RC Baptism Records for Miltown Malbay Parish, 1831-1881

Transcriber Notes:

1: The middle name given for the father of the child, in the earlier part of this register, is a marker for which family he belonged to – not a middle name as we think of it nowadays. This way of distinguishing families is still used in west County Galway, where Irish is still spoken.
2: The priest used his own shorthand for the townlands (Residence), which I thought I would grasp as time went on, but never fully grasped. I hope the Miltown Malbay people, at least, will be able to make something of my efforts, or that somebody will improve on them.
3: There are no gaps in the baptisms until we come to January 1839. Maybe the Night of the Big Wind (Jan. 6, 1839) caused damage to the chapel and put the register out of reach. The following few months are in higgledy-piggledy order – it looks like pages fell out and were stuck in back to front. There are more examples of disorderly pages in the late 1840s.
4: This register shows more variety in the notes on offerings (payments), than any other register I’ve transcribed. Apart from the word “poor”, which signified that the priest did not expect an offering, I did not attempt to transcribe these notes. The word “collop” turns up at the top of page 102, right-hand side – I think that’s the amount of land needed for the grazing of a cow. The word “Bailwick” turns up at the bottom of page 108, right-hand side.
The word “clear” is the usual note, meaning nothing more is owed, but as time goes on and we enter the 1840s, we see that work was often accepted in lieu of cash and there are a couple of examples of a tally system being used to count off the number days owed, i.e. three upright strokes are crossed off. Also, the Irish word for work, Obair, in Gaelic script, appears. Sometimes payment is deferred until “after Michaelmas”, or until “after Miltown Fair, 2nd Feb.”
5: As usual some names are confused, for example, Carny and Canny, Keavy and Keary, Thynne and Flynn, Liston and Sexton, Morony and Molony, Goonan and Gorman, O’Connell and O’Connor, Coghlan and O’Loghlan, Burke and Rourke, Kinnelly and Kinulty, Moony and Morony. I hope researchers will take this into account.

Registers by Date (all .xlsx format)
1831-1855	1855-1858	1858-1881
Registers by Father's Surname (all .xlsx format)
1831-1855	1855-1858	1858-1881
Registers by Mother's Surname (all .xlsx format)
1831-1855	1855-1858	1858-1881