FOCUS ON: IRISH REGISTRY OF DEEDS
Dr Kay MacKeogh explains how to find Irish marriage settlements, leases and wills as far back as the early 17th century
How this free resource can help you track your kin back to the 1600s
Registry of Deeds records hold details of family relationships and lineages as far back as the 1600s
Asuccession of wars and conquests during the 17th century meant that Ireland was in turmoil. Soldiers who fought in the Williamite Wars and supported the winning side were rewarded with tracts of land confiscated from the indigenous population. The Registry of Deeds Act, passed by the Irish Parliament in 1707, established a system for securing tenure and proving ownership for the new landowners. While registration was not compulsory, a registered deed provided more security over title than an unregistered one. So the Registry of Deeds set up business in 1708, starting in Dublin Castle, then moving to Inns Quay, before finally settling in the South Wing of the King’s Inns in Henrietta Street, Dublin, in 1832.
The move to Henrietta Street saved a genealogical goldmine from the destruction of so many public records in the fire of 1922. Buried in Registry of Deeds records is a wealth of detail about family relationships and lineages going back as far as the 1600s. The records include wills, marriage settlements, mortgages, leases, conveyances… basically any transaction where property changed hands. They are not confined to the very wealthy, either; many relate to tradesmen and tenant farmers. The challenge has been to find the nuggets among the millions of records. Two initiatives are helping the situation: FamilySearch transcripts of memorials, and the Registry of Deeds Index Project.
A memorial, or legal recording, was deposited in the Registry to register a deed – essentially a condensed version. They start by indicating the nature of the deed, whether will, marriage articles, lease, release or mortgage. They then list the
parties: the Grantor and the Grantee. Next they summarise the content of the deed, often providing details about family relationships, descriptions of property, marriage settlements, and lists of will beneficiaries, servants, tenants and subtenants. They also list the witnesses to the original deed, and the witnesses to the memorial, giving the date the memorial was lodged. Clerks transcribed the memorials on vellum, bound in volumes known as ‘tombstones’. The transcribed memorials are available for public viewing, and copies of the original memorials can be purchased for €20 ( www.prai.ie/registry-ofdeeds-services/#records). The original deeds were not deposited with the memorials.
Fortunately, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints microfilmed the Memorial Transcripts and Grantor and Place Name Indexes in the 1950s. The microfilms can be viewed for free on FamilySearch in the collection ‘ Transcripts of Memorials of Deeds, Conveyances and Wills, 1708– 1929’: bit.ly/fs-1708-1929.
However, memorials can be hard to identify because of a lack of good finding aids – the Grantor Indexes are limited to the name of the Grantor only. But if you know where your ancestor lived, then browsing through the Place Name Indexes may prove fruitful since they name the Grantor and at least one of the Grantees.
The indexes provide a Reference Number for each memorial. Between 1708 and 1831, Reference Numbers included the Volume Number (indicated as ‘Lib’ in earlier indexes), Page Number (of the tombstone) and Memorial Number. From 1832 onwards, the reference is to the Year, Volume Number and Memorial Number. For example, the reference for the memorial of my relative Edward Hayes’s will, lodged in 1737, is Volume 87, page 204, no. 61293. To find the memorial on FamilySearch, go to the collection mentioned above, scroll down to ‘Deeds, etc., v. 87–88 1736–1737’ in the ‘Note’ column and click the camera icon to open the microfilm. Edward’s will, which you can see on page 65, is on image 126 ( bit.ly/fs-edwards-will).
Although the quality of the reproduction varies, you can use the ‘ Tools’ palette on the right-hand side of the screen to rotate the image; adjust the brightness or contrast; and invert it to see white writing on a black background, which may make the text clearer. The magnification tools are on the left-hand side of the screen. You can also download the image; copy and paste it into a document; or print it off.
A helpful finding aid for memorials of wills are the Irish Manuscripts Commission Abstracts of Irish Wills, collected in a three-volume book in 1956 covering 1708–1745, 1746–1785 and 1785–1832 respectively. The volumes are freely available online at bit.ly/ abstracts-wills-one, bit.ly/ abstracts-wills-two and bit.ly/ abstracts-wills-three. The Registry of Deeds Index Project ( irishdeedsindex.net) is also making memorials much easier to locate. Under the stewardship of Roz McCutcheon of the Irish Genealogical Research Society, volunteers are creating three sets of indexes to help navigate the Registry of Deeds microfilms on FamilySearch. The searchable Grantors and Townlands Indexes at bit.ly/irish-grantors and bit.ly/irish-townland provide a shortcut to searching the microfilms of the Grantor and Place Name Indexes. But the Main Index at bit.ly/irish-main transcribes all of the names in the memorials, together with short abstracts of the contents including relationships and place names. The number of index entries already exceeds 276,000, from more than 30,000 memorials, with millions more to come. Visit the website to find out how you can help this important project.
Dr Kay MacKeogh is a retired academic researcher who has turned her research skills to genealogy and family history
The number of index entries already exceeds 276,000, from more than 30,000 memorials, with millions more to come