Land Commission Indexes to be digitised

hblock21

Didn't get want you wanted from Santa? No worries read this and rejoice!

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/treasure-trove-includes-record-for-almost-all-land-in-ireland-1.4762067

"steps are being taken to start opening some of the Land Commission files. Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has backed moves to digitise some 200 “search aids” in anticipation of making them available online in the same way as old census records"

"The search aids are made up of thousands of pages on court approvals for land purchase agreements, loan advances and repayments, and migrant books detailing how people moved from one area to another to take up land. They are a critical guide for finding individual documents among the 35,000 separate sets of records"

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hermy

Great first post of the New Year!!

Furze99

Roll it on, once we are past this 'decade of centenaries', we can then start confronting the grubby side of the War of Independence and the Civil War - just who got which land in exchange for their services and connections. A lot of the bitterness in Irish history relates to land and just who seized what, whether through the various plantations or rewards for being on the winning sides.

But from a genealogical perspective, it may help I guess to fill out various family histories more completely.

pinkypinky

I saw this news at 2am and could hardly sleep with excitement!

It'll be a while but I'll wait. Just get started!

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118399853#Comment_118399853

I Love your optimism.

It is a start, but only the ‘search aids’ (i.e. hints on where to look) will be digitised. I’m not holding my breath. The €200k budget is just a spoonful of the ocean of cash required. It took the Dept. of Defence 12 years to digitise 250k records; how long will the Dept of Ag take to complete the basic 'search aids'? Then theu will have to tackle the 'real' archive of 12 million records, most in non-standard bound ledgers or rolls, a nightmare to document, manual not automatic. (At D of Def rates it's about 600 years if you do the math!) We still are waiting for the simple task of the digitisation of the early GRO records.

Confidentiality of theLand Commission correspondence will be a huge issue down the road to access the ‘real’ data. Any duty of confidence established prior to death extends beyond death, so disclosure will require consent of heirs. Too many ‘Sean Citizens’ will not allow this as they will not want the neighbours to see how grandad’s political connection got them the farm!

Sadly methinks it is a New Year 'puff' story.

hblock21

Two years have passed.

Any news?!

pinkypinky

Crickets.

I've written to one of my TDs about it and asked them to follow up.

Hermy

Crickets.

That's a new one on me!!

Jellybaby_1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121630580#Comment_121630580

Indeed, me too! But its a good one. I usually say 'tumbleweeds'!

Mick Tator

Crickets? To some people, a cricket looks a lot like its cousin, the civil servant. Crickets have cylindrical bodies, rounded heads, long antennae, thick thighs (from sitting all day), and a propensity to chirp “We’re planning that” while planning to do nothing.

The largest crickets in the world are found in Ireland. They are the Bull Species, one abbreviated by both entomologists and genealogists to ‘BS crickets’.

My post #5 sums it up I'm afraid.

pinkypinky

Just re-reading your post, how did the NI authorities get around those obstacles? Their portion of the Land Comm records have been accessible in PRONI for a long time.

MIKEKC

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121630332#Comment_121630332

Hard to see all details coming out. The way land was given out was disgraceful .People got land, never used it then got more later. Coliite.got land and it is still unused till this day

Mick Tator

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121636481#Comment_121636481

The Six Counties and PRONI don’t have the same issues as we do in the 26. Pre-Independence the files would be the same, containing transfers, rent details, revisions, etc.  Post 1922 the 26 was different, the estates were being broken up, non-resident landlords penalized, political allies were being rewarded, old scores were being settled, the memory of the Civil War lingered. It went on for decades. Payback.

In the Six, that didn’t happen, and where it did, if you were a Prod you benefited, Tadhgs didn’t count for much. My grandfather, a senior civil servant in Dublin, struggled  to hold on to our family farm in Tipp, bits being compulsorily acquired up to the 1960’s, when the last bit ‘went’. Remember there was little money in farming up to the EEC, so it was better for him to work in Dublin, secure job, pension,  than farm 100+ acres of good land with rubbish prices.. There were PQs in the Dail about the delay in transferring it to locals – I suspect motivated by Civil War political lines. That was the case all over Ireland – Dev’s economic war screwed agriculture, anyone with drive and ambition got out but tried to hold on to their heritage.

 I have a Kildare friend whose grandfather in the late 1920s bought a nice house and good farm from an Irish army officer. The vendor never lived in the place and had no connection with Kildare. Go figure.