Boland Report 1. Sources consulted

The principal sources used for this genealogical search fall under the following headings.

1. Civil records.

All births deaths and marriages in have been registered with the state since 1864. In the case of births the information required to be registered was the name of the child/children, date of birth, name, surname and dwelling place and occupation of the father, and the name, maiden name and dwelling place of the mother. Before this date the registration of births, marriages and deaths was sporadic and dependent on the parish.

In the case of marriages, any person whose marriage was to be celebrated by a Catholic priest was required to have the clergyman fill out a certificate with the following information. The date of the marriage, the names and surnames of the people involved, their ages, rank, profession and/or occupation, name and surname of their parents and the rank and/or occupation of the fathers of each of the parties.

One problem with birth and marriage registration is that a significant number of registrations simply did not happen. This happened, in particular, during the more turbulent periods in Irish history, such as the Great Famine 1845-1848. In some cases a birth with be registered later. For example, some one born in 1850 and not registered could be found to be registered in 1900, if it was the case that they later needed a birth certificate.

2. Parish Records

One of the main sources of information for the family history are the parish records. These records date mainly from the early 19th century – this being due to the fact that the Penal Laws for a large potion of the 16th to 18th centuries proscribed the practice of the Catholic faith. The oldest Catholic parish records are from the larger towns and cities, particularly those on the east coast, while some of the poorer parishes do not have records dating back further than the 1860’s.

The main disadvantages of the Catholic parish records are the condition in which the originals were kept for several decade’s, thereby leading to degradation of the parchment. Also the fact that it was up to the individual parish priest/clerk to make sure that each baptism/marriage was recorded, which meant a small but significant percentage of events were simply not recorded. The weather, dampness, rain, fire etc has contributed to destroying or making unreadable some parish records. The remaining records are available in the National Library of Ireland on microfilm. It is obvious from the remaining records that a significant number of these people recording the material were semi-literate, at best, as spelling of names, surnames and place-names can be eclectic. While much of the time the clerk used Latin, this is not a severe disadvantage as only the Christian name is written in Latin, i.e. Joannes or Ionnanes for John, Jacobus for James etc.

For baptisms the information one can get is the baptism date, child’s name and parents names (with often the mothers maiden name given as well) as well as sponsors names. Also sometimes one can get a or street address for the family – although this is not always the case.

3. Land Records.

These consist of two very important census substitutes. These are the Tithe Applotment Books (1824-1838) and the Primary Valuation of Ireland (commonly called Griffith's Valuation) of 1848-1864. Everyone in Ireland had to pay tithes or dues to the Established Church (The ), even if they were not members of this Church. In 1823 the government decided to formalise the situation and conducted a valuation of the entire country, parish by parish, to determine how much would be paid by each landowner. There are exemptions from the Tithe Applotment, so it is not a comprehensive list of the entire country, and the genealogical information contained therein is quite basic, consisting as it does of the townland name, the landowner's name, the amount of land owned and the monies owed in tithes. The value of the Applotment books lies in the fact that, for some parishes where records do not begin until after 1850, they are the only early records.

In order to produce the information necessary for local taxation, the Tenement Act, 1842 provided for a uniform valuation of all property in Ireland. The man appointed as Commissioner of Valuation was Richard Griffith and the results of his survey, The Primary Valuation of Ireland (commonly called Griffith's Valuation) were published between 1848 and 1864. The Valuation is arranged by county, , poor law union, civil parish and townland and lists every landholder and every householder in Ireland.

All surnames in the Tithe Applotment Books and Griffith's Valuation were indexed in the 1960's. This index is a useful starting point is a family or name search, especially where the name is quite common.

