Emigration records for families who departed Ireland in 1845/1846?

Susan,

The tithe applotment records (church taxes) for 1828 list 3 Grier households in Creevagh, parish Tullycorbet, Monaghan. Samuel, Timothy & Hugh.

http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/home.jsp

Griffiths Valuation for 1860 has a Joseph Greer in Creevagh. Perhaps that is your family. Joseph had a farmhouse, outbuildings and 16 acres of land (plot 13).

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

No Grier/Greers there by the 1901 census.

There?s no list of departures in Ireland or Britain. Few authorities had much interest in people leaving and no passenger records were kept at the Irish or British end. (There are a few sets of ticket sales records left by ships agents but these do not form anything approaching a national database). The records that were created were for US immigration and so tend to be based around records kept at ports of entry to the US. I assume you have already checked Castle Island and Ancestry?s databases.

Though there were plenty of ships from Ireland to the US, the biggest departure port by far was Liverpool with many ships agents throwing in the cost of passage there as part of the deal. Here?s an article that gives you a little background information:

http://www.finnvalley.ie/history/emigration/index.html

Bear in mind that it was considerably cheaper to sail to Canada than directly to the US and so a lot of migrants chose that route for that reason.

If you know your ancestors religious denomination, that may help a little Grier (and variant spellings) tend to be more common in Counties Down, Antrim & Armagh, though they are found elsewhere in the country. However if yours were say Presbyterian, then that would hint strongly at his origins being in what is now Northern Ireland.

Elwyn

Dear Elwyn,

Thank you SO much for your prompt and informative response. I had researched the Griffith's Valuation but the tithe applotment books are a new resource to me and I am thrilled that you were able to find a Timothy Grier listed there. 

Thanks also for the info about the cost difference between arriving in the U.S. and Canada. Since I haven't seen any Canadian linkage within this branch of the family tree, I had discounted a Canadian arrival. I'll need to reconsider that as a variable.

I've made great progress in my research via Ancestry, but I find that many, many records are not available digitally, most likely due to cost restrictions. I recently returned from a trip to a town in Central Pennsylvania where my Grier relatives settled when they came to the U.S.; there I was able to find Timothy's naturalization record at the county courthouse, his wife's obituary in the  local newspaper's microfilm records, and a membership record for Timothy and his wife at the Presbyterian church in town. None of these documents are available online and had I not been able to travel the 300 miles to conduct "on the ground" research, I would not have know that Timothy came from Creevagh.

I'm sincerely appreciative of your assistance, and of "Ireland Reaching Out" for helping connect those of us searching for our Irish roots with reference materials we might not otherwise know to consult.

Thanks again, and all the best to you,

Susan Rink