County Down

Births/Baptisms/Marriages/Deaths ? pre1790-1800 ? The reality of finding documentationpertaining to births/baptisms/marriages/deaths in Ireland prior to 1800 ? particularly in rural areas? is that they simply may not exist. Some registers for urban areas pre-dating 1800 may exist ?though often these can be fragmented- as there was an increased need in cities or larger towns todocument the population. Please also note that the Church of Ireland was the official church of thecountry and therefore the bulk of information that does survive for earlier periods is often fromthese registers. ROMAN CATHOLIC: Most Catholic records are held locally - One site which might be of use is -http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/ - where you can ?browse? an overview of availablerecords per county. If you have any difficulty, you could try writing to the parish priest for possibleassistance. CHURCH OF IRELAND: Church of Ireland parish registers for the period up to 1870-are publicrecords. Registers are available for about one third of the parishes, however many were destroyedin the Public Records Office in Dublin in 1922. Most are still held by the local clergy, althoughsome are in the National Archives of Ireland and others are in the Representative Church BodyLibrary in Dublin. A list of all surviving registers is available in the National Archives. http://ireland.anglican.org/about/42 and http://www.nationalarchives.ie/. The Anglican Record Projectis has created an index to their records: http://ireland.anglican.org/cmsfiles/pdf/AboutUs/library/AngRecord/bunclodyunionindex.pdf PRESBYTERIAN: Presbyterian registers are held in three main locations: in local custody, in the PublicRecords of Northern Ireland (PRONI) http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/family_history.htm and atthe Presbyterian Historical Society http://www.presbyterianhistoryireland.com in Belfast. PRONIhas microfilm copies of almost all registers in Northern Ireland and also lists of records held by thePresbyterian Historical Society. For the rest of Ireland, almost all records are in local custody. It candifficult to locate these as many congregations in the South have moved, amalgamated, or simplydisappeared over the last sixty years. The next thing you could do is find the counties and places in Ireland your family names are mostprevalent. Look at the website http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/surname/ and perhapssomething will match some other clue you may have found elsewhere? If nothing turnsup ? it is advisable to try different variations of the spellings of the names. If you have a possiblefirst name you could try the Irish Census 1901, 1911 at www.census.nationalarchives.ie/ or the landvaluation record called Griffiths Valuationhttp://askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

Hi Lorraine ... not sure if you will get this message but David Small and Sarah McNeil were. My great great great grandparents and I am currently researching the Findlay marriage line .... Louise.nbdc@hotmail.com if you would like to contact me — Louise Small-Cameron