Anyone else excited for the Free State Irish census release tomorrow?

[AInightingale]

Anyone else looking forward to the release of the 26 county Free State Irish census tomorrow (18 April)? What do you hope to find out?

I don't know why I'm writing this, as the site will probably crash immediately and be unavailable for ages.

I didn't know about it until I saw your thread, so now I am excited - thank you!

Almost but not quite beside myself. I won't wait up for it, but really hope it's still functional at 6.00 am.

What I hope to find out - where my 8 mo father was, who was living with both sets of grandparents, what my great grandfathers list their jobs and employers as, who was in the house I live in now. What it says about several friends, aunts, uncles etc who were young adults then.

Longer term and if possible, how the popularity of various personal names had changed over the 15 years since 1911.

It was a delayed census so it's left quite a gap for researchers until now; at least the English census of 1921 and the 1939 Register are available for those in the UK.

My forebears were in Cavan, Monaghan and Dublin at that time, so I hope to look them up.

Yes I am! I want to see who was living in my house at the time (my family has been in it since the '50s)
Also to see where my grandparents were at that time.
Its fascinating stuff isn't it!

Yes I’m very excited about it . I’d say there will be massive interest in it

Did not know about it (not in Ireland) but very excited about it now!

I'm finding it slow, but so far - my father was at home with his parents, two brothers and one sister. His mother had given birth to six live babies, so two of them had already died. They were married two months when their first child was born (I already knew that)

My other grandmother had birthed four babies, all girls, all still alive in 1926 although one had been taken away (without my grandmother having any say) to live with her own grandmother, who had herself had had 16 live births.

I'm not sure how many of those 16 lived to adulthood - 14 maybe, must try a headcount. It was always a bit complicated because some of them were away at school during the earlier censuses, and asking their siblings in the 1980/90s wasn't as much help as I'd hoped. Those who had avoided the various perils of WW1, being on the run, and joining the Irish mob in New York, were a bit vague. Being female was, obviously, a help for anyone who wanted to live beyond their early 20s. Once they did survive that, most of them made it into their nineties, several over the hundred.

Anyhow, there are clearly lots more things to learn.

I know for a fact (as per civil records) that my great grandparents married in 1899, a month after their eldest child was born, but in this census (and the last one, now that I check) they have stated that they were married a year earlier. So that's an attempt to conceal illegitimacy, which I'd say was pretty common.

It's interesting that in this (Protestant) family, the parents and older children are stated as having no Irish, yet the younger children are listed as non-native Irish speakers - from school, obviously.

Absolutely

So I can't find my grandfather (who would have been a baby) or my great grandparents but the great grandparents and a few grand-siblings were in the 1911 census. I had never looked at this before either.
An good reason why my great grandparents have disappeared?

They were definitely in the IFS at the time and not Northern Ireland?
I have a few disappearees as well, although they died in the Republic of Ireland at a later date. God knows where they were. Maybe in the north temporarily or in England. On the other hand my grand aunt appears twice, once at school and then at home...

I love a census!!! I've found my grandparents on one side (the other side were in the North, so on 1911 and 1901 but no longer on this one). There are a few transcription errors but these can be reported from next year onwards, apparently!

My aunt (the 2 yr old living with her grandparents) is there on the household form but wasn't transcribed so would not have shown up in a search.

If you are looking for a household it might help if someone had an unusual (in Irish terms) name.

My great-gran was listed as a non-native Irish speaker. I already knew this to be the case (as older members of her family were native speakers but she was born outside the Gaeltacht), but it was sad to see my (just adult) gran in the same household listed as having no Irish 😔. Her younger siblings were listed as having non-native Irish (clearly also from school) but obviously it didn’t ‘stick’ for long even though great-gran knew the language.

That said, Granny did actually have a lot of Irish words and sayings, probably ones her mother used. Maybe it was just her standard for ‘speaking’ a language was high?

It is hard to ‘see’ the language in the process of being lost though…

What is the link to search the 1926 census?

https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/

I was hoping to find out some more about one of my grandmothers as I don't know much about her life between the 1911 census (when she was still at school) and when she got married in 1930 (old for those days). But I can't find her at all!

I have found her mother and various siblings but absolutely no trace of her. I'm not aware of her living outside the country at that time but who knows? I've read that some people did not want to be recorded and maybe she had reasons for that.

The other person I was curious was my father's older half sister. Her mother died when she was a baby and I know she was looked after by various people until she started school when I think she went back to live with my grandfather. She's not shown as living with him, nor is she living with the aunt who she stayed with nor her maternal grandparents. I can't find her name anywhere in the country!

It's frustrating that the two people I was hoping to find out more about can't be found.

Decorhate

how old would she have been? I’m assuming that means she’d taken another name by marriage?

She would have been early thirties in 1926 and when she married my grandfather the record shows her maiden name and that she is a spinster so I don't think she was married before. Unless she lied!!

For those who cant find relatives, have you checked for the Irish language spelling of their name(s) as well as the name they were known as ? (John/Seán, Aine/Aine)
My husband’s family were entered in that version even though the family didnt use the Irish version of their names. Common surnames can have multiple versions in Irish (Murphy can be Ó Murchú/ Murchadha for example).

I have had trouble finding a few people. One person I knew as Anne was listed as Annie, and another I knew as Betty was down as Lizzie. So try all the name variations you can think of! I still haven’t been able to locate one or two though.

Yes, I too noticed the rise in Irish language names over a few decades. For example, in the 1901 census there were zero Seáns listed, though presumably the name was used, just not ‘officially’ on the census? By 1911 there were 133 and in 1926 there were 2958 Seáns (you get the same result with and without the fada). Not surprising given the times of course.

In 1926 952 of the Seáns were aged 9 or under, and many of them were listed with the English form of their surname rather than the Irish language one. It shows that, as well as older people adopting the Irish form of their name to use, children were being christened with Irish language names in increasing numbers.

Not a surprise, but it’s still interesting to watch it happen.

In 1911 they were still spelling 'Sean' 'Seaghan' and there were 1001 of them (14 in 1901).

With some info from my very elderly uncle, we have been able to find my grandmother. The age stated is around 6 years too young and the name is spelled very differently to on her birth record but we are pretty sure it is her from the occupation and village of birth.