Hi Earl,
Thank you for your message.
Unfortunately, it may be difficult to find relatives of Daniel as the reality of finding documentation pertaining 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 to document the population. Please also note that the Church of Ireland was the official church of the country and therefore the bulk of information that does survive for earlier periods is often from these registers.
As you can see from the Irish Times website Catholic records for Ardstraw do not begin until 1846:
http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/fuses/rcparishmaps/index.cfm?fuseaction=showidrecords&CityCounty=Tyrone&parish=Ardstraw-West&churchid=344
Most surviving Church of Ireland records are still held by the local clergy, although some are in the National Archives of Ireland and others are in the Representative Church Body Library in Dublin. Here are their websites: http://www.nationalarchives.ie/ and http://ireland.anglican.org/about/42
Lists of these surviving registers can also be found at the National Library of Ireland.
I did find mention of M?Farlands in the Flax Growers List 1796. This was part of a government scheme to encourage the linen trade, free spinning wheels or looms were granted to individuals planting a certain area of land with flax. The lists of those entitled to the awards, covering almost 60,000 individuals, were published in 1796, and record only the names of the individuals and the civil parish in which they lived.
http://www.failteromhat.com/flax/tyrone.htm
It may be an idea to contact the Irish World Heritage Centre in Tyrone for possible assistance. Here is their email:
info@irish-world.com
Please be patient - as our programme has only begun to rollout across the island of Ireland and volunteers in some areas may not yet be organized.
Kind regards,
Genealogy Support
