Orlaith McBride

But I didn't know much more about it.

But then all of a sudden I got the return and then I could begin to see, oh, granddad was alive then.

And then all of a sudden I went beyond his return to look at the other returns and then began to look at the newspaper archive

found articles then relating to this tragedy, which befell our family and that we lost our great uncle and our great grandfather.

But it then speaks to life on the Western seaboard, life in a rural community on an island community.

Rural Ireland was hard enough in 1926, living on an island.

of the West Donegal was even harder.

So the census returns really, they offer us just a gateway into other stories, other themes that one can begin to research.

Is it a literacy thing?

Yeah.

Five thousand of them were filled out in Irish.

And it's the cloacaillac, so it's absolutely beautiful.

I couldn't find my grandfather when I was looking, when we were beginning the search.

And then I found him.

He had filled his out in Irish.

And that is just, they're beautiful.

They're beautiful to look at, actually.

Yeah, it is.

And it's particularly interesting in urban areas.

In rural areas, it's not so interesting, obviously.