An Idiot's Guide To Tracing Ancestors
Glin Historical Society
8:00pm
23 Nov 2011
by Paddy Waldron
Outline:
Where do I start?
Cahara House
The Sleemans
The Fitzgeralds
The Pegums
Where do I finish?
- Start with yourself!
- With names, dates and places
- With a blank pedigree chart
- With a computer program like Ancestral Quest AND online backup like tribalpages or WorldConnect or the new findmypast.ie Family Tree builder (launched 21 Nov 2011)
- With your oldest and/or most knowledgeable relatives
- With your family papers (in memoriam cards, newscuttings, family bible, wills, intestacies - no will, maybe a pedigree affidavit)
- Then with online sources, free, subscription, pay-per-view, download, etc. For example:
-
- Google is great for more unusual names or combinations of names, like "quin sleeman"; but Google, by accident or design, does not harvest many genealogy sites.
Limerick
- Archives
- Limerick City Council website (Jacqui Hayes)
- Local Studies
- Limerick City Council website (Mike Maguire)
- Museum
- Limerick City Council website (Brian Hodkinson)
- City Councillors 1841-2009
- Families
- Limerick City Council website
- Chronicle Obituaries by year
- Limerick City Council website
- Alphabetical listings of obituaries
- Limerick City Council website
- Mount St Lawrence 1855-2008
- Limerick City Council website
- Limerick City Trades Register 1769-1925
- Limerick City Trades Register - Advanced Search
- Magazine of Magazines
- Digitisation Project: The Magazine of Magazines, 18th Century Limerick Publication
- Mark Humphrys' family tree
- Notable Mayors in Limerick's History
- IFHF
- Pay-per-view online Irish ancestral Birth, Death and Marriage records for Co. Limerick. Genealogy research center - Limerick Genealogy
Ireland
- 1901 and 1911 Census of Ireland
- Irish Genealogy
- FamilySearch.org --- Irish Civil Registration Indexes
- FamilySearch.org --- Ireland Births and Baptisms
- FamilySearch.org --- Ireland Marriages
- FamilySearch.org --- Ireland Deaths
- Griffiths Valuation (askaboutireland - free)
- Griffiths Valuation (Irish Origins - subscription)
- Griffiths Valuation (Find My Past - subscription; also includes Landed Estates Court Rentals)
- Townland index (SeanRuad RIP)
- IreAtlas Townland Search Form
- Lewis, Samuel: Topographical Dictionary of Ireland
- Architects Dictionary
- Online newspaper archives
U.K.
- England and Wales BMD indexes I
- England & Wales GRO
- Certificate Ordering Service
- UKBMD
- 1901 Census of England and Wales Online
- 1911 Census of England and Wales
- ScotlandsPeople
- CWGC :: Search
- London Gazette
U.S.
- Ellis Island
- Ellis Island II
- SSDI
- California Death Records
Australia
- Birth Death and Marriage Records - Australia
- Web Sites for Genealogists
- NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages
World - free
- IGI search
- FamilySearch.org --- Free Family History and Genealogy Records
World - subscription
- Ancestry.com
View Larger Map- Townland index
- 1656 Down Survey: Caheragh was part of Ballygiltenan (Seven Centuries of Change, p.40)
- 6 Aug 1737: Knight of Glin leased Caheragh to James Connor for 99 years from 1 May 1739 ((Seven Centuries of Change, pp.161-2)
- Cahara House built in the 18th century
- Tithes?
- Griffith's Valuation (1 Jul 1852) page 1 and page 2
- The most valuable house in Caheragh was occupied by Frederick Alme or Alms
- Cancelled books in the Valuation Office, Irish Life Centre, Dublin, will show all subsequent occupiers to 1970s
- Photographs of Cahara collected by Joanna Pegum
- First Irish connection in Irish Marriages
Being An Index To The Marriages In
Walker's Hibernian Magazine
1771 to 1812
By Henry Farrar; London, England; 1890:
Sleeman, Capt., 28th Foot=Quin, Miss, d. of late Wm. of Limerick July 1805 (p. 445)
- A marble tablet on the north wall of the
chancel of [Tavistock] parish church ... records, in touching
words of eulogy, the death at twenty-one of his
daughter-in-law, Mary, the wife [sic, elsewhere misdescribed as widow] of Richard Sleeman,
captain in the 28th Regiment (Alford, 1891, p.326)
- The Sleemans were clergymen in Tavistock and Whitchurch, Devon for three generations (Capt. Richard Sleeman's father (Rev. Richard), his brother (Rev. Peter) and his nephew (Rev. Richard), The Hunting Parson).
- The Sleeman family papers are in Sloman (solicitor) papers, Plymouth and West Devon Record Office.
- Alumni Dublinenses has just one Sleeman:
- He does not appear to have been conferred with any degree by the University of Dublin.
- The death of Mrs Harriet Sleeman, Glin, relict of Capt., 28th Regt., & of Whitechurch, Devon was reported in the Ennis Chronicle 2 Jan 1828 and Waterford Mail 9 Jan 1828
- Richard Quin Sleeman, Cahara, Co Limerick, was member no. 30 and founding committee member of the Royal Western Yacht Club of Ireland, Kilrush, 6 Feb 1828.
- By 1837 (Lewis), the principal seats of Glin included Cahara House, of R. Q. Sleeman, Esq.
- At Whitechurch in 1840, Richard's paternal first cousin Alice Catherine Sleeman married Rev. William Quin Montgomery, who may have been a maternal relation. (GGgrandparents of Arthur Montgomery of Banteer.)
