Newsgroups: soc.roots
Date:         Sun, 15 Nov 1992 21:37:00 EST
Reply-To:     JWD@PSUVM.BITNET
From:         JWD@PSUVM.BITNET
Subject:      re: Roscommon Heritage Center

>     "Matt Baney" <mattb@ssc-vax.boeing.com> wrote

>I recently received a form and letter from the Roscommon Co.
>Heritage Society.  They say they will do family history research
>for a fee of IR L40??  My questions are:
>   How much is IR L40 in US dollars?
>and
>   What experiences has anyone had as far as getting results from
>   Irish heritage society's??  I have rather limited information,
>   basically only 4-5 names, a vague time period when they left
>   Ireland, and family lore that they came from "Roscommon"??

Rather than responding directly to Matt, I am putting this on the net because
it is of broader interest.  An Irish pound is worth $ 1.67.
I paid 30 pounds to the Sligo Heritage Center to look into my family and
they found nothing.   They looked in the church records for every parish in
the county in the relevent period and checked the census and Griffiths
Valuation.  All in all a lot of effort to do yourself, especially since
some of the Sligo parishes are in dioceses that require a letter from the
parish priest or the bishop to look at the microfilms of the parish in
the National Library.  The Heritage Centers are computerizing the  records
which will make the search much easier for them than it would be for you.
A big problem is that Irish parish records rarely predate 1850 by very
much so it is easy to get stopped for Catholic Famine immigrants.
In my instance, only about half of the parishes had records that went
to 1833, my gg grandfather's birth year.  The heritage center did tell
me how many Dunn's lived in each parish so it gave me a probabilistic
view of where they might have lived.
Roscommon is a big county and also quite populous so for a common name
without a year of birth or several names in a single household it may
be hard to know if you have the right family.  Most Irish names are
fairly local so a single town might have 10 or 15 Michael Baneys in it.
Identification is further compounded by the small number of first names
in common use in former times.  More than half the male population has
one of these names - John, Michael, Patrick, James, Thomas, Dennis, Brian,
Edward, and Anthony.  The women are similarly named - Mary, Catherine,
Bridget, Margaret, Susan, Ann, and a few more abound.  Naming conventions
have children named after grandparents, parents, and then aunts and uncles
so one family name may have lots of Anthonys while another has hardly any.

All in all, I thought the Sligo Heritage Center did as well as they could
for me.  In my case there was nothing to find.
If you decide to hire the Roscommon Heritage Center, I still have my Irish
checking account if you need a check in pounds.  I'll charge you the
exchange rate from the Wall Street Journal plus 29 cents for a stamp.

Jim Dunn
BITNET: JWD at PSUVM
INTERNET:JWD@PSUVM.PSU.EDU
Researching DUNN, PARKER, MCNELIS, BYRNE, BURNS, WALSH, CAVANAUGH
      LAVIN, CARNEY, PETTIGROVE, HORINE, PELHAM, MEARS, FRESHNEY,
      CANNON, DONOVAN, MONARCH, MEEHAN, DUNLEAVY, AND CARR.
also  LAME, PERKINS, COMSTOCK, FISKE, ADAMS, ROBINSON, PENROSE,
      and MASSEY but less actively.