Greg,
I can’t answer all your questions but I can comment on a fewthings.
You ask whether PRONI and PHS have exactly the same records.No they don’t.
Similar but not always identical. Various records have beenacquired over the
years which, for one reason or another, were handed to one but not the other.
Andthere are still some records out there than neither of them have. I
haverecently been transcribing Limavady 2nd Presbyterian church earlybaptism
records which were discovered recently. Neither PRONI nor the PHS havethem
(though they will get a copy idc).I know of one or two churches whose
congregations, for one reason or another,have not made their records available
for copying. The Minister has the onlycopy and they can sometimes be very hard
to access.
Though coverage is improving, many Presbyterian churches recordsare not on-line
anywhere.
Tradition was to marry in the bride’s church (after whichshe’d usually attend
her husband’s). Soit’s common to find that the marriage and subsequent
children’s baptisms are indifferent churches, and sometimes, different
denominations.
Not all churches kept baptism records or if they did, notall have survived.
Presbyterians startedto be a bit more methodical from the 1820s onwards but
even then it’s patchy.So there are literally hundreds of Presbyterian churches
with no marriages preApril 1845 and no baptisms before the 1850s and 1860s. Rev
Charles Kennedy wasMinister of Maghera Presbyterian church from around 1802
till 1838. When heretired his successor asked him if he had any baptism,
marriage or otherrecords to hand over. No was the answer, he hadn’t kept any.
Even when Ministers did keep records, like the rest of usthey made mistakes. I
know a Presbyterian Minister here in Ireland who told methat even today the odd
baptism gets overlooked. But in the older registers youoften see 3 or 4 blank
lines where it looks likely that the Minister intendedto insert some entries
but never got around to it. Or it will say “a child of….”because the Minister
has forgotten the name and sex of the child. So plenty ofgaps and omissions.
A lot of Irish research comes to stop around 1800 due to thegeneral lack of
records.
Elwyn
On Saturday, 25 April 2026 at 06:20:31 BST, Gordon Wilkinson via
CoTyroneList <[email protected]> wrote:
Greg,
The only suggestion I have is that you may be able to access the e-files of
the Aussie National Library in Canberra (<www.NLA.gov.au>). I suspect that even
as a Kiwi you may be allowed free access to these records. Such as Trove, which
has most of the early Aussie newspapers and hence shipping information, which
may help locate arrivals &c.
Regards,
Gordon
https://www.library.gov.au/
On 25/04/2026 2:39 pm, greg.limpet--- via CoTyroneList wrote:
Further to this, we are back from our trip which still leaves me with no link
from our Joseph B Ewing to his parents from Irish records. As I said we can see
on this site and in Proni microfilms several children of William Ewing and
Margaret Reid, but no Joseph, reputedly their eldest, born around 1841.
Also, we find no marriage of William and Margaret, maybe around 1838-41.
My question to Les and other admin of this site:
-
what other parts of N Ireland can be accessed on this site or associated ones
that might include further afield - eg Omagh or even Belfast? I’ve manually
looked around Leckpatrick - Urney, Camus, Ardstraw index pages -no luck there.
-
(it is possible they moved for some reason)
-
Birth / Baptism records of these two parents would likely be in the region of
1810 +/- some years. Maybe these would be a clue for finding the birth of Joe
as first child.
-
Early 1800s births seem very limited in the data available.
-
Note they were definitely Presbyterian, so are all these records on your site?
Can I find more from the Presbyterian Historical Society, or is everything in
Proni anyway.
This note is after feeling that we have come to a dead end, and not knowing if
we are missing something on this site, or it might be elsewhere because of
location.
We have never had any luck finding useful emigration or immigration records
from Ireland to Queensland, Australia around 1861 for Joe.
We did find immigration into Queensland for William and Margaret and their
other children around 1866.
Please let me know if I’ve missed something you can spot. Thanks !!
Greg Ewing, Nelson NZ
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