Glynn family mystery still

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nanub44
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Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2014 7:38 pm

Glynn family mystery still

Post by nanub44 » Wed Dec 30, 2015 5:28 pm

Happy New Year to one and all. I am still looking for information about my grandfather Harry Glynn, born Henry McMahon in 1886 to Mary McMahon Burton street Kilrush. I have not been able to find his baptism in the NHI records. The years I am looking for are missing. Does this mean that they don"t exist or that they may not have been copied? I have found the baptism record for his Uncle Daniel, 1869 in St Senans records. Harrys mother, Mary, was born in Kilkee in 1866 but there is no baptismal records for that area either. Have been trying to find the connection between the McMahons and Glynns of Kilrush. Have been able to make some headway using sideways records. Hoping that there will be more definitive connection made in the future. If anyone could help with this search I would greatly appreciate it as I am committed to solving this family mystery.........Thanks in Advance. Denise

Paddy Casey
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Re: Glynn family mystery still

Post by Paddy Casey » Wed Dec 30, 2015 9:29 pm

nanub44 wrote:....I have not been able to find his baptism in the NHI records. The years I am looking for are missing. Does this mean that they don"t exist or that they may not have been copied?.....
Just until one of the Kilrush/Kilkee experts pops up to answer your question more constructively, Denise: many chunks of baptism records haven't made their way to the cyberworld, either because they weren't preserved or because they are still "lurking" undiscovered in some cupboard somewhere. There was no system for archiving baptism records in times gone by. Thus there were no archive logs such as "Baptism records 1855-79 inadvertently binned together with the rest of PP Fr. Donal's stuff when he died in 1878" or "Baptism records from the 1870s used for lighting fires. Signed: Honora O'Keeffe, housekeeper to the PP". Various entities have transcribed records over the years. Thus the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) microfilmed large numbers of Irish parish records back in the 1950s. Those records are held at the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and, in the case of County Clare, have partially been transcribed and put on line by volunteers in collaboration with the Local Studies Centre and the County Clare Library in Ennis. The Clare Heritage Centre in Corofin also transcribed parish records. However, the processes involved have, to my knowledge, not been published so it is impossible to know how much effort was made to obtain the original records for transcription and whether the process of collecting those documents was audited and documented. Were the parish priests' houses systematically searched for church records (highly unlikely) or were the PPs asked to send in records and left to comply as they wished or did the bishops issue some kind of fiat ? I don't know and to the best of my knowledge neither does anyone else. Years back in a series of phone calls with various people at the NLI I tried to find out how the LDS organised their microfilming of the Irish parish records but no-one there had any memory of the events at that time.

So there we are. There are gaps in the records and we don't know why. We cannot exclude that at some future time (e.g. when a PP's house is being demolished) a bunch of records will be found to have fallen down behind a cupboard and will come to light. We can only hope.

Paddy

nanub44
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2014 7:38 pm

Re: Glynn family mystery still

Post by nanub44 » Wed Dec 30, 2015 10:22 pm

Thank you so much for replying. I have spent endless hours searching the records, as my eyesight can attest. I will continue my search and hope that others will help, thanks again. Denise

pwaldron
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Re: Glynn family mystery still

Post by pwaldron » Thu Dec 31, 2015 12:22 am

The general policy was to microfilm only pre-1880 church records. So for an 1886 baptism in most Clare parishes, you will have to either consult the original register in the parish or pay Clare Heritage & Genealogy Centre a large sum for whatever extract it made when allowed to borrow the original register.

Kilkee was one of several parishes where large chunks of pre-1880 baptisms were not microfilmed. So again you will have to consult the original register in the parish for an 1866 Kilkee baptism or Pay Clare Heritage & Genealogy Centre.

For more details of what is available online and offline, see
http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/brow ... larerc.htm

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