How to Create an Irish Surname Map using Griffith’s Valuation and the Tithe Applotment Books
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Creating an Irish surname map has to be, hands down, one of the best genealogy mapping projects I have ever undertaken. Why? Because Irish ancestors are elusive. It can be extraordinarily difficult to find any information regarding your Irish ancestors before the 20th century. The 1901 census is the last surviving census of Ireland, and most records prior to 1901 are incomplete parish and civil registration records. You’d be lucky to find your ancestor in them.
However, there are two 19th century record sets that I have found indispensable in researching my Irish ancestors. I’ve used them to supplement missing censuses, civil records, and parish records dating to the 1830s, and in doing so I’ve been able to glean some pretty detailed things about my family. What am I talking about? The Tithe Applotment Books and Griffith’s Valuation.
These land records are oftentimes overlooked because, besides consisting of names and places, they don’t give many other details relevant to genealogy research.
Or so you may think…
On the contrary, while these records are primarily concerned with land values, there is so much other relevant information to glean from them. By utilizing these records and comparing their data, I was able to:
✅ Narrow down the areas within County Donegal my family (the Lynaghs) were from, discovering they were either from Mevagh or Kilmacrenan parishes
✅ Narrow down this geographic area even more to find the townlands my family possibly could have lived in (if you need a primer on Irish jurisdictions, ie the difference between parishes and townlands, give this blog post a read)
✅ Infer the relationships of other Lynaghs living in the area by discovering clusters of people living close to one another, thus being able to start building a larger Lynagh family tree
✅ Infer the ages of some Lynaghs who appear in both Griffith’s Valuation and Tithe Applotment Books
✅ Use the process of elimination to determine which Lynaghs appearing in the Tithe Applotment Books were not my family
I was able to do all of this by mapping out the information in the Tithe Applotment Books and Griffith’s Valuation in, what I call, an Irish surname map.
So, let’s talk about how I did that.
Mapping Griffith’s Valuation
I started with Griffith’s Valuation. I knew my Lynagh family came from Co Donegal based on their obituaries, and I knew the whole family emigrated in waves between 1837 and 1855. Based on these dates, I knew they likely wouldn’t be listed in Griffith’s Valuation, which was completed in Donegal 1858. Nonetheless, I wanted to map out all the Lynaghs that appeared in Griffith’s Valuation, because, even though they wouldn’t be my direct line, they were likely the siblings or the cousins of my family that emigrated.
To do this, I searched Griffith’s Valuation on AskAboutIreland.ie for the surname “Lynagh” and filtered the results to include only those in Donegal. Now, I’m lucky because Lynagh is a fairly rare surname in Ireland, and on top of that, it’s even more rare in Donegal. Most of the Lynaghs in Griffith’s Valuation lived in Westmeath, and so only 23 results came back when I did this search in Donegal. There were so little that they were easy to map. I would recommend that if you have a more common Irish surname, or a surname that was particularly common in the county you’re researching, this project may not be as helpful as it was for me.
To be able to map out the results you get from Griffith’s Valuation, you need to learn how to read Griffith’s Valuation and how to navigate its accompanying maps. Once you master those two things, mapping out these results is simple. I won’t dive into those now, but check out these tutorials when you want to get started:
➡️ Introduction to Griffith’s Valuation for Irish Genealogy
➡️ [Video Tutorial] How to Search and Read Griffith’s Valuation
➡️ [Video Tutorial] Introduction to Griffith’s Valuation Maps
Mapping the results from the Griffith’s Valuation helped me narrow down where exactly in County Donegal my Lynagh family came from. For instance, Griffith’s Valuation showed me that all the Lynaghs living in Donegal were clustered into townlands just north of Letterkenny in Mevagh and Kilmacrenan parishes - and no where else throughout the county. You can watch me map out Griffith’s Valuation in this video.
Mapping the Tithe Applotment Books
I then turned to the Tithe Applotment Books, and this is where things got really interesting. In Donegal, the Tithe Books were recorded in 1828, exactly 30 years prior to Griffith’s Valuation. My direct line was still living in Ireland at that time, and so I knew there was a chance the head of the household, John Lynagh, could have actually been recorded in the Tithe Books.
Searching the Tithe Books returned even less results - only nine, to be exact. And indeed there were two John Lynaghs listed. However, it is important to note that the Tithe Books are not comprehensive at all - they left a lot of people out. And so while one of these John Lynaghs very well might be my direct ancestor, it is also entirely possible that my ancestor was one of the unlucky ones left out of the books entirely. You should keep this in mind when you try this mapping project yourself.
The Tithe Books are also difficult to navigate as there can be plenty of transcription errors, as well as place names that might not exist anymore, or were spelled differently at the time the Tithe Books were recorded. For example, the first two of my results were for a John and a Michael Lynagh both living in the townland of ‘Cruckbauen’, a place name that does not show up on any map or in any simple Google search.
If you are met with a similar problem, try this:
Consult your Griffith’s Valuation Map (this is why it is important to may Griffith’s Valuation first!): look for any names recorded on that map that match the names in the Tithe Applotment Books. On my Griffith’s Valuation map there was indeed a John and a Michael living next to each other, in the townland of Umlagh.
Search on Townlands.ie: search for that townland on Townlands.ie and consult the ‘subtownland’ list to look for any place that could be the place listed in the Tithe Books. In the townland of Umlagh, there is a subtownland of ‘Crockbane’. This seemed like it could be ‘Cruckbauen’.
Compare maps: consult the Townlands.ie map of the subtownland, and compare it to your Griffith’s Valuation map. In my case, it turned out the subtownland of Crockbane was exactly where I had mapped John and Michael in Griffith’s Valuation.
This proved to me that the John and Michael Lynagh recorded in ‘Cruckbauen’ in the Tithe Applotment Books in 1828 were the same John and Michael I had mapped from the Griffith’s Valuation.
Knowing that they were the same people also told me that this John listed in the Tithe Books was not my John, since this John was also present in Griffith’s Valuation, when my family had already emigrated.
This just goes to show the level of detail you can glean from mapping these two record sets out and comparing the results!
As for the other John listed in the Tithe Books? Mapping him out gave me another interesting clue. This John was recorded as living in “Drumavanagh” which I came to discover was a transcription error, and was actually supposed to be Drumnamona, a place very close to Crockbane, actually.
The John living in Drumnamona, however, was not recorded in Griffith’s Valuation, which means that this John either was old at the time the Tithe Books were recorded and either died within the next 30 years or was no longer the primary land holder, or… it could mean that he emigrated and that he was, possibly, my ancestor! While it is unlikely that I will ever know for certain, just chipping away at this Irish brick wall is good enough for me, and I hope it encourages you to undertake a similar mapping project!
For a full look at how I built this comprehensive surname map using both Griffith’s Valuation and the Tithe Applotment Books, watch the video below!