June trip to N Ireland

Sheri,

The townland will be Tully (rather than Tilly. There’s Tully North & South in Loughguile). The other parish you mention is Derrykeighan. Roseyards is in Ballymoney parish.

I am sorry you didn’t hear back from Kate. I’ll contact her again and ask her to check her spam box. Hopefully I can put you in touch with her.

Sheri,

I have been in touch with Kate. She should contact you shortly.

Elwyn

Elwyn, thank you for all your help.  We come to the beautiful green Isle in a week.  We are excited, hopeful and eager to learn all we can in the short time that we have.

I was wondering where we would find:

court records-land and petty sessions

dog licenses

school records

will and probate records

We have narrowed down property that we think was farmed by the O'kane and plan on following up with a visit to see who is still farming it today.

I know that you told me some of these can be researched at the PRONI, but I can't remember which records.

Sheri

Sheri,

Court records and petty sessions records for Co Antrim will be in PRONI where they still exist. Many have been lost though, either in the original 1922 fire in Dublin or because they were simply thrown away.

I don’t think there are any dog license records for Northern Ireland. I know they exist elsewhere in Ireland but I have never come across any here.

School attendance records are in PRONI, in the SCH series. There is a catalogue on the PRONI website, compiled by parish, which tells you what schools they have. There are also separate record son the schools in the EDD series which record other information about schools. For example, the teachers names and salaries, the results of inspections, applications for grants for extra resources etc.

Probate files (with wills where there was one) are held by PRONI. The abstracts (summaries) from 1858 to 1964 are on the PRONI site. Some of the wills themselves are also on that site, especially for the years 1858 to c 1910, but later probate files are generally in paper format, and so you have to order them up from the store room there. The staff will show you how to do that.

Pre 1858 wills were mostly destroyed in the 1922 fire, though few still exist because of duplicate copies etc. Search on the names index or the main e-catalogue site for them.

Searching tip for the PRONI wills site: Put in the townland on its own in the line marked “Full abstract”. Don’t put in any other information. The search will then bring up all the probate abstracts for folk who lived in that townland, 1858 onwards.  So you may find a few members of your family that you didn’t know to look for. And it also allows for alternative spellings of surnames, which you might miss.

Remember that not everyone left a will and that not all wills required probate. So if someone’s assets were all moveable, eg some cash, a few cows and the farm, the family just administered the estate according to the will, but without obtaining probate. In those cases, RONI won’t have the will. (Indeed no-one’s likely to have the will now).

Hope your visit goes well.

Elwyn