Ormsby, Ruth

[MJHeckles]

Hello.

This may be a challenge as we have little information to start with...  We are looking for Ruth Ormsby who, we think, was born in Belfast in around 1820.  She later moved to New York state and married John Heckles. 

Any information you may have on birth, baptism, emigration documentation for Ruth specifically or hints on how to search Belfast/Irish records would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you!

-Matthew Heckles-

[kingskerswell]

Hi,
   Civil registration of births did not begin until 1864 in Ireland so there will be no birth certificate. The only way to get information will be a baptism. To get this you need to know Ruth's parents religion and a fairly detailed knowledge of where she was born, ie townland or parish. One problem is that many churches did not keep records at that time.

Regards

[MJHeckles]

Thank you for the reply - though it isn't encouraging.  So if you only had the information we have - name, approximate year of birth, and city - what would you do?  I was wondering about ship manifests ...  thinking that if she appears then perhaps she was traveling with parents or family.  Any thoughts there?

Thank you again.

[aghadowey]

Passenger lists at that period were fairly basic- usually name, age (children sometimes listed as 'child'), occupation, country of origin. Arrival could have been through a U.S. port or Canada. Some U.S. census records list year of arrival in U.S. (not always accurate).

'Belfast' could mean the city itself (smaller than now), an area outside the city or just listed because the nearest city of any size was Belfast (my great-grandmother's uncle born 1819 went to U.S. as a young man and his obituary says 'born near Belfast' but he was born 50 or so miles away).

To start searching for church records you'll need to know the family's religious denomination and where they lived (parish if not actual townland) but not all church records for that period survive and of those that do not all are online.