Spencers in Dublin

Hi there,

It seems to me that you should try working backwards, i.e. check for records (army, transportation records, etc.) in the UK, and then check the records for Dublin.

You should first start by checking the National Archives (UK) website. From this, hopefully you will be discover more detail about his life in Dublin. You may find a more precise location where he was from in Dublin. Perhaps he moved to the UK from Dublin via the army? Was he transported from the UK or Ireland?

Hopefully someone in the Dublin are will be able to help you further. Perhaps there are other family members there who are also researching the same family history?

Please make sure you link anyone else in your family who is interested in their Irish heritage to our site - and indeed anyone else you know of Irish heritage.

Kind regards,

Sinead Cooney

Genealogist (Ireland XO)

Hi there,

Do you know what religion James was? If he was Roman Catholic, the church records for Gorey, Co. Wexford do not start until 1845, so too late for you. Not only that, but the civil registration records do not start until 1864, so again too late.

There are some records you could start looking at:

Sinead Cooney

Genealogist (Ireland XO)

• You could try checking the land records called the Tithe Applotment Books (1823-38) or the later Griffth's Valuation (1848-64). Griffith's is freely available here: www.askaboutireland.com or here: www.failteromhat.com Failte Romhat has lots of other useful links you could try looking at.

• 1776 Freemen of Wexford, The Irish Genealogist 5, Nos 1, 3, 4, 1973

• Kind regards,

He seems to have been Protestant, at least in later life & certainly he couldn't have been in the English army at that time & be a practising Catholic. However, that doesn't necessarily mean his family wasn't Irish Catholic & he may have been baptised in a Catholic church. However, it seems more likely he was Church of Ireland.

Hi there,

Church of Ireland start much earlier than Roman Catholic records. A significant number of parishes have records starting from the mid-17th century. The majority start in the years between 1770 and 1820. The National Archives of Ireland has the only countrywide listing of Church of Ireland parish records that give full details of dates. A copy can be found at the National Library of Ireland. In addition, the Irish Family History Society has published A Table of Church of Ireland Parochial Records (ed. Noel Reid, IFHS, 1994; 2nd ed., 2002), while the Guide to Church Records: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI, 1994) gives details of PRONI's holdings.

Unless the local clergyman was in a posiiton to demonstrate that he could house the records safely, he was required to deposit them in the Public Record Office in Dublin. By 1922 more than half of the records (the original registers of nearly 1,000 parishes) were stored there. Unfortunately, all of these were destroyed in the fire at the Office in 1922. Luckily, 637 registers had been kept locally in secure storage, an in many cases local rectors had made a transcript before surrendering the originals. The Appendix to The 28th Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records in Ireland lists the Church of Ireland records for the entire island, giving full details of the years covered and specifying those which were in the Public Record Office at the time of its destruction.

The Representative Church Body Library in Dublin is the Church of Ireland's own repository for its archives and manuscripts, and it holds the original records of some 830 parishes. http://ireland.anglican.org/about/42

Kind regards,

Sinead Cooney

Genealogist (Ireland XO)