[4qd-bannvalley] 1841 and 1851 census reflections

[4qd-bannvalley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Boyd Gray)]

Boyd Gray
17 St Judes Court
Lifford
Co Donegal

I found another very interesting source in PRONI today, about which I had
heard very little.  It is the Old Age Pension enquiries made to Dublin,
where the 1841 and 1851 censuses were being used to search for folks who
were claiming to be over 70 and therefore eligible for the pension
introduced in 1908.  A huge book, apparently unindexed needs to be searched
through, but I found some very useful nuggets of information.  Obviously, it
only covers the period 1908 to 1922 but that takes you back to births in the
1830s and 1840s.  And if you hit lucky, the searcher often added all sorts
of details on the families which he found.  I could hear skeletons rattling
from closets down through the ages!