Wednesday 10 December 2014

FindMyPast's Dog Licence register kills off my ancestor

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=5947&awinaffid=123532&clickref=&p=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.findmypast.ie%2Fsearch-world-Records%2Fireland-dog-licence-registersLast week I reported on another huge (3.6million+) chunk of records joining the Irish Dog Licence collection on FindMyPast (see blogpost here).

Well, I followed up the clue from the dog licence registers and popped along to the GRO Research Room yesterday to order a copy of the death certificate for the Patrick Tierney who died in 1869, and sure enough, it was my gt gt gt grandfather! He died of influenza just a couple of weeks after registering his dogs.

Another surprise was his age. Based on the birth year of his first son, I had rather assumed he was born in the 1815-1825 period. It's always worth receiving a slap on the wrist for making assumptions! He appears to have been considerably older than I expected. His wife records him as being 73 at the time of his death, which means he was probably born shortly before the 18th century expired. Sadly, there's a gap in the local RC parish registers for the period in question, so neither a trip to the National Library of Ireland today, nor a rummage in RootsIreland.ie's database turned up his baptism. Chances are, then, his wife's notion of his age wasn't too far out.

It is, of course, always good genealogical practice to 'kill off' your ancestors ie find documentary evidence of their death, so I'm as pleased as punch to have found Patrick's death record. And I love that I've found the evidence thanks in no small part to such an unlikely record collection as the Dog Licence Registers. Just goes to prove that you never know what you'll find, so long as you keep looking.