Are there any Census records for 1840-50?

[Wayne Cook]

I'm trying to see if a particular family lived in Roscommon in the 1840-50s. (I know the family was there about 1812 though but don't know how to access any Irish Church Records (if they survived)
Were Censuses done in Ireland back in the 1840s-50s and if so, have they survived?

Thanks in Advance

[Megan Roberts]

From a quick search it does not look like there is much on line.

https://www.
irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/records/census/1841.htm

[Wayne Cook]

ok, thanks. If they do exist, I wonder if someone has access to them.

[geneius]

Try this site, supposed to have 300 years of Irish records

https://registers.nli.ie/

[Pam Downes]

ok, thanks. If they do exist, I wonder if someone has access to them.

From the way I read the link Megan gave, you can access the records drawn from the original 1841 census (although only one original section of it still exists) at either the National Archives in Dublin or the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland, depending on which part of the country you're looking at. Hiring a researcher would probably be cheaper than the airfare from Oz.

Try this site, supposed to have 300 years of Irish records

https://registers.nli.ie/

Judging from the title, that has only Catholic parish registers.
However, I can see your logic because the site does say 'In many cases, the registers contain the only surviving record of particular individuals and families'. The problem being that you need to have a rough idea of where your ancestors lived, and hope that they were Catholic, not Protestant.

Pam

[Wayne Cook]

Thanks, Roscommon and Catholic (from what I understand) if that helps

[JNicLiam]

The 1841 and 1851 census were both destroyed in the fire in 1922 in the Four Courts. The remaining scraps are on the website www.census.nationalarchives.ie There is nothing for Roscommon in 1841 and only 20 people in total for Roscommon in the 1851 census.
So your best options if the person is a Catholic to look at the Catholic registers. As of 1st March FindMyPast is releasing an index to these parish registers. If you have access to Ancestry they too have promised an index to these records also to be released in March. If you know the parish and an approx. date you can go straight to the registers at https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ These are not indexed on that site but have excellent filters that allow access to images of the registers filtered by parish, year, date and event.

[Elwyn Soutter]

A common census substitute is Griffiths Valuation which, for Roscommon, was compiled in 1858. It only lists heads of households, so it’s not as good as a census and there are plenty of exceptions e.g. people who were lodging with someone, servants etc. Also people in hovels of too low a value to be worth listing are omitted. However if your family were farmers or not too badly off (by the standards of the time) they may be listed.

https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffi...ion=nameSearch

[geneius]

Allegedly Ancestry has today announced the inclusion of Irish records on their site!

[Megan Roberts]

This is a link to today's announcement from FMP:

https://
blog.findmypast.co.uk/10-million-new-1632616369.html

You will see from this that they are offering free access for a few days to the Irish records.

This is a link to the list of new Irish data sets at Ancestry, which shows the parish registers at the top, and also some other data sets relating to censuses.
https://www.
ancestry.co.uk/cs/recent-collections