Griffith's Valuation 1855 Search Facility

Hints and Tips

1. By typing a family name in the surname box, a list of ALL individuals by that name found in the listed civil parishes shown in Griffith's Valuations 1855 will appear.
   
   If you do not know the correct spelling of a surname or if there are multiple ways of spelling that surname, then the Soundex facility can help trace all similiar sounding names e.g. Lally and Lalley or Cavanaugh and Cavanagh.This can also be useful for surnames where there is a prefix e.g. McDonagh or Mc Donagh ( note space after Mc ). Just click the Soundex box on the search screen to invoke this facility.
   
   While Soundex is useful in certain circumstances, it does not help in searching for 'groups' of names. For example, the name Lally and Mullally are interchangeable in this part of North Galway but a Soundex search would not find all occurences of these. But using a 'wildcard' character just might! Use the symbol '%' ( percent ) to replace a group of characters in the surname at the beginning, middle and/or end of the name e.g. %LALL% would return all Lallys, Lalleys, Mullallys, Mullalleys, etc. To substitute just one character in a name use the single wildcard synbol '_' ( underscore ). It is inadvisable to combine wildcard searches with Soundex switched on as Soundex ignores characters other than letters and will therefore not give the desired results.
   
   
2. Leaving the surname box blank and selecting one of the eight civil parishes or choosing a particular townland will generate a list of all persons residing in that civil parish or the selected townland. [ Note more civil parishes will be added in time ].
   
   
3. Once records are selected, they are presented in Surname, Forenames, Townland, Parish order ( alphabetically by surname ). An additonal column indicates whether more information is available for this specific entry ( it will be hyperlinked if so ). Clicking this link will present you with the additional information available - typically this consists of property lessor, page number from original Griffiths County book, map references of the property ( maps available from Land Valuation Office, Irish Life Centre, Dublin, Ireland ), type of property ( house, offices and/or land ) and the actual Soundex key for this surname.
   
   
4. Enjoy researching these records. Researchers are especially encouraged to verify data by checking original sources or microfilm copies. Any suggestions or comments will be appreciated. If this facility fails to work as expected, please email mcarroll@iol.ie with details.

Copyright © Clydagh Enterprises Ltd., 2001