Ever get that feeling that you ancestor was an alien abductee? Edward Patrick Dwyer arrived in Australia or suddenly popped up in Australia with no apparent means of getting there! I can't find his entry to Australia in shipping lists, convict lists, emigration lists, shopping lists, nothing. Either he was dropped into Australia by aliens OR he was part of some 1800's Irish Witness Protection Program! Tee hee.
Oh I know records for free settlers weren't as meticulous as those for convicts, but but but .... they should have know that we genealogists would want to know this sort of information!! (stamps her feet and throws a tantrum)
Ahem!
Getting back to Tipperary; it has been difficult to trace my ancestor in Tipperary. There was no public recording of births, deaths or marriages until the early 1900's, prior to this the only records that were kept were by the church. You have to know, therefore, what parish your ancestor was born in to find their birth/death/marriage.
Through various civil disturbances, and the fire at the Archive in Dublin, census records have been lost or are fragmented so the genealogist has to turn to other records to piece together their family history. Griffiths Valuation is a valuable source in this respect. It lists those who rented properties and who owned those properties.
Presently records are slow to be digitised and made available online - but then there are a hell of a lot of records.
It seems that naming traditions meant that the first born son (at least) was named after the father, but it turns out that the grandfather was also named Edward and the one before that, and that. In fact if the first born son died, then the next born son was called Edward! It can all become very confusing, especially if there is no death recorded for the first son. There was also a change to the family surname even among the baptism records. Some children were named Dwyer some were O'Dwyer!
On my mother's side of the family, it was a Devonshire naming tradition to give the first born child the mother's maiden name as a middle name. This has been a fantastic boon in tracing the family tree as one can safely assume that if your child is called Norton Lilycrap Mattacott, then his mother's maiden name was Lilycrap and you can go back to the records and census to find her parent's and siblings!
I must say that the Tipperary Heritage Centre has been fabulous at helping me track down Edward Patrick Dwyer's parents and siblings. They have access to the Catholic records for Tipperary which helped establish relationships and also provided the names of witnesses and sponsors. If you have ancetors in Tipperary then I can highly recommend this organisation. One of the few that I have come across that deliver what they promise at a reasonable cost, and lets face it there are a lot of sites out there that want to rip you off. And I hate ripoff merchants.
Happy digging.
