Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now, the census records from 1926 are to be published tomorrow and it will be the first time that such information was recorded as part of the independent Irish state. To discuss, I suppose, the fascination behind these census records 100 years later, I'm joined now by history content creator, Jane Casey. Jane, you're very welcome to the programme. So...
Where have these records been, these canvas bound records been all this time?
Yeah, well, they've just been locked up in the archives here, to be honest. We have a rule here in Ireland that there has to be 100 years just for privacy and data.
Chapter 2: What significance does the 1926 census hold for the Irish State?
It can't be released until 100 years later. And we are now coming up to the 100th year. So 18th of April 1926 was the first census of the Irish Free State, the Searstot.
And in terms of the volumes, in terms of the records themselves, there's a phenomenal amount of paperwork here. I'd imagine very fragile paperwork. Have all of the records survived? Are they all intact?
Well, I'm unsure if they're all intact, but from what I hear, largely they are. There's over 700,000 household records that are included. And you have to remember at the time, The population of Ireland was only about 2.9 million. So it was much smaller population than we have now. So 700,000 household records would cover nearly all of them.
So I can't say for sure that every single one survived, but it's a pretty complete set.
Yeah.
This will have been, I suppose, one of the largest projects ever taken on by the National Archives. What can you tell us about the work, I suppose, that would go on behind the scenes to get to this point where you have all of these records now available in a digital form for the public to search?
Yeah, it's absolutely incredible work. It really is. The archivists in the National Archives obviously went through hundreds of thousands of records and painstakingly manually digitise them. So it's a massive piece of work, but it's such a valuable piece of work.
And for people like me, you know, armchair historians, it's just such an exciting, you know, archive to be able to access because generally, you know, our family history and genealogy and all that stuff, you kind of need help of an archivist or you need to go into the archives yourself. So to actually put in the work to bring this to the masses, not only here in Ireland, but also
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Chapter 3: Where have the 1926 census records been stored until now?
descendants of people who might have emigrated, you know, especially during times of upheaval in Ireland. It really just, you know, it's such a valuable resource. It really is. So I'm so glad they put in the effort because I'm so excited for tomorrow. It's like Christmas morning.
Tell me what people will be able to find. What information is contained within these records? What might we be able to find out about our own ancestors?
Yeah, so look, you could probably guess a lot of it. So name, occupation, religion, age, that would have been obviously big, but also marital status and family structure as well. And of course, then you've got your locations as well and you can search it quite easily through their website.
But what's interesting as well is that you can kind of get clues about kind of the housing conditions as well. You know, I've done a lot of research on the 1911 census and the 1901 census, which came previously. And you can kind of see how family units are made up. A lot of the big Georgian houses, you might see that they have five or six family members and two or three servants. as well.
You know, so it really paints a picture of what life would have been like 100 years ago. So it's not even just about what information is right in front of you, but what clues you can get from that information as well.
In terms of searching through the census, where do you actually start? I mean, if I go on tomorrow morning, do I just put in the word Doherty Donegal and see what comes up? Because I would imagine that'll throw up about five million records in of itself.
Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, that mightn't be the best place to start. You probably have to narrow it down a little bit more. But essentially, yeah, that's it. Really, that's it. I mean, I would have, you know, kind of names of ancestors that I would have put in. But I can imagine there's a lot of William Casey's as well, also in Ireland.
So what I do is I'll try and put in the townland if I can get specific about the townland or the town.
that can narrow it down quite a bit and also if you have an idea of someone who you want to search and you have a rough idea of when they were born or when they died you can also put in those parameters as well to help narrow it down and everybody I think has somebody within their family that one person that you think you know what when they go when they die all information about this family goes so you need to speak to them and get that detail out of them why do you think Jane people are still I suppose so fascinated by records like this
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