Researching your family history: birth registers

Welcome back, last week using the website www.irishgenealogy.ie  we looked at how to find a marriage certificate.  Our example was the marriage of James McCormack and Catherine Clarke who married in 1903. This week, staying with this couple, we are going to try tracing them on the 1911 census.

As with last week my search begins by accessing www.irishgenealogy.ie   

Scroll down to Search online records and fill in first and last name and location if known, then press search. You will be offered a list of sources to choose from.  Choose Search Census records 1911. This will bring you directly to 1911 census. Check details of search, you may have to revise County, e.g. Dublin.

The search returned 37 results for James McCormack and only 13 results for Catherine McCormack.  We don’t know where the couple are living in 1911 therefore we need to do some detective work.  As Catherine has the least results we will search these first.  By clicking into each of the 13 results we discover that there is only one Catherine McCormack who is married to a James.

We also discover that they are Roman Catholics and have been married 7 years. All this information fits with what we know from their marriage certificate and we can be fairly confident that we have found our couple.

 The 1911 census helps us to build up a fuller picture of the couple’s lives since their marriage.  

Additional information shows that Catherine is six years older than her husband. He is 30 years of age while she is 36 years old. James is no longer a butcher, he is now listed as a labourer. They have had two children but unfortunately one child has died.  The remaining child is named James and is four years of age.  All the family were born in Dublin city and the parents are literate.  See below.  

Next week we will look at Birth Certificates.