County Clare electoral registers

Genealogy, Archaeology, History, Heritage & Folklore

Moderators: Clare Support, Clare Past Mod

Post Reply
pwaldron
Posts: 730
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:31 pm
Location: Ballina, Killaloe
Contact:

County Clare electoral registers

Post by pwaldron » Mon Nov 08, 2010 12:06 pm

I have recently been told that there is no official policy of archiving electoral registers in Ireland. Is this true?

Printed registers have traditionally been available for consultation at post offices, public libraries, Garda stations and council offices. Are they discarded every year?

Like telephone directories, they will be the genealogical source material of future centuries.

The live register can be checked at http://www.checktheregister.ie/ on what Paddy Casey has termed the "reading the bible through a keyhole" principle.

The 1939-40 register for Dublin can be searched at http://dublinheritage.ie/electoral/index.php

The 1923-24 register for the Constituency of County Borough of Limerick is at http://www.limerickcity.ie/Library/Loca ... fElectors/ and the Limerick City Library has a selection of old registers for other years available in hard copy.

Are there any similar facilities available for Clare?

Are there any old Clare registers in public archives or in the private hands of the families of postmasters, gardai, political activists, etc.?

Paddy Casey
Posts: 743
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Внешняя Громболия
Contact:

Re: County Clare electoral registers

Post by Paddy Casey » Mon Nov 08, 2010 6:25 pm

Hi Paddy eile !

A most interesting question.

Having searched the NAI site fruitlessly, on an impulse I gave them a call, was connected to the Reading Room, and received the following information.
  • The NAI in Dublin holds old electoral registers, variously referred to as electoral rolls, electoral registers and registers of electors (the variant terms are important for searching purposes, it seems).
  • The registers are held in a couple of warehouses away from the reading room so if one wants to read them one has to go to the Reading Room, order the register in question, and go back the next day to read it.
  • Some – but not all – of the registers are indexed, i.e. some of the old registers are still in boxes in the warehouse and haven't yet been catalogued (the terms 'index' and 'catalogue' seem to be interchangeable).
  • Clare electoral registers from 1851-1930, with some years missing, are in the index and could be made available for reading in the Reading Room. The year 1888, for example, is missing.
That's as far as I got this evening. If you see a future in it I might give the Clare County archives a call to see whether they have the "phone books" on their shelves somewhere.

Paddy

Clare Admin
Posts: 83
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:16 pm

Re: County Clare electoral registers

Post by Clare Admin » Tue Nov 09, 2010 4:20 pm

I am reliably informed that Clare archives (http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/archiv ... _index.htm) have 49 electoral registers dating variously from 1934 to 1983. They can be made available for consultation in the Local Studies Centre by prior arrangement. Clare Admin

Clare Admin
Posts: 83
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:16 pm

Re: County Clare electoral registers

Post by Clare Admin » Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:36 pm

Hello all. I have an update on the electoral registers from the County Archivist. This is the full list held in the archives:

EL/RG/
A 1858 – 1909
1 1934 -1935
2 1935 - 1936
3 1936 – 1937
[4]
5 1938 - 1939
6 1939-1940
7 1940 - 1941
8 1941 - 1942
9 1942 – 1943
10 1943 – 1944
11 1944 – 1945
12 1945 – 1946
[13]
14 1947 – 1948
15 1948 – 1949
16 1949 - 1950
17 1950 – 1951
18 1951 – 1952
19 1952 – 1953
[20]- [30]
31 1964 – 1965
32 1965 – 1966
33 1966 – 1967
34 1967 – 1968
35 1968 – 1969
36 1969 – 1970
37 1970 – 1971
[38]-[42]
43 1976 – 1977
44 1977 – 1978
45 1978 – 1979
46 1979 – 1980
47 1980 – 1981
48 1981 – 1982
49 1982 – 1983
50 1983 – 1984

As with any other material held in the County Archives, they can be viewed in our Local Studies Centre (http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/librar ... studi1.htm) following a request to the archivist as there are no viewing facilities in the archives themselves. Any queries on these registers (e.g. re the 1858-1909 range above) should be addressed to the archivist. See http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/archiv ... act_us.htm.
Regards,
Clare Admin

Paddy Casey
Posts: 743
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Внешняя Громболия
Contact:

Re: County Clare electoral registers

Post by Paddy Casey » Wed Nov 10, 2010 8:51 pm

I wonder if any of these registers are in an easily scannable form, e.g loose-bound in a format which could be dropped into the stack-feeder of a scanner, scanned, and OCR-ed to produce a searchable index which could be put online.

Hmmm.

Paddy

P.S. I have been searching the WWW to see whether these electoral registers/rolls have already been digitised and put on line. I have not found any such datasets. Does anyone in this forum have any knowledge of online electoral registers/rolls of County Clare ? They may be buried somewhere in a site like ancestry.com but I haven't found them if they are there. P.

deirdre carroll
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2010 3:43 pm

Re: County Clare electoral registers

Post by deirdre carroll » Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:47 pm

Re last comment regarding electoral registers elsewhere, Ancestry.com has the Australian electoral registers 1903 to 1954. I found them very useful in tracing possible Manning connections. My great grandmother was Bridget Mannion who lived in Crusheen. She was born in the Kilbeacanty area of Galway. Her Mannion (later Manning) brothers emigrated in 1890 - one to Australia.

Deirdre Carroll

treatycity
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Jul 26, 2013 8:10 pm

Re: County Clare electoral registers

Post by treatycity » Mon Oct 20, 2014 5:00 pm

Claire Santry http://www.irishgenealogynews.com in her show report Friday Oct 17 2014 on the Back To Our Past 2014 event held in the RDS Dublin mentions that the subscription service http://www.findmypast.ie will be rolling out the Clare Electoral Roll records in the not too distant future.
Something to look forward to.
Patrick

Post Reply