Ancestry has added an index of pre-Famine emigrants from County Antrim and County LondonDerry in 1833-1839. The records were originally compiled from notebooks ('memoirs') created by surveyors working on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.
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| Click image to search on Ancestry.co.uk |
These field officers gathered topographical, historical, economic and social information about the places they were visiting in the course of their work, but only those for the counties of Antrim and LondonDerry included details of emigrants such as name, age, name of parish, town and county, religion, occupation, destination and year of departure, plus the names of family members.
Ancestry's description of the collection is good, so be sure to read it before searching.
Importantly, it points out that many of those NOT departing for North America may have been travelling to Glasgow or Liverpool either for seasonal work or as a stepping stone to a transatlantic crossing once the fare had been earned in Britain.
As far as I'm aware, this is the first time these 3,421 records have been made available on a major online database.
The new collection offers both a searchable index, and a browse facility of the 127-page book published back in 1989 by the Genealogical Publishing Company of Baltimore, which was brought together by Brian Mitchell MAGI. Brian's introduction to the book should also be read.
Click here to search the records on Ancestry.com.
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