Andrew Frasier/Fraser/Frazier B: 1811 Tyrone Ireland

A birth in 1811 is long before the start of statutory birth registration in Ireland (1864), and so you need to rely on church baptism records where they exist. To do that you really need to know the person’s exact denomination and ideally their parish. Even then it may be tricky as not all parishes have records that go back that far. If he was RC most of the surviving records are on-line on Ancestry and fmp, but only some of the other denominations records are on-line. The most complete collection for Tyrone is held in PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast but a personal visit is required to access them. There’s a lot of churches in Tyrone and without some idea of where he lived it’d be a time consuming search.

Ideally you should also try and get his parents names from a marriage or death certificate to ensure you find the correct family.

Regarding immigration records, if he travelled from Ireland or Britain directly to Canada prior to around 1865, passenger lists were not normally required, and so you may not find any record of his journey. (In contrast the US required passenger lists from around 1820 onwards). It was cheaper to go to Canada than to the USA which is one reason why people favoured that route.

Kori,

I’d be inclined to disregard the Longford baptism you found. Andrew clearly said he was born in Tyrone so I’d rely on that. Longford is over 100 miles south of Tyrone. Not likely to be the same family. Many church records from that period have been lost and of those that still exist, many are not on-line. Only the RC records are routinely on-line and even there, there are some parishes that are not. I am guessing that you have searched Irish baptism records on Familysearch and just found that one Andrew in Longford. That doesn’t mean it’s the right one.

You haven’t said what denomination Andrew was but I suspect Church of Ireland. So they may be the records to focus on. Here’s a map of all the 43 parishes in Tyrone. You would need to work through them all in PRONI. (Not all have records for 1811. If he comes from one of those parishes whose records are lost, you will struggle to find the family).

https://www.ancestryireland.com/civil-parish-maps-for-ulster/civil-pari…

Families often repeated names from generation to generation. Obviously your Andrew had left Ireland long before 1901 but it’s possible that related family were still using the name. I searched the 1901 census for Andrew Fraser, Frasier and Frazer in Tyrone – none. However I did find one Andrew Frazier:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Tyrone/Drumharvey/Make…

In the 1911 census it’s spelled Frazer. (Expect the spelling to vary. People were not consistent with spelling then).

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1911/Tyrone/Drumharvey/Make…

This is probably his birth (Andrew Thompson Frazier) in 1894, in Tullynincrin, to Andrew Frazier and Leah Coulter:

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_retur…

Andrew, the father died in 1894 aged 35. Leah remarried in 1896 to Irvine Stewart.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/marriage_re…

So the Andrew, described as a boarder in the 1901 census is actually Leah’s own son!

Makenny is in the parish of Kilskeery. Their Church of Ireland records start in 1767. This is just a hint that perhaps your Andrew came from that area. At least it’s in the right county. Kilskeery baptism and marriages are on-line on this site. I don’t see any Frazer (or variant) events in them.

http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ire/tyrone/churches/kilskeery-mar.htm

http://www.igp-web.com/IGPArchives/ire/tyrone/churches/kilskeery-bap.htm

All I can suggest is you search other nearby parishes in Tyrone. Most are not on-line and so you need to go to PRONI in Belfast to look them up.

Kori,

Don’t worry about the spelling of Tyrone. Irish place names are often mis-spelled and we often see versions like Tirrone. To me there’s no doubt that the writer meant Tyrone. (The US spelling mirrors the way the word is pronounced in Ireland. So easy to see why it was written like that).

Protestants would be a small minority in Ireland. About 85% of the population is Catholic. However there were (and still are) a lot of Protestants in the counties of Ulster.

I consider it highly likely that your Frazier (etc) ancestors are of Scottish origins. It is not recognised as a ”native” Irish surname. MacLysaght’s surnames of Ireland says: “The name of a Scottish clan numerous in Ulster, derived from, and sometimes a synonym of Frizell, there.”

Huge numbers of Scots, English & Welsh settled in Ireland in the 1600s. Some came as part of the Plantation of Ulster in the early 1600s, others followed for other reasons throughout that century. In the 1690s, for example, there was a dreadful famine in Scotland and a large number of Scots arrived then. It’s estimated that something like 200,00 Scots settled in Ireland in the 1600s (something like a fifth of the entire Scottish population).

These settlers mostly went to live in Ulster. Tens of thousands of Scots settled in Tyrone. I looked at the Muster Rolls for c1630. There were no Fraziers in the county at that time, so it appears yours arrived later. A few Scots arrived in the 1700 but by that century many of the original settlers were thinking of leaving and so the tendency from 1700 onwards was for outward migration rather than inward. So it’s most likely your arrived in Tyrone between 1630 and 1700.

The majority of the Scots settlers were Presbyterian. Presbyterianism was established in Scotland in the 1500s and Scots migrants brought it to Ireland. However there were some Scots who were Episcopalian (ie Church of Ireland) and some were Catholic. But the predominant denomination was Presbyterian.

So based on your grandpa’s information your family were probably either Presbyterian or Churhc of Ireland, in Ireland. All you could do is plod through all the church records for Tyrone for around 1811 to see if you can find a fit.