Rachel MURPHY
Eneclann
Tracing land ownership using Property and Valuation Records
Given the lack of extant census returns for Ireland during the nineteenth century, many researchers use Irish property and valuation records as a census substitute.
These records, although created for administrative purposes, contain a wealth of information on families and individuals across all of Ireland from the mid-19th Century down to the late 20th Century. The proper use of these records can allow the genealogist to track continuity of a family in any district, and is especially useful where no other records survive. The use of the Valuation Office records to the Irish family historian is not fully appreciated, even by many professional genealogists. The true value of these records can only be fully exploited by using them in conjunction with published sources of Griffith’s Valuation [available on the Irish Origins site], and the Landed Estates Court Rentals (to be published later this year), but also the manuscript sources of the Cancelled Books held in the Valuation Office. Rachel Murphy of Eneclann demonstrates the importance of the house and field notebooks, Griffith’s Valuation and the cancelled valuation books to the family historian researching their family from the 1830s through to the late 20th Century.