JimMc
Well-known member
Westport, County Mayo, and a beautiful place it is. My grandmother and her siblings left at the beginning of the 20thC as their parents had died of typhoid, a result of the famine and poverty.
One of my Grandfather's and all his people were from Westport, a generation back they were solely Irish speaking. Most of the people say Westport but often the home of sorts was in a nearby townland.
If you can find the family townland, the wilder west is still one of the few places in Ireland left where the old family home and bit of land is often still known to be found, if lucky there might be a bit of wall left or even a foundation stone that was built by your ancestors.
Means quite a lot to find something like that, because you know then part of the place is part of you, because back then a hundred and more years back it's more than likely they were in that area for many centuries.
Billy Connolly found some of his ancestors in Galway and he found the foundation stones of the old family home. I know how he felt it is priceless thing to find physical evidence of the past that part made you.
from around 7 minutes.
In case any of you didn't know, the census for 1901 and 1911 is online and searchable.
leave the townland out if not known and try different spellings of names as all were sadly anglicized one way or another, some having no context what so ever, just given a English sounding name by some official and sadly often by the anglicizing priest.
http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/