Discover your ancestor who died in Ireland between 1771 and 1812. You may be able to piece together your relative’s history from such details as full name, age, date of death, cause of death, marital status, and occupation. Included in these records are those of Edward Gibbon, author of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” who died of a hydrocele on 17 Janaury 1794.
Discover your ancestor who died in Ireland between 1771 and 1812. You may be able to piece together your relative’s history from such details as full name, age, date of death, cause of death, marital status, and occupation. Included in these records are those of Edward Gibbon, author of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” who died of a hydrocele on 17 Janaury 1794.
Each record comprises a transcript and black and white image of the original index. The amount of information listed varies, but the records usually include a combination of the following information about your ancestor:
• First name
• Last name
• Year of birth
• Age
• Year and date of death
• Burial date
• Address
The image of the transcript often provides additional information about your ancestor. Further details include:
• Occupation
• Marital status
• Nicknames (for example: Alexander English, “Buck English” of Ranelagh)
• Religion (for example: Robert Jackson, a Quaker)
• Cause of death
• Details of relatives
Please note that your female ancestors mentioned in these records are often described in terms of men; for example wife of is abbreviated to “w. of,” daughter of to “d. of,” and sister to “s.” Also, some women are referred to simply as “Mrs”; for example, we know Mrs Brennan was a haberdasher who died in Limerick in 1793, and that she was a relative of Augustine, but we don’t know her first name. In addition, Morris, a widow and “Quakeress,” died in Cork on 6 Feb, 1793, but her name, marital status, or occupation cannot be seen in these records.
The record set comprises 531 records.
These records date from 1771 to 1812.
Details of a range of occupations are provided in the image of the transcript. These occupations include: “an eminent clothier,” haberdasher, cook to Trinity College, cutler, farmer, bookseller, Bishop, merchant, surgeon, clerk, attorney, and merchant of Kingston, Jamaica,.
Diseases that are curable today claimed the lives of several individuals in these records. Edward Gibbon, author of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” died “of an hydrocele,” or fluid on the scrotum. Captain Thomas Wallis, 32nd Regiment, died of yellow fever in Barbados, while Countess H. E. Susan Westmoreland, wife of Lord Lieutenant, at the Vice-Regal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, died of malarial fever. Several other causes of death are mentioned; for example, Captain Hyland “of one of the Canal passage boats, fell overboard and was drowned” in 1793. That same year, Reverend Thos Butler, chaplain to the Bishop of Meath, was “most cruelly murdered while returning at night to Ardbraccan” in 1793. In addition, Ensign Upton of the 43rd Regiment in Cork Harbour, was killed by the “oversetting of a boat.”
Some nicknames can be seen in the images, such as Alexander English, “Buck English” of Ranelagh, and Myles McDermott, known as the “Prince of Coolavin” of Coolavin, Sligo. The records claim that Arthur O’Neill, who died in December 1794, is the lineal descendant of Owen Roe O’Neill of the O’Neill dynasty in Ulster.
About Farrar’s Index to Irish Marriages 1771 – 1812
This index by Henry Farrar, published in two volumes in 1897, provides details of all the marriage entries in Walker's Hibernian Magazine 1771-1812. There are more than 12,000 marriages recorded from a time when few other records of this nature survive. The two volumes also contain an Appendix by Sir Arthur Vicars of the births, deaths and marriages recorded in the short-lived magazine Anthologia Hibernica 1793-94. There are about 1,350 records in this section.