Irish Census Records

Having found seven siblings for my great grandmother Elizabeth O'Leary in Ancestry.com's extracted baptismal records, I wanted to see if I could confirm that they were indeed her siblings.  I had already traced her sister Ellen O'Leary Ford to San Francisco and identified her children and grandchildren. I needed to work out her other sister who I was told was named Polly, but records turned up as Mary.  I also needed to look for at least five brothers.

As I have throughout the process of working on the family tree, I looked for other sources for records beyond Ancestry. I had found a source for the 1901 and 1911 census records of Ireland through the National Archives of Ireland. Their search functions and digitizing of records isn't as clean as Ancestry, but it's pretty good. The biggest headache being that each digitized image of the census record is a separate file and with the way the Irish censuses were recorded I had to open multiple files to gather all the information. (As opposed to the US census records where all the information for multiple families is recorded on a single page which were digitized in groups so I could scroll through pages to see neighbors, etc.) The next biggest headache is understanding the land divisions in Ireland as they definitely don't make a whole lot of sense to someone like me who has lived her entire life in urban/suburban United States of the late 20th/early 21st century! It's definitely not as neat and easy as knowing my relatives lived at 6 Harry Place in San Francisco in 1880, but I think I'm getting a general idea.

As I mentioned in my last post, I believe I found my great great grandparents Jeremiah O'Leary and Mary O'Looney in the 1901 census. Only daughter Mary was living with them in 1901, so I set off to look for the five sons and my great grandmother who was still living in Ireland in 1901. I started with oldest brother John. According to the record I'd found on Ancestry, he was born January 16, 1865 which would make him 36 in 1901. I entered that information and up popped a record: John O'Leary, age 36, teacher, in Fahanalooscane, Ballymartle, County Cork. Living with him is his sister Eliza O'Leary, age 24! Well, that matches up with the family story that Lizzie O'Leary's older brother was a teacher who worked with Daniel Coleman's sister. According to the census record, John O'Leary is married, but his wife doesn't appear on the census form. Unlike the US census records, which recorded the usual residents of the enumerated houses whether or not they were at home on the day the census was taken, the Irish census is based on who was in the enumerated house on a specific date (e.g. March 31, 1901)

Having found John in 1901, I decided to see if I could find him in 1911. He appeared again in Fahanalooscane, and this time his family also appears on the census record. Wife Hanora (age 43), sons Jeremiah (10) and Denis (5), and daughters Mary (7) and Hannah (10 months.) Ah-ha! Well that's loads of useful information. I now have John's wife's name so I can look for her in the 1901 census. His oldest son is 10, so he was likely an infant when the 1901 census was taken, so perhaps Hanora was staying with family when the census was recorded. Denis is 5 in 1911, which would mean he was born in about 1906. That matches up with the information I found about Dennis O'Leary in San Francisco, whose wife and daughters attended my parents wedding!

Well, that certainly was a promising start. It got a bit more difficult after that. I had very little information on the other brothers beyond birth dates, so identifying if I'd found the right people would be quite difficult. I found five different William O'Learys living in County Cork in 1901. One was born in the United States, so that left four options, but none were living in Ballincollig. None of them had any clues to indicate I'd found the right one, so I'll have to go digging some more there. Next on my list was Edmund. No Edmund O'Learys showed up in the 1901 or 1911 census records. I did find a couple of Edwards, but none of them appeared promising. So what happened to Edmund? Is he indeed a brother?Thinking he might be the mysterious "Arthur" from Ellen's death notice, I tried that name with the age I'd found for Edmund. Again, nothing promising. There was an Arthur O'Leary who was about the right age and living in Ballincollig, but he was illiterate. Since all the other O'Learys could read and write, I doubt he's the Arthur I'm looking for.

I set Edmund and Arthur aside and moved on to Jeremiah. This is a brother I knew existed, so what could I find about him? I turned up 19 Jeremiah O'Leary's in the 1901 census that were within 5 years in age of the Jeremiah I was looking for. Two were born in Cork City, so I eliminated them. Another was born in County Kerry, so I eliminated him also. That left 16 possibilities, one of which was living in Ballincollig. I clicked on his record and he was living with an aunt, Ellen O'Leary, and a sister Hannah O'Leary. Drat. That probably isn't the right one either. It's going to take some time to weed through the remaining 15. Okay, let's see if we can find Daniel O'Leary. There are 34 Daniel O'Learys in County Cork in 1901. Arrgh!

So, I've got a lot of work ahead of me weeding through the various census records to see if I can figure out if any of the people I've found are Lizzie O'Leary's brothers. I'm not even completely certain that they all are brothers. John at least matches up with the family stories and I know there was a Jeremiah. As for William, Edmund, and Daniel, it's hard to know for certain. That doesn't include the mysterious Arthur who may be one of those three or a completely different person! I need to see if I can find out more on those birth records I found on Ancestry.