catholic Gracey family from Downpatrick . In particular I am looking for any information about Thomas Gracey b 1832 married to Esther and later Lizzie Mclester. Can anyone help?

[Elwyn Soutter]

PRONI (The Public Record Office) in Belfast has copies of the following RC records for that parish. (Any earlier records appear to have been lost.) The records themselves are not on-line and a personal visit is required to look at them.

R.C. Downpatrick (Down and Connor diocese) Baptisms, 1851-82; marriages, 1853-82, (one entry possibly for 1852); deaths, 1851-82.


RC marriages weren’t recorded in the statutory marriage records till 1864. Can’t see a marriage to Esther listed and suspect therefore they married prior to 1864. You would need to check the parish records in PRONI.

[Butterbean]

PRONI (The Public Record Office) in Belfast has copies of the following RC records for that parish. (Any earlier records appear to have been lost.) The records themselves are not on-line and a personal visit is required to look at them.

R.C. Downpatrick (Down and Connor diocese) Baptisms, 1851-82; marriages, 1853-82, (one entry possibly for 1852); deaths, 1851-82.


RC marriages weren’t recorded in the statutory marriage records till 1864. Can’t see a marriage to Esther listed and suspect therefore they married prior to 1864. You would need to check the parish records in PRONI.


Thank you, I guess I will have to make a trip to Ireland to find out more.

[Amma38]

You don't need to go to Ireland and if you do it will be a slow and expensive search.

I have completed extensive research on the Catholic Gracey's from Downpatrick I posted a LOT of the info on genforum http://genforum.genealogy.com/gracey/messages/585.html.

Regrading Lizzie McClester and Thomas Gracey I have a copy of both their wills and the death cert of Thomas. I also have a copy of Thomas' obituary.

You can find them both on the 1901 and 1911 census returns of Ireland for free at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/

I have an extensive amount of info on all the Gracey family, I've been working on it for more than 15 years

If you let me know your interest in the Gracey line that would be a huge help to my research. I'm happy to help and to share info.

[Amma38]

Hi, I am new on here, but have been trying to research the Catholic Gracey family from Downpatrick . In particular I am looking for any information about Thomas Gracey b 1832 married to Esther and later Lizzie Mclester. Can anyone help?

Catholic Gracey's of Downpatrick

You don't need to go to Ireland and if you do it will be a slow and expensive search.

I have completed extensive research on the Catholic Gracey's from Downpatrick I posted a LOT of the info on genforum http://genforum.genealogy.com/gracey/messages/585.html.

Regarding Lizzie McClester and Thomas Gracey I have a copy of both their wills and the death cert of Thomas. I also have a copy of Thomas' obituary.

You can find them both on the 1901 and 1911 census returns of Ireland for free at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/

I have an extensive amount of info on all the Gracey family, I've been working on it for more than 15 years

If you let me know your interest in the Gracey line that would be a huge help to my research. I'm happy to help and to share info.

Forgot to add that you can get birth / marriage / death and baptism records from www.rootsireland.ie

[Elwyn Soutter]

Catholic Gracey's of Downpatrick

Forgot to add that you can get birth / marriage / death and baptism records from www.rootsireland.ie

That’s true, but they don’t have all parishes records, nor for all years. For example, they quite often cut off at 1845, so for very early records you often need to search elsewhere. (For RC records that would be National Library Dublin or PRONI).

[Amma38]

That’s true, but they don’t have all parishes records, nor for all years. For example, they quite often cut off at 1845, so for very early records you often need to search elsewhere. (For RC records that would be National Library Dublin or PRONI).The parish records held in Dublin and Belfast

With respect, I wholeheartedly disagree with you and present evidence to the contrary of your advice below.

Nowhere has complete records because many registers have been lost, destroyed or simply were not kept. Most RC parish registers were not kept in a parish, they were kept by the priest who moved around from parish to parish and with him went the registers. Over time many of these have been lost.

RC Records, Research and their Locations (http://www.heritagecertificate.com/genealogy-articles/church-records-finding-parish-registers)

It was illegal for Catholic priests to keep registers for many years so there are few examples pre-dating 1800. Most start in the second or third decade of the 19th century, but there are some unfortunate parishes with registers that begin only in the 1860s.
Because of the penal laws it was illegal for Catholic priests to keep registers so there are few surviving registers pre-dating 1800.
The earliest Catholic parish records in the country appear to be the fragments for Waterford and Galway cities, dating from the 1680s, and for Wexford town, dating from 1671. Generally speaking, early records tend to come from the more prosperous and anglicised areas, in particular the towns and cities of the eastern half of the island.

In the poorest and most densely populated rural parishes of the West and North, those that saw most emigration, the parish registers very often do not start until the mid- or late-19th century. However, the majority of Catholic registers begin in the first decades of the 19th century, and even in poor areas, if a local tradition of Gaelic scholarship survived, records were often kept from an earlier date.

Catholic registers consist mostly of baptismal and marriage records. The keeping of burial records was much less thorough than in the Church of Ireland, with fewer than half the parishes in the country having a register of burials before 1900. Even where they do exist, these records are generally intermittent and patchy.

