Wisdom Wednesday: Research in Northern Ireland

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has moved to the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. In an effort to revitalize the former shipbuilding area, new housing, offices and a museum about the ship called Titanic Belfast are being developed. The doomed Cunard vessel was built on one of these very docks.

Although the move was in 2011, many books and lists still give the old address while the website remains the same, www.proni.gov.uk

                    2 Titanic Boulevard, Belfast, BT3 9HQ

PRONI can help you flesh out an ancestor's life. They have church records, the 1901 census, wills, national school records, and valuation records, including the famous Griffith’s Valuation.  The church records have the baptisms, marriages and burials before 1864.

On the home page, click on the choice ‘Research Local and Family History.’ (Lower left side with photo) Then click on the highlighted words in paragraph three ‘Your Family Tree series of leaflets’. You will find a list of free pdf files on about 50 topics including ‘Latin Terminology in Roman Catholic Church Records.’ I mention this one because it has translations for Irish/English names not often found on other lists, like Cecil (Caecilius) and Winifred (Winifrida).

However, PRONI is not the place to find Indexes and BMD certificates. Records of events since 1864 are found at the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI), www.nidirect.gov.uk, 49/55 Chichester Street, Belfast, BT1 4HL. To order a birth certificate online, for example, you will need:

-full name of the child

-date and place of birth

-parents’ names, including the maiden name of the mother

-mother’s address at time of the birth

£14 plus postage

At the GRONI website home page, click on ‘Ordering Certificates’ and follow the instructions.  On the 'Ordering Certificates' main page, click on the phrase ‘Leisure, Home and Community Online’ in the right hand column. A long list should come up with links to other research sites under a subcategory ‘Family and Local History.’ One click will take you to the:

-PRONI Online Records

-PRONI ecatalogue

-National Archives (Kew)

-National Archives of Scotland

-1901 and 1911 Census of Ireland (www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search)

-World War casualties (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Liber, Folio et al

Genealogy is a great way to introduce you to or to review Latin vocabulary. When searching land records, you are likely to come across few terms. Here are translations for the most often used.

Every document that comes to a registry for recording is copied and placed more or less chronologically into a book, often referred to by its Latin name, liber. The pages of the book may be called folios. This blog will refer to book and page numbers to identify deeds, not liber and folio numbers.

Et al is an abbreviated form of the phrase ‘et alia,’ Latin for “and others.” If more than one person owned a piece of property, the registry clerks might index all the names on the document, but in some circumstances, only use the name of the first person listed on the deed, followed by ‘et al’ or ‘et alia.’

Et uxor is Latin for “and wife.” The grantors and grantees might be written as “John Doe et uxor” on deeds in certain times and places. You may find it shortened to ‘John Doe et ux.’ Today wives are identified by their full name, since they take a more central part in the transactions legally.

Latin phrases will appear in other genealogical documents, and you can use www.translate.google.com to help you. Familysearch.org and about.com have Latin word lists for genealogists. To find these sites quickly, just google ‘Latin for genealogists’.  If you have no Latin background, you may want to take the time and effort to study the twelve tutorials for beginners at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/beginners. The examples in the lessons are from genealogical documents and are interesting themselves. Fair warning, with four years of high school Latin, I found the first three lessons more challenging than I would have predicted.

The web sites listed in the last paragraph will take you way beyond a simple deed which usually only used the terms I defined above. Now you will know where to look for definitions of church related terms used in baptism, marriage and death records in early England.

©2011, Susan Lewis Well