Friday, 28 June 2019

County Donegal Workhouse records make online debut

FindMyPast has uploaded 433,398 records to its new County Donegal Workhouses collection. The records include admission and discharge registers as well as Board of Guardians’ Minute Books.

The registers and books span from 1840 to 1922 and comprise records from eight poor law unions across the county: Ballyshannon, Donegal, Dunfanaghy, Glentis, Inishowen, Letterkenny, Milford, and Stranorlar.

While the bulk of the collection is made up of the admission and discharge registers and BoG Minute Books, there are many other types of material to be searched in the record set.

Among them are accounts, death registers, letters, indoor and outdoor relief registers, dispensary notices, supplier contracts and other administrative documentation that kept the workhouses running and a tight control over inmates.

Each search result will provide an image of the original records and a transcript. Details will vary according to the type of document being accessed. Most will include name, sex, occupation, marital status, age, birth year, event date, admission/discharge/death date, previous residence, union, county, whether the document is typed or handwritten and an archival reference.

The original records are held by the Donegal County Council and have been digitised by Findmypast.