National School Registers freely viewable, new

[smcarberry]

On FamilySearch.org the National Archives of Ireland films of National School Registers are now available for finding individual students' records via a search engine: https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/4496116

Although the entire collection has a start year of 1847, Clare's filmings are not that early. There are 6129 students in Clare National Schools in the NAI films, all of which Clare entries I scrolled through rapidly. The earliest I saw was an O'Dea b. 1856 in the 1869 Ruan book.

AI-type transcriptions of handwiting in Clare did result in some odd spellings. In Ruan, there are a number of those but they are usually only one letter off, such as Nurly for Hurly, and Luais for Lucas. I also saw a Lierney that could be Tierney.

However, in West Clare, entire names are lost to OCR mishaps, such as:
Padrarz O'Aicik
and
Seapain O'Hoda

In East Clare, films/images for the Kilkishen school at Clonlea starts only in the 1900s. However, Ruan's books start well before 1901, as do Killaloe and nearby Ballycorney. I wasn't seeing any books for the southeast end of the county.

Books can vary by information recorded. The ones that I viewed listed the father's occupation but not a name. Some have detailed listings of individual's success, academic subject by subject.

Thanks to Claire Santry for alerting us to this database's accessibility through a free resource.