Friday, 28 November 2014

RootsIreland adds seven new databases for Derry City

RootsIreland.ie has uploaded seven new record sets from Derry Genealogy Centre. Mostly compiled from Derry City record sets, these databases date from 1628 to 1921 and most fall into the category of census substitutes.

They are:
  • The earliest census of the city, namely the rent roll of 1628
  • The names of 905 men from Derry and surrounding estates who defended Derry’s walls during the 1641 Rebellion
  • The names of 1,660 supporters of the 1689–91 Williamite campaign, many of whom fought at the Siege of Derry in 1689
  • The names of 226 citizens of the city who signed a petition condemning a Jacobite plot to assassinate King William III in 1696
  • The names of 110 leaseholders within the walled city in 1738
  • The names of 191 Derry men and women who were held in the County Jail on Bishop Street from 1839 to 1856 awaiting transportation to Australia
  • Reconstruction of census for Derry city during ‘the Troubles’ of 1920, extracted from Derry Almanac of 1921, which names 8,367 heads of households against their street address and house number.
You can check out the full range of records held on the RootsIreland database, here. Incidentally, the site has been updated since it switched to a subscription model at the end of September. It allows searches to be carried out across a ten-year period, rather than five years. A big improvement.  

UPDATE: On 4 March 2015, more than four months after the upload to RootsIreland, the Belfast Telegraph wrote a feature about the 'new' databases. It might have been somewhat behind the times in terms of news, but the feature includes some interesting additional information about these records. Read it here.