3. Census Records.

Full government censuses were taken for the whole of the island in 1821 and every ten years after that until 1911. The first four 1821-1851 were largely destroyed in the fire in the Public Record Office in Dublin during the Irish Civil War, 1922. Those for 1861 and 1871 had been earlier destroyed on Government orders. This means that the only comprehensive census returns for the whole island are 1901 and 1911. Although these returns are very late the information they give is still illuminating. The 1901 records gives the name of all persons in the household, relationship to the head of the house, religion, literacy, occupation, age, martial status, county of birth etc. The most useful information given in the 1901 census is age. This has to treated with caution as very few of the ages given in the 1901 census matches that in the 1911 census - most people seems to have aged more than ten years!!! However, a person born in the 1840's could conceivably still be alive for the 1901 census, and is interesting to see if families remained in the same area throughout this period of time.

The census returns are also useful for cross-checking. Where a name, like Bradley, is very common in an area, it is impossible to be sure in the parish records whether a particular family is the relevant one - especially are Christian names were also similar. In such cases a check of the 1901, 1911 census returns for a family can provide useful circumstantial evidence.

Because of the dearth of census information before 1901 we have to consult with 'census substitutes' to try and fill in any gaps. In each county there are some records, which have to be consulted, and which, sometimes, help fill in the gaps in the civil and census records. These include land deeds, wills, gravestone inscriptions (those which have been complied on database) local journals, local directories, estate records, tithe book, etc.

While these records can sometimes fill the gaps in family records they are only really useful if the relevant family were in a particular trade or profession owned land or were clergymen. Unfortunately the vast majority of Irish families, in particular, Irish Catholic families, were either tenant farmers or landless labourers who would not feature in these records.

4. Miscellaneous sources

These include sources, which are incomplete – many of these having being partly or largely destroyed either by government or by the Custom House Fire in 1922. These include wills for the early 19th century, deeds, and emigration lists. Wills and deeds have one major disadvantage in that only those with property or money would have left either of these records – therefore a huge portion of the 19th century Irish population were excluded. Despite having a huge emigrant population Ireland has very incomplete emigration and passenger lists. There was no legal requirement on the behalf of ports or ships masters to provide complete lists of passengers at the point of departure. In many cases these passengers were not listed as a significant minority of ship owners illegally overloaded their ships and did not provide enough food for the journey – in not wanting to be found out they never listed passengers. On the point of arrival most passenger lists simply state Ireland as the point of origin therefore giving little genealogical information of use to us today. Records Found

From the information you gave we found that

Bridget Boland, born 1872 in Farnahappy, Co to James Boland, a farmer and Bridget Coggins

1901 census - a house 18 in Farranyharpy (, Sligo)

Occupants of House

Name Position Age Occupation Marital Status Where born

James Boland head of house 79 Farmer married Sligo

Bridget wife 60 “ “

Kate daughter 28 single “

James son 26 Farmer “ “

Margaret daughter 17 “ “

1901 census - a house 28 in Farranyharpy (Skreen, Sligo)

Occupants of House

Name Position Age Occupation Marital Status Where born

James Boland head of house 89 Farmer married Sligo

Bridget wife 70 “ “

Kate daughter 41 single “

James son 40 Farmer “ “

This also tells us that James and Bridget had been married for 49 years and had 10 children, eight of whom were still living. The family live in a 3 roomed, ‘2nd’ class thatched house. They are tenant farmers.

