Christine,
As others have said, you need to find out the townland that Richard came from in Ireland before you can look for a baptism or marriage for him. Otherwise you are really just guessing. Statutory records of births, deaths and Roman Catholic marriages only started in 1864 in Ireland, so your only chance of tracing his marriage and birth is through RC church records. Catholic records are available on microfilm in the National Library in Kildare St, in Dublin (website :
http://www.nli.ie/), but you need to find that townland first before they will be of any use.
There are a few options for you to thinks about:
1. Did Patrick leave a will in England? If so get a copy, as it may name or refer to relatives still in Ireland, giving an address.
2. Did Patrick ever make a Poor Law application in England? (Financial assistance). If so, the records often contain details of his parish in Ireland.
3. Have a look for Patrick in all the English censuses from 1891 back to the first in 1841. If you can find him, his place of birth may just be given as Ireland but sometimes you get a county or even an exact place (often scored out by the enumerator and replaced with “Ireland” but can still be legible).
4. Did Patrick have any siblings that you know about? If so try and make enquiries about them, as obviously they could lead you back to his Irish origins.
What I would say is that this will not be easy. You should also be aware that there are gaps in the Irish records (lots of parishes didn’t bother keeping records of births, deaths or marriages, and all the Irish censuses from 1841 – 1891 have been destroyed) and prior to 1800 there is very little to go on.
Elwyn