For some reason, almost all Catholic burial registers are for the northern half of the island. Baptisms and marriages are recorded in either Latin or English, never in Irish. Generally, parishes in the more prosperous areas tended to use English, while in Irish-speaking parishes Latin was used. There is, however, no consistency.

The Latin presents very few problems, since only first names were translated, not surnames or place names. The English equivalents are almost always self-evident.

Roots Ireland is the largest family records database on line and the most complete to date.

"This website contains a unique set of Irish family history records including Birth, Death, Marriage and Gravestone records the majority of which are only available online on this website and cannot be found online elsewhere.

This website was created by the Irish Family History Foundation (I.F.H.F.), an all Ireland not-for-profit organization, that is co-ordinating the creation of a database of Irish genealogical sources to assist those who wish to trace their Irish ancestry.

Its county genealogy centre members are based in local communities and work with local volunteers, historical societies, clergy, local authorities, county libraries and government agencies to develop and preserve a database of genealogical records for their county. By using this website you are supporting that work and the communities from which your ancestors originated."

To research via parish registers in Dublin and Belfast requires a researcher to know the actual parish where people were baptised or married. The records are not name indexed, few researchers know the parish that their ancestors lived in and so going to Dublin or Belfast is a waste of time and energy, see extracts from the websites of NLI, Dublin & PRONI, Belfast below which explain what they hold and what a researcher needs to know before going to either place.

Parish Records at National Library of Ireland, Dublin
The registers are listed by parish, there is NO index of names so you need to know the correct parish in which your ancestor(s) were baptised in order to get the full benefit of the records. You are wasting your time and money going to NLI if you do not have these basic details.

The NLI holds microfilm copies of the registers for most Roman Catholic parishes in Ireland (including the counties of Northern Ireland). These registers consist primarily of baptismal and marriage records. Records of burials are uncommon.

The start dates of the registers vary from, for example, the 1740/50s in some city parishes in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick, to the 1780/90s in counties such as Kildare, Wexford, Waterford and Kilkenny. Louth. Many of the parish registers in counties on the western seaboard do not begin until the 1850/60s. 1880 is the cut-off date for the filming of the vast
majority of registers, although a few later registers were microfilmed.

The quality of the information in the registers varies from parish to parish. Latin was used in many registers, but neither surnames nor place names were translated

If you know the name of the Roman Catholic parish, you can consult the List of Parish Registers on Microfilm, available on the NLI website, www.nli.ie.
This contains covering dates of the registers in each parish, and the call number. For example P.5000 contains the registers for the parish of Doneraile, 1815-1880. The microfilms are available on self-service access in the Genealogy Microfilm Reading Room. It is possible to print from the microfilm and copies cost 10c per page.
Source: www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx



P.R.O.N.I – Public Record Office Northern Ireland, Belfast
(Parish Records)www.proni.gov.uk/index/family_history.htm

As with the records in Dublin, the registers are listed by parish, there is NO index of names so you need to know the correct parish in which your ancestor(s) were baptised in order to get the full benefit of the records.

Church Records Held At PRONI
Most of the Church records are on microfilm (PRONI reference MIC), available in the Public Search Room self service microfilm cabinets.

Irish Catholic parish registers & Society of Genealogists (SoG)
It had always been difficult for family historians to obtain copies of Irish registers. Indeed in some cases anyone wanting to use these records would have had had to apply to the Bishops of certain dioceses before being allowed even to view films of the records at the National Library of Ireland in Dublin.
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/blog/family-history/irish-catholic-parish-registers-sog

[Elwyn Soutter]

Amma 38,

I note that you disagree with me. Fair enough. You then provide a long explanation about missing records and lost records etc. I think you may have missed my point completely.

I visit PRONI at least once a week and am very familiar with the range and extent of the parish records, there and elsewhere. I know all about lost registers etc. However My point very simply is that where the records do exist, they are not all on the IFHF site (nor any other pay to view site). Therefore anyone using those sites needs to be aware that there are parishes and years where records do still exist but which are not included. I say this because I know from personal experience as a researcher in Ireland that people search those sites, find no match and then give up thinking that no record exists, when sometimes it does exist. Just not on-line.

If you go to the IFHF site and click on “County Genealogy Centres”, then click on the county you are interested in, followed by the “source list” link, you will see what parishes they have, and what years. If you then compare that with the list of parish records held in PRONI for that county (assuming we are talking about Northern Ireland, as in this case) then the huge gaps in the IFHF data leap out at you.

Taking as a simple example, this link to Co: Antrim records, you will see that for the Church of Ireland, IFHF have records for only 16 of the 78 parishes in the county. And even for those records, there are only 8 sets of baptisms and 16 burials. No marriages at all. Whereas PRONI have baptisms, marriages and burials for 95% of those parishes. Just they are not on-line. That should give you some idea, when I say that the sites like the IFHF do not have all the available records. Which is why, as butterbean has commented, a personal visit is sometimes necessary to get at the records that are not on-line.

http://antrim.rootsireland.ie/generic.php?filename=sources.tpl&selectedMenu=sources