Tracing my grandmother's family WATTERS in Dundalk

I am going to be staying in Dundalk in May and hoping to find out a bit more about my grandmother.  All I know is she was born c1879 in Dundalk and her father's name was JOHN WATTERS.  She is first found in the 1901 England Census as a kitchenmaid in a dining room in Birkenhead, Cheshire age 18.  She married my grandfather WILLIAM KAVANAGH in 1904 at which time her father was shown as deceased.  I have been researching for many years and cannot come up with a birth record for her.  Where would the best place be to start my research - in Dundalk or the National Archives in Dublin?  There is a family connection through a THOMAS WATTERS through QUIGLEY .  I have Thomas's marriage record and feel that John might have been a brother of Thomas.  If I go to the church where he was married would there be more information re the family - he married in 1882.?

Hi Angela,

Welcome to the community and thanks for your question.

It's always exciting to discover your family's heritage and even though I am not a genealogical expert, I would be more than happy to point you in the right direction. 

I have a few basic tips for you: You will find that civil registration, as we know it today, was not introduced in Ireland until 1864. Everyone who lived in Ireland after this time would have been registered with either GRO (the General Register Office of Ireland, for the Republic) orGRONI (the General Register Office of Northern Ireland) after 1921, depending on where they lived. This will be the best place to start as she was born in 1879.

However, before 1864 records were kept in the form of baptismal, marriage and burial records at the local parish churches; regrettably some of these have been lost throughout the years, but all remaining records from this time have been collected in the Genealogical Centre assigned to their county. By following the paper trail, you will be able to find the appropriate office and hopefully records as well. If she was from Dundalk then the centre will be in County Louth.

You can find plenty of great additional resources on our website, and links to other forum members posts, as well as with our friends over at Ireland Family History who run an advisory Facebook Page. Another great resource is the website of the voluntary group Ireland Reaching Out, who endeavour to reunite the descendants of Irish emigrants with their roots through reverse genealogical research.

I hope this information helps and I'm sure our other members will be able to assist you too.

Best of luck

Martin

Hi Angela

In the first instance make sure you search Irish civil registers at  http://www.irishgenealogy.ie and Irish church registers at http://www.rootsireland.ie. 

For example RootsIreland holds the baptismal record in 1879 in County Louth of a Mary Anne Watters to a father John Watters.

Obviously been a while since I was last on this site so thought I would bring Martin and Brian Mitchell up to date with my discovery in May 2017. I visited Dundalk and went to the library with my small amount of info and was helped by Dermot, who found another marriage record for Thomas Watters in 1877 to a Margaret Grant. She died a week after giving birth to Bridget. Thomas' father was JOHN and we (me and the librarian ) have assumed that his parents brought her up, hence she thought of them as her parents. Not uncommon in those days! Thomas remarried a few years later to Elizabeth McDermott. They had 4 children, the youngest was Mary Anne Watters born in 1890. She married Thomas Quigley and it is their son, Patrick born in 1925 who always visited us in Birkenhead. Brian, I'm interested in the birth record of a Mary Anne born in 1869 to John Watters? These names are so common in the Dundalk area. My gran's exact DOB was 3 March, 1879. So now I'm looking into Margaret Grant and her family....!, thanks for your help. Angela

Hello, Angela.

Thanks for checking back with us!  It's great to see what you've had the opportunity to do some really fantastic research.  We're thoroughly impressed and we are sure that these findings are very exciting for you.  We're delighted that Dermot was able to assist you with this whilst you were visiting Dundalk.

Hopefully, Brian can follow-up with you and assist with the next part of your search.  We cannot wait to find out more.  Be sure to keep us in the loop, Angela!

All the best,

Colin

Hi Angela

It would appear that Dermot in Dundalk Library has pulled out great information for you from their RootsIreland database at  http://louth.rootsireland.ie/ 

I would definitely recommend that you now spend time looking through the collection of 'civil records' on irishgenealogy.ie website at  https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/  Not only is it free to search but it holds scanned images of Irish Birth certificates from 1864 through to 1915, marriages 1882 to 1940 and Deaths 1891 to 1961. To pull out County Louth entries just select to view any images with SR District/Reg Area of either Ardee, Dundalk or Drogheda.

I just received an email from this page from 'Christophe' but when I clicked on the link Received this message
The following problem occurred...
It seems this topic has been removed or you don't have permission to access the topic.

Confused? Any suggestions as to why this happened? Thanks. Angela

Hi Angela,
that was a message which I added - we experienced some technical issues and I added a 'test' reply, which I then deleted.
Apologies for this and good luck with your search.
Regards
Christoph

Thank you for your prompt reply. Understand . Angela