Sears familynresearch

Hello Arnie,

You seem to have a lot of information going back quite a long time, but the question I ask myself is how do you know this?  From where have you gotten the dates?

If by chance that you got this information from a tombstone or a census record then I would ask that you keep a very open mind regarding dates.

Most people who emigrated were illiterate and undocumented.  They didn't know how to spell their names and hadn't a clue as to what age they were.  At the port of arrival their names were recorded phonetically, their ages were only guessed, and this is the information that followed them for the rest of their lives.

The proof of this occured in 1909 when the old age pension was introduced into ireland.  People had to prove their ages and were forced to go through baptismal records to establish when they were born.  That is why there is such HUGE discrepancies between ages in the 1901 census and the 1911 census of Ireland.  Dates were found to be out by many many years in some cases.

So bearing that in mind, I would suggest that you go to www.irishgenealogy.ie which contains many of the church records for Co. Kerry.  this is an Irish government site and is free to use.   I found many Sears families in Kerry so there's a good chance that you will find who you are looking for.

I would suggest that you search for the children first as you know parents names .  Look for Thomas and Andrew and all the others first, but make sure you don't put in any dates as this will eliminate possible relatives.  Leaave the date blank at first and gradually refine your search.  I would also leave the mother's name out of things at first to see what comes up.  As you are probably aware, all the records are in Latin and some names have be translated in peculiar ways.  Keep your search broad to be able to read as many results as possible.

Hope this helps you in some way,

Anne Dennehy