Can anyone help, please-Smith Family-Dublin

[shanew147]

One point to remember is that not all parishes have records back to the 1820s, so there's no guarantee that anything exists for your Smith family... which is why knowing the parish, or at least the general area, is important before starting the search. Having a few additional family details could help verify or rule out potential matches - e.g. a couples full names, details of siblings, father's occupation etc...

You have quite a few parishes to check - see the map and details on the Irish Times Website, which also show dates available, location of records etc :

   Co. RC Dublin Parishes
   Dublin City RC Parishes

One major city RC parish not included on the Irish Genealogy Website is St. Paul's Arran quay. Many transcripts for this parish are available on the pay-website of the Irish Family History Foundation website at : www.rootsireland.ie

It's not really a case of contacting the Individual parishes, not all of these are still open or in a position to carry out research, and for historic records you would probably be directed to the IrishGenealogy website, or the National Library - which holds historic records for most RC of the parishes on microfilm.



Shane

[smithy12]

Thanks Shane again.  What a lovely person you are for helping me like this. I'm  in Australia doing this research and I'm getting more help from you than from the Genealogical Society I joined.  I'm not impressed, Grizzle! Grizzle! Anyway, do you perhaps think, that I should contact the National Library of Dublin first and ask them if they conduct searches for people, then if I have no luck with them, make contact with the parishes that you have kindly given me a link to? It did cross my mind though like you stated, that some of the parish priests or whoever, probably wouldn't carry out research for me.  Also, I was seriously thinking of joining a reliable Genealogical Society in Dublin, at a cost though, because I'm not getting anywhere fast if you know what I mean.

[shanew147]

The National Library dont have staff to do research - you would have to either visit in person, or arrange for a researcher to visit on your behalf.

I think the problem is not in finding possible Smith baptisms, it's trying to figure out if they are 'your' Smith family or not with such limited details, and such a common surname. It was 5th most common surname in Ireland in a survey of all births carried out in the 1890s


Shane

[smithy12]

Thanks Shane for that info.  Some Libraries I know offer a 'lookup service' and some don't. That's unfortunately the way it goes. Makes it difficult though.  I think I realized a while ago, because of the such common surname, that my family research was going to be quite difficult.  I think that I'll have to ask questions first and then hopefully go ahead and join/pay a reliable Genealogical Society in Ireland to do my research for me. I did this with a Genealogical Society in America and I got quite a bit of information, although they weren't able to locate my gggrandparent marriage certificate where it hopefully would have given the parents names on it making my research a little easier. Unfortunately though a lot of records were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. I'm afraid I'm not having much luck so far.  Road blocks almost all the way.
Nevermind I'll keep pressing on and hoping against hope.

[shanew147]

one detail I forgot to mention - many RC registers have Christian names entered in Latin - so if they were RC then you also need to check for the Latin equivalents of James and William  - i.e. Jacobus and Guillelmus.

These are not always spelled correctly so you need to allow for some variation..

here's a link to sample search of Irish Genealogy website for Smith RC baptisms in the 1820s where a first name begins with Ja - the search also returns results when any name on the record includes 'Ja' as part of the firstname, or Smith as the surname (i.e. father, mother, sponsor..). The search also automatically returns some variants of the surname - e.g. Smyth..

  Ja* Smith RC baptisms, Dublin 1820s


Shane

[smithy12]

Thanks again Shane. You are fantastic and i have to say that  i'm truly overwhelmed with the help you are trying to give me.  Just goes to show that there are some good people out there in Genealogy land. Like yourself, I did remember something also. It is, that on James Smith's death certificate, here in Australia, it mentions that his father name was 'Simon Smith', but his mother's names is unknown.  Now if that information is correct, I did find a 'Simon Smith' as the father of 'James Smith' born I think in 1827 in Dublin at St Peter Parish on the irishgenealogy.ie website.  The DOB is a little out from the DOB I have, but I'll go back and have a look, anyway. Also, I wanted to say that,  do you remember when I first started posting on this website, that I was also looking for a 'William Smith'.  As I've already stated to you previously, I joined a Genealogical Society in America and they were able to locate a James Smith and William Smith on the 1851 San Francisco marriage returns - Johanna Regan and Mary Ann Regan. (Not the actual Marriage Certificates though, unfortunately).  Anyhow, it seems to me that James Smith and William Smith were brothers who married two sisters. Maybe when I'm asking for help from a Genealogical Society in Ireland, that information will help a little.  All Helps.       

[shanew147]

St. Peter's is a Church of Ireland parish - no RC equivalent that I know of

Many of the other Church of Ireland and RC city parishes have the same names, and cover similar areas e.g. St. Mary's and St. Andrews


Shane

[smithy12]

Thankyou again Shane. I realized that St Peter was Church of Ireland and not Roman Catholic, however I decided to look at all of the Smith's born about 1825 on the irishgenealogy.ie - COI website location anway. One does get desperate when one doesn't know enough.  However, I didn't realize what you stated about St Peter. You seem to be very knowledgable. We can talk again in a day or two, Shane, but for now I've spent so much time on this computer today and if i don't get off it about now, then I think my whole body is going to disintegrate.  I don't know what country you are you are in, but as I've stated previously I'm here in Australia and its getting quite late at night. I thankyou once again for your tremendous help and your time.  Until then.   

[smithy12]

Can any lovely genealogy people help please - Smith

I'm wishing to locate the marriage and death records of my gggrandfather's parents - Simon Smith and Hannah Smith.  Because Smith is such a common surname I've had to employ a professional Irish researcher who found that that my gggrandfather was born in the 1820's in the parish of St Lukes-Dublin - Church of Ireland denomination. I can only presume that both Simon and Hannah did also live in this parish.  However to this day this old church has fallen into disrepair, so I don't where to start to look for marriage and death records. Any ideas would be most helpful.         

Moderator Note : Merged with previous topic