Griffiths Valuation of Ireland - Skreen, , 1852

Boland James Farranyharpy Skreen Sligo

Boland John Farranyharpy Skreen Sligo Boland John Finnure Skreen Sligo

Boland Michael Masreagh Skreen Sligo

Tithe Applotment Records – Skreen, 1833

Boland, Pat Farnaharpy Skreen Sligo 1833

Boland, Martin Farnaharpy Skreen Sligo 1833

Boland, James Farnaharpy Skreen Sligo 1833

Coggins, Danl Farnaharpy Skreen Sligo 1833

Coggins, Pat Farnaharpy Skreen Sligo 1833

Coggins, Michl Farnaharpy Skreen Sligo 1833

Parish Records in Skreen

Name Date of Baptism Parents Names

Catherine Boland 19 Mar 1868 James Boland, Bridget Coggans

James Boland 25 Mar 1870 James, Bridget

Bridget Boland 13 Mar 1872 James, Bridget

Margaret Boland 23 Apr 1874 James, Bridget

John Boland 26 Mar 1876 James, Bridget

Pat Boland 9 Jun 1878 James, Bridget

Joanna Boland 22 Aug 1880 James, Bridget

Margaret Boland 24 Jun 1883 James, Bridget (this means the older Margaret

died young) James Boland and Bridget Coggins/Coggans married in Sligo in 1862.

We were unable to find records for the baptism of James Boland and Bridget Coggins but both were likely born in Skreen in 1820/1830, which means that they lived through the trauma of the Great Famine. Like many famers the Bolands and Coggins were tenant farmers and open to the vicissitudes of the Famine. The Great Famine would rage over Ireland for four years, but its impact is still noticeable. The most obvious outcome of these years appears when the census of 1841 is compared with the census of 1851. According to the 1841 census 8,175,124 people lived in Ireland. The census of 1851 counted 6,522,285 people. Judging by the official figures the population of Ireland had decreased with 20% in just one decade. Due to malnutrition and poor general living conditions illnesses such as dysentery, typhus (or black fever), relapsing fever (or yellow fever) and scurvy started to occur. Besides these famine related diseases the weakened Irish were an easy prey for the cholera pandemic which raged over Europe at the end of the 40's and 50's of the nineteenth century. The highly infectious diseases caused the collapse of social structures as nobody was eager to provide shelter and food to strangers or even relatives. Hordes of homeless, hungry and ill people moved to the workhouses and food depots in the cities. Without operational fever hospitals to accommodate the ill the cities became the focus of infection.

There are numerous reports describing the situation in Ireland. A traveler wrote for example the following moving comment while he was visiting Skibbereen in County Cork: ‘The number of deaths and the multitude of starving people is shocking. People are screaming for food or dying in their houses, whole families are found dead, sometimes the living are lying with the decomposing dead, unable to move. People are dying on the roadsides. The traditions of waking and keening the dead are not being observed as they have bee’.

Like many Irish Bridget Boland left the devastated country. . While in Ireland, like most of the poor their lives and living conditions would have been bad, even before the Famine struck. Most landless labourers and small tenant farmers lived in a mud cabin without windows or two roomed thatched cottages; this was home for 45% of the population. People lived in so-called scalps, a hole in the earth covered with twigs and turf, and scalpeens, almost similar to a scalp but with a loftier roof and slightly larger dimensions. Gustave de Beaumont (1830s) on his Tour of Ireland described the living conditions of landless labourers.

"Imagine four walls of dried mud (which the rain, as it falls, easily restores to its primitive condition) having for its roof a little straw or some sods, for its chimney a hole cut in the roof, or very frequently the door through which alone the smoke finds an issue. A single apartment contains father, mother, children and sometimes a grandfather and a grandmother; there is no furniture in the wretched hovel; a single bed of straw serves the entire family.

Five or six half-naked children may be seen crouched near a miserable fire, the ashes of which cover a few potatoes, the sole nourishment of the family. In the midst of all lies a dirty pig, the only thriving inhabitant of the place, for he lives in filth. The presence of a pig in an Irish hovel may at first seem an indication of misery; on the contrary, it is a sign of comparative comfort. Indigence is still more extreme in a hovel where no pig is found... I have just described the dwelling of the Irish farmer or agricultural labourer."

The main, and often time only, food was the potato – which were eaten whole, often with milk. Uniquely, the potato (including the skin) is able to provide all the basic nutrition required by growing children and manual labourers and famers, and so became the only "choice" available to the rural Catholic poor, who formed the vast bulk of the population. Potatoes contain plentiful carbohydrates and some protein, calcium, and niacin. They are easy to grow and store, therefore when they were plentiful a labourer / farmer could feed his family well on this staple food.

