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Thanks for the replies everyone!

Sonas I got my information from "Sources for the History of Landed Estates in Ireland" Terence Dooley 2000. There's a card index file in the reading room in the NLI arranged by county and estate name. This will have two references. "E.C.1234" refers you to green volumes in the reading room. "box no.1234" refers to the Land Commission reference. The green volumes contain information on the contents of the boxes. Let us know how you get on calling them!

I know there are no estates records existing for the one I'm interested in. I even contacted a descendent of that estate to see if there were any held privately.

I think the inspectors reports that deal with the tenants could be a great source. For those of us with farming forebears I feel like it would be akin to military records of ancestors in the military. I'm sure eventually they could introduce some form of service where you could pay to view the records, similar to the valuation books, this would help support the resources needed.

As for the sensitivity of material issue, considering what you can already access, I can't see it being an issue, just an excuse. The people who decided to send them down to storage in Portlaoise are probably descendents of the people who decided to burn the 1800's censuses 

I checked and the book is out of print unfortunately. You could try contacting the publisher:
http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/product.php?intProductID=388
If you're in Ireland, I know the book is available in some libraries, so you might want to check that out first.

Blondie,

You should try and get your hands on a copy of Mayo's Lost Islands - The Inishkeas by Brian Dornan. It has extensive information about families on the islands in the 1800s. Plenty of mentions of Lavelles in it! It's a pretty interesting read anyway but for anyone who has ancestors from the Inishkeas it should be compulsory reading.

Also back in 1895 a Dr. Browne did an ethnographic study of the Mullet and the Inishkeas. It's a study of the people basically. If you want send me a message and I'll send it onto you. You never know, one of the men detailed in it might be an ancestor.

Happy Paddys Day!

Hi Ros,

I have a similar situation in my own family tree, an uncommon surname in a village, evidence that just the one man with this surname came to the village in the early 1800s from another area of Mayo (from Schools Folklore Collection), where the surname is common, but family oral tradition suggests that the families (only two) with the surname in the village today aren't related (though I think this is more to do with my family not wanting to be related to the other family).

From Griffiths Valuation, by 1856, there were two Lallys (both Patrick) in the parish of Kilcolman (parish for Garryredmond and Caraun) one in Caraun and one in Garryredmond. You can search Griffiths Valuation yourself for free online, just google it, and there's threads about it in the Ireland resources section.

The fact that the name was uncommon in this parish might suggest that John and Patrick were related. What sort of relationship is there supposed to be between the two families? If they were brothers then maybe looking at the names of their children might signify something. There was a pretty common naming tradition whereby the eldest son was named for the paternal grandfather, second son for the maternal grandfather and third son for the father. There was a similar tradition for daughters. If eldest sons and eldest/second eldest daughters names match up it would be a good indicator.

If you're in Ireland, a sometimes helpful source for the origins of families in an area is the Schools Folklore Collection, on microfilm in Mayo Co. Library, you can read about the collection on that website, but it depends on the material each school collected. I'm guessing you've already done some research with the usual sources if you have the couples names including wives maiden names.

I don't know if I'm allowed mention other websites but mayo-ireland.ie has discussion boards for local towns/villages in Mayo, the discussion boards are used a lot by people researching their family trees and it's a good website for more specific family/area/genealogy queries. I think Ballindine, Claremorris, Irishtown and Ballyhaunis would be the nearest towns to your villages, so it might be worth a shot leaving messages there about the Lallys, or even finding older posts there about them.

Good luck!

Something else to maybe consider is that Gill would have been, and is, a common surname in that general area.