The 1911 Census at the Irish National Archives

Copies of the Irish 1911 census are held at the Irish National Archive website. Through this site I've been able to find details of my family at the time.

Each image shows the actual census document rather than a transcript so I've actually seen my great grandfather's handwriting!

The other good thing about this website is that it's free (unlike the 1911 census in England) so you can have a really good trawl around it.

The census return took all names, relation to the head of the family, religious preference, education, age, sex, profession, length of marriage, number of children born alive, number of children living, county of birth, whether they speak Irish or not and if they are deaf, dumb, blind or an imbecile.

As well as the individual returns you can also see the enumarator's abstract, details of the houses and buildings at each address and further information on the outbuildings

This photo shows the return for my great grandfather, Daniel GUTHRIE. On Sunday, 2nd April 1911 the family was in the townland of Pharis in the parish of Loughguile in County Antrim. This Census entry has confirmed information that I'd obtained from an old family bible that my mother has. It has also given me middle names that I didn't have.

This is the buildings information for the townland of Pharis. It shows what types of buildings and who rented from whom.

I believe I've also found the return for another great-grandfather, James HICKINSON, when he was 18 and living with this parents (my greatx2 grandparents) in Carncullogh Upper in the parish of Derrykeighan in County Antrim. I haven't yet corroborated this with other evidence but I'm working on it!

I've also found the returns for some of my collateral lines but as I'm trying to focus on my direct line ancestors I won't include them here.

I'll cover the details of the census when I describe what I've learnt about the individual families.