The potato crop was first hit with the ‘blight’ in 1845, and then each succeeding year until a full crop grew again in 1850. The worst year was ‘Black ‘47’ – already in 1845-1846 all that the people possessed--their clothing, bedding, etc.--all had been pawned to buy food. Now even the weather turned against the people. The winter of 1846-47 was the most severe in memory; snow fell early in November, frost and gales were continuous. The Irish laborer must now go out and work in the icy chill, covered only in rags and in a half-starved condition. Men began to faint from exhaustion. In Cork, five thousand beggars roamed the streets. They were the first to die, at a rate of one hundred a week. Soup kitchens could not offer enough nourishment to sustain life to a man who had been accustomed to eating fourteen pounds of potatoes a day. In many cases, those with dysentery were left in worse condition than before the soup. Typhus was becoming common. The fever had reached epidemic proportions by March of 1847. The fever reached a peak in April when during a single week, 2,613 inmates of workhouses were declared dead. September brought some relief, but by now, the people felt the land was cursed, and those who could, boarded ships to go to America, Australia, Canada.

Since the first bad harvest of 1845 emigration began a gradually increasing flood of Irish set out on a journey to mainly Britain and the United States of America. As rule of thumb it is assumed that approximately one million Irish emigrated during the Great Famine. The exodus continued long after the horrors of the famine had blown out. We can presume that Patrick, Ellen and their family left Ireland because there was no future for them there. They would have seen the worst of the horrors or the Famine, Co. Cork in particular was badly hit. In 1847 in Skibereen, as the Cork Examiner says ‘One hundred and forty have died in the Skibbereen Workhouse in one month; eight have died in one day! And Mr. M'Carthy Downing states that 'they came into the house merely and solely for the purpose of getting a coffin.' The Rev. Mr. Clancy visits a farm, and there, in one house, 'he administered the last rites of religion to six person.' On a subsequent occasion, he 'prepared for death a father and a daughter lying in the same bed.'

In 1846 moved by the conditions he witnessed in his travels around Cork Mr. Nicholas Cummins, a Justice of the Peace, who lived at Ann Mount, Cork, wrote to the Duke of Wellington "without apology or preface" describing conditions in Ireland and imploring for help.

In his letter he gave several piteous examples of the effect of the Famine. One scene he witnessed was "A mother, herself in fever, who was seen to drag out the corpse of her child, a girl about twelve, perfectly naked, and leave it half covered with stones. In another house, within 500 yards of the cavalry station at Skibbereen, the dispensary doctor found seven wretches lying, unable to move under the same cloak, one had been dead for many hours, but the others were unable to move themselves or the corpse’.

People were getting desperate. One writer mentioned an incident in Tralee, Co. Kerry. " On 5 Nov 1847 a crowd of destitute people marched on the workhouse at Tralee carrying a black flag marked 'flag of distress', declaring they would enter the workhouse by force. They had been deprived of outdooor relief of a 'halfpenny a day' by the Guardians, 'because the Board's finances could not bear even so small an allowance.' They succeeded in breaking down the main gate. Police and troops were called out and the people were forced, after a struggle, to depart."

These conditions forced people off the land, into the towns and workhouses and on to the emigrant ships. Most emigrants at the time went to the USA and Canada but many thousands also found their way to the big cities in the UK –mainly in Manchester, Liverpool and London. Cobh, or Queenstown, Co. Cork as it was then know, was the most important port for emigrants from this area of Ireland and probably where your ancestors left from. Between 1848 and 1950 over 2.5 million Irish people left Ireland through Queenstown, and it is likely that these families were among them.