- 1841 Tralee election: Richard Quin Sleeman of Glin arrested two intending duellists during the election campaign (Limerick Chronicle 21 Jul 1841)
- Richard Quin Sleeman was High Sheriff of County Limerick for 1843.
- Two young women servants of Richard Quin-Sleeman were found dead in their beds in Cahara House at 9 o'clock on the morning of 29 Feb 1844. See `Cahara House Tragedy' by Tom Donovan in The Old Limerick Journal, Winter Edition 2005, p.29.
- Richard Q. Sleeman, Esq., was considered among the "benevolent local gentry" during the famine: his "tender, charitable and humane acts" were described in an anonymous letter (Limerick Reporter, 1 Jun 1847). See also "Glin During the Great Hunger" by Tom Donovan in The Glencorbry Chronicle vol.1, no.1, 1997, pp.32-39
- 1848 - emigration to America?
- Sleeman v. Knight of Glin: action for illegally distraining for rent; Sleeman lost (Limerick Reporter 16 Mar 1849)
- According to an 1851 travel writer, Richard Quin Sleeman got a fortune of 25,000 with his wife, but "His wife is at this moment the matron of the Limerick workhouse, and he himself is a London hostler." On 21 Feb 1852, the above statement was retracted with an apology, in Eliza Cook's Journal.
- Anne Sleeman in Griffith's Valuation (nine days before the retraction, on 12 Feb 1852) on Greenhill Road, Garryowen, near the Asylum.
- findmypast.ie has lots of mentions in Landed Estates Court Rentals 1850-1885:
Killocally: To be sold by auction 12 Dec 1856:
These lands will be subject to the right of dower, of Mrs Anne Sleeman, the wife of the owner, in case she shall survive him. The owner is now aged about 53 years, and Mrs. Sleeman, about 50 years.
South Miltown (Barony of Lower Connelloe) and Broad Street: To be sold 1 Jul 1858:
Richard Quinn [sic] Sleeman, Assignee of the Estate and Effects of John Evans, an Insolvent Debtor, continued in the name of Robert Anglim, the present assignee of said insolvent.
The Killocally property was purchased by the late Charles Humphrey Minchin, Esq., in the year 1857, in the then Incumbered Estates Court, and same was conveyed to him by the Incumbered Estates Commissioners, by indenture dated the 21st March, 1857, subject to the leases and tenancies referred to in the schedule thereto.
And subject also to the right of dower of Mrs Anne Sleeman, the wife of Richard Quin Sleeman, the previous owner of said lands, in case she should survive him. The said Charles H. Minchin afterwards purchased a release of her said right of dower from the said Mrs. Anne Sleeman, who duly released the same with the concurrence of her husband, by indenture dated the 23rd of June, 1857.
- London Gazette
14 April 1857
Issue number:
21989
Page number:
1369
- 1861 English census: Surrey > Clapham > District 15 > 1 at 2 Park Crescent - Richard not at home
- London Gazette
31 December 1867
Issue number:
23338
Page number:
7149
- 1881 English census: London > Paddington > St Mary Paddington > District 34 > 22 at 159 Ledbury Road - Richard not at home
- Anne b.c.1805-1811, Madras; d.1886 Q2, Kensington; her maiden name is not known.
- They had at least six children, born c.1837-1850: Harriette Alice; Antonia Mary; Isabella E.; William I.; Joseph F.; and Arthur Fitzgibbon.
- Harriette Alice m. Charles Edward Stewart (1871 Q1) and had four children: Arthur Charles, Henry William, Isabella Mary and Richard Alexander
- Richard Quin Sleeman, "of independent means" died 22 Aug 1893 aged 86 in 9 The Croft, Saint Clement's civil parish, Hastings, Sussex:
View Larger Map- For more, see full Sleeman descendants report.
- Cahara was originally a dower house for the Knights of Glin
- Cahara house was in the possession of George Fitzgerald Hartigan Putland in 1865 when it was advertised for sale on 107 acres and held under an accepted proposal for life of G.F.H. Putland from the Knight of Glin. (landedestates.ie)
- Edward probably lived in Cahara with his widowed mother:
- Stephen Pegum sr. (c.1808-1888) dominated the salmon trade in Glin as early as 1864 (Seven Centuries of Change, p.195).
- Pegums also owned ice houses; a steamer and a hardware store in Main Street.
- Cahara House was home to the Pegums from about 1888, when Stephen Pegum bought it, till around the 1940s
- 1892: Knight of Glin proposed Stephen Pegum jr. (c.1850-1918) as a J.P. - "a Roman Catholic of A1 character, a large fish-merchant and a tenant of mine" (Seven Centuries of Change, pp.202-3)
- Stephen jr. and his younger sister Mary (c.1860-1928) never married, but raised their orphaned nephews and nieces at Cahara, including Jack Pegum (1886-1940) who married firstly 29 Oct 1913 Mary Constance O'Flynn (c.1887-1927) of Sixmilebridge.
- Caheragh in 1901 census (PDF)
- Caheragh in 1911 census (PDF)
- Ardnacrusha hydroelectric power station put an end to the Shannon salmon fishery by the 1930s
- Thomas Edward Pegum J.P. (1885-1947) then left Cahara
- A family history is never finished!
- Keep trying to go back another generation
- Explore new sources
- Revisit old sources
- Trace the emigrants
- Add current births, marriages and deaths