North Tipperary Church Records- Good News & Bad News
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| Nenagh RC Church 1906 |
North Tipperary Church Records-
Good News & Bad News
My Holy Grail is a Baptism record for my direct ancestor John Hingerty (?1813-1889) who arrived in Sydney as a farm servant in his twenties in 1841.
He reported that he was from Templemore, Tipperary.
Having found a John Hingerty leasing farming land in Barnane-ely from 1823 to 1836 (Tithe Applotment Lists), and Barnane-ely being located not far from Templemore, I pinned my hopes on this being 'my' John's father (or close relation) and that I would find church records in this area of Tipperary.
I trawled through church records for any north Tipperary parish as they became available online.
Parish records for North Tipperary are found in various places and in various formats (indexed, unindexed, filmed, paper based etc)- on line records have been increasing in number and coverage over the past few years. It was always my hope that as more records were made available, one day John Hingerty's Baptism record would emerge.
As time went on I would have been happy with any mention of a Hingerty family in this part of Tipperary- a birth, a marriage, a burial, witnesses at a non-Hingerty marriage, sponsors at a non-Hingerty Baptism.
John Grenham has a list of available Tipperary RC records and how to access them on his website Tipperary RC Church Records
Realising that RootsIreland had every available record for North Tipperary on it's subscription based website, I decided to take the plunge and take out a short term paid subscription in order to make sure that I had not missed a Hingerty reference in my trawling (and trying to read Priests' very poor handwriting!).
Unfortunately, searching their index of church records from across all of Ireland for the Hingerty surname (and all the possible spelling variations) yielded no new records : (
I emailed the North Tipperary Genealogy Centre who have the responsibility to make all the parish records in that area available via RootsIreland just to double check that there were no more records waiting in the wings to be digitised or indexed. They confirmed that their list is the complete list for North Tipperary.
So the GOOD NEWS is that we live in a time when we can access an index that includes every record in every Catholic parish in North Tipperary that has survived to the current day.
The BAD NEWS is that we have such access and no records for John Hingerty and his family have been found.
So, where does that leave us?
John and his family must have lived in a parish where the records for their times do not exist....... this means that we will NEVER find a church record for John and his immediate family : (
Our only (small) hope would be that John and his family actually came from an area outside North Tipperary and records may emerge in the near future- not every county has completed its digitisation task as North Tipperary has done.
However, we know that Hingerty families lived in a relatively small and concentrated area- the range of other parish areas they may have come from is small and very soon ALL parish records in these areas will have been processed........
I will take out another Roots Ireland subscription once I have been assured that all records for all areas where there is any evidence of any Hingerty families having lived have been indexed- if John and his family are not in those records, then we will know that we will never find them as they do not exist.
At least then we will know.......
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