Description of Skeen in 1837

SKREEN, or SKRINE, a parish, in the barony of TYRERAGH, county of SLIGO, and province of CONNAUGHT, 5 miles (E.) from Dromore-West, on the road from Sligo to Ballina, and on Ardnaglass harbour; containing 4567 inhabitants. This parish was anciently called Knock-na-moile, and was granted by Tipraid, Chief of Hy-Fiachrii, to St. Columb: it obtained its present name from a shrine of St. Adamnan erected here. From its contiguity to the shore of the Atlantic, great facility is afforded of obtaining valuable manure: agriculture is very bad, the peasantry being adverse to the adoption of any improvements, though the land is in itself good; there is some bog in the mountains. At Ardnaglass is a good limestone quarry, from which some of the hewn stone work of the new chapel at Ballina was procured; it bears the chisel well and takes a good polish. Petty sessions are held at Ardnaglass once a fortnight; and fairs for cattle on June 21st, Aug. 13th, Sept. 23rd, and Nov. 12th. Leckfield is the residence of Lewis G. Jones, Esq.; Seafort, of R. Wood, Esq.; and Tubberpatrick, of Jeremiah Jones, Esq.

The living is a rectory and vicarage, in the diocese of Killala, and in the patronage of the Archbishop of Tuam; the tithes amount to £480. The glebe-house was built in 1807 by the then incumbent, at a cost of £680; the glebe comprises 21 acres, valued at £52. 10. per annum. The church is a neat building with a square tower, and was erected in 1819, near the ruins of the former, by aid of a loan of £1200 from the late Board of First Fruits: the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have lately granted £180 for its repair. The R. C. parish is co-extensive with that of the Established Church, and contains a chapel. On the glebe is a female school aided by the incumbent; a school at Farnaharpy is under the patronage of the Rev. T. Webber, who built the school-house; and there are four other public schools, in all which about 280 children are taught. There are also three private schools, in which are about 210 children. Tradition reports that once there were seven churches within the parish, and that there existed an establishment for religious instruction; there are appearances of the foundations of many buildings. The old castle of Ardnaglass, of which there are considerable remains, was originally the residence of the Odowds, a family then of great note, and was also in the possession of the Mac Swineys; it is now the property of J. Jones, Esq., whose ancestor came over with Oliver Cromwell. At Skreen is a very fine well, having over it a monument inscribed, "Eugenius McDonnail, vicarius hujus vile, M. F. F. 1591:" it is in excellent preservation.

Skreen Parish today

Before 1849, Skreen and Dromard were separate parishes and they became one parish in 1849. Fr Hugh Conway was the very first Parish Priest from 1849 until 1872 when he became Bishop of Killala.The Parish of Dromard (which means high ridge) is the most easterly parish in the barony of and the diocese of Killala. The stream near Michael Kilgallen's house in which flows into Ballisodare Bay is the boundary between the diocese of Killala and . Dromard takes its name from the elevated position of the old church on the slope of the and has 7,417 acres and 41 .The present of Ss Peter & Paul is at Chapel St. Christ the King Church of Ireland is at Beltra. All history books of County Sligo refer to Longford House - seat of the Crofton family and Tanrego House - seat of the Irwin family.

The Parish of Skreen adjoins Dromard and stretches from the sea to the summit of the Ox mountains ( 1778ft high). it has 13,233 acres and 27 townlands. Skreen was once the home of King Daithe, High King of Ireland and the last pagan monarch. St Colmcille was given land here to build a church and it was built in the time of St Adamnan (St Eunan). This area was called Skreen (from the Irish meaning of Scrin) because of the shrine or church of St Adamnan. St adamnan later became abbot of and wrote the Life of st Colmcille and died in 704.

The present Catholic Church in Skreen is known as St Adamnan's and was built in 1868.The Church of Ireland Parish Church churchyard contains some of the finest boxtombs in Ireland. For the first time since the Great Famine 150 years ago Skreen and Dromard is increasing in population. One third are involved in farming and the majority of the rest work either locally orin sliugo and Ballina. There has been tremendous growth in housing and people have returned to their home place once more. The parish is fortunate to have some of the best land in County Sligo and some of the loveliest scenery in Ireland.