Thursday 30 June 2016

More on the Bishop's Bank of Philadelphia collection

My post last week about the Bishop's Bank of Philadelphia (you can read it here if you missed it) seems to have caused some excitement. It really is a fabulous resource and is sure to be knocking down brickwalls for many US-based family historians thanks to its inclusion of a county of origin in Ireland for many of the Bank's customers.

But some researchers may be even luckier and find the parish of origin included, too. See the example below, sent to me by Sharon Carberry, who came across an entry for a John Claby, aged 27 in 1852, and from King's County (now Co. Offaly). The entry additionally notes that he came from the parish of Castlejordan (spelt Castel Jordan by the clerk). You just have to hope that his descendents, if they are searching for their Irish roots, come across this collection.

Several readers have also pointed out that there is a 'soft' alphabetical surname index at the front of each of the tree volumes ie all the surnames beginning with C are gathered together, but are unsorted.  The index refers to the page number where you can view the full account details for each of these customers. This saves studying all 700-odd pages of each ledger. It should also be noted that the volumes are not in strict chronological order.

Here's Sharon's example of an entry showing parish of origin:

Digital Library@Villanova University