The purpose of this project is to index all of the names that appear in the memorial books at the registry of deeds.
The Registry of Deeds is located in Henrietta Street, Dublin, Ireland and is a reposity of records
of wills, land transactions in Ireland and other deeds from 1709. While most of the deeds registered prior to 1800
were related to the Protestant ascendency Catholic occupiers are sometimes mentioned. Thus the Registry of Deeds
is a rich source of genealogical information. Marriage settlements are particularly informative about family relationships.
A representative of the Property Registration Authority has indicated the Authority's support for this project.
Their statement is as follows "The Property Registration Authority recognises the benefits of the development of a comprehensive names
index to the memorials volumes held at Registry of Deeds to assist genealogists accessing these valuable resources."
Contributrions so far
How will the project work
This is a distributed project where contributors will index a small part of the records and share that information with many
others. Contributors will be recognised by their code-name appearing in each their index records. Many contributors would be obtaining
microfilms of the memorial volumes through the Mormon Family History Library to pursue their own research and index a small part
of that memorial volume and send their contributions to the project. The following is a sample of the sort of information the
project would gather.
The growing database the output of the effort of the indexers
Volume is the volume number of the memorial book. These were sequential until 1833 after which the volunes were numbered by year and then volume in year.
Thus we have volume 183301 to 183320.
Each volume of these later had 300 memorials. The page numbers are the page number of the volume prior to 1833 aftervards they are the number of the deed
memorial in that year.
The number of the memorial were sequential until 1833. Thereafter the number are represented as the volume number concatinated with the memorial number in the volume.
eg 183301001 to 183301300.
Year, Month and day of the date of the current date is the earliest date on the deed and the release. Write as written so that 1 January 1710
will mean 1 January 1710/1.
Current deed type
L = lease
L + R = Lease and release
Mge = mortgage
ID = indented deed
any other or if in doubt spell out.
MS or W
MS = marriage settlement
W = will.
Family name of person leave empty if unknown, say, in the case of the Bishop of Limerick.
Forename of person leave empty if unknown, say, in the case of the Bishop of Limerick.
Title of the person being indexed.
Residence of the person. Give all the details given. Thus include townland or town, barony, and county if stated.
Leave field blank no residence is stated. Also use this field to record family relationships mentioned in the deed or memorial.
Role in current deed A person may have a number of roles in the deed and memorial. They can be:
A party to the deeds eg one person could be the second party in the lease and the third party in the release.
This would be represented as "P2L P3R"
A life in the deed. This would be represented as life
A witness to the deed or the memorial of the deed. Use WD for a witness to the deed and WM for witness to the memorial.
The registrar with whom the deed was registered. Use REG for an official of the registry.
An occupier of some land mentioned in the deed. This is represented as O.
Role in earlier deed A person may have a number of roles in an earlier deed mentioned in the memorial. They can be:
A party to the deeds eg one person could be the second party in the lease and the third party in the release.
This would be represented as "P2L P3R"
A life in the deed. This would be represented as life
An occupier of some land mentioned in the deed. This is represented as O.
Year, Month and day of the date of the date of the earlier deed. Write as written so that 1 January 1710
will mean 1 January 1710/1.
Signed memorial enter "A" in this field if the person signed the memorial in the role of a party or witness of the memorial.
Note: if a person is a witness of the deed but not the memorial leave the field blank.
In the field comments add any relevent additional data not captured in other fields. Do not use more than 254 characters.
Indexer the code for the indexer
cd Is an alphabetic code that can be used to refer to people in the deed. In the comments field you might say:
"A set to B for lives of C, D and E"
where the letters are in the rows of the people referenced.
Most important
It is most important to capture the volume, page and memorial numbers, and the names. The other information while useful is less important
and can be omitted.
How to help
Whenever you look at a memorial volume, take a little extra time and index a few pages using the above format. Send the data as
a spereadsheet file (excel, Lotus 1-2-3, comma separated variable (CSV) file) or as a database file. Template file for excel and
123 are at the following links. Right click on the link and save the file to your computer.
Then send the file by email to the webmaster of this site using the button below.
An atlernative way is to uses this form as you do your abstracting to create
an e-mail to send the information for each deed to the webmaster. If you are not on line at the time save the e-mails and send them later.
If you have a number of abstracts or copies of memorials of deeds you could extract the name and other information and add
the information to the database using any of the above mentioned methods. The page numbers may not be exact but they will be helpful
enough as a starting point.