Genealogy
Tracing your ancestors back to West Cork can be difficult, as many of the primary records are scattered or lost. However, there is a large amount of information available online and genetic testing has unveiled new ways to find out more about your ancestry.
If you are descended from people who originated on Sheep’s Head peninsula or West Cork in general, then tracking down documents relating to them will depend very much on when they left. The largest most recent emigration from Ireland was during the Great Famine that began in 1845, but there has been a constant flow of emigration before and after this. There were also boom and bust enterprises that brought people to West Cork, for example the pilchard industry, linen industry and mining.
There are many online genealogy tools, the largest is Ancestry.com. On there you can search newspapers, military records and many other sources. Some online resources available in Ireland are:
The Griffith Evaluation Map
The map below has the Griffith Evaluation map as a layer that you can explore. There are 5 versions of the map with the layer “Griffith Map 1” loaded first.
The layers have numbers corresponding to rented plots, and lowercase letters corresponding to the renters within each numbered plot.
The layers “Griffith Map 1” and “Griffith Map 2” have the alphabetical identifiers for different areas, but there is not one layer that contains all of them. So if the alphabetical identifiers aren’t showing for the area you are interested in, try looking through the different Griffith layers.
The extracts from the books with the names and numbers are below the map for the parishes of Kilcrohane and Durrus. The modern townlands are super imposed on the map which you can turn off and on via the layers control. Some of the features from the walking trails are shown as well.
You can toggle between the Griffith map and a modern satellite image using the slider on the right and the townlands have links to census information, other useful resources as well as the Griffith page number with the details for the 1850 evaluation. When you click on a townland, a popup appears and the field “Griff.: p(page number)” is a link to the page in the Griffith Evaluation with names and letter values to indicate the location on the map.
You can find more general information on the Griffith Evaluation website.