William Ramsay/Rose Smith somewhere in Donegal near Derry?

There were two Wm. Ramsays in the Tithe Applotment Books for Donegal:

Ramsay          William          Kiltoey           Aghanunshin            Donegal         1834

Ramsay          William          Lower Croghan        Aughnish       Donegal         1834

Click here to see the records: http://titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie/search/tab/results.jsp?…

I hope this helps.

The births are long before the start of statutory birth registration in Ireland (1864) and so you need to rely on church baptism records to trace their births. The records may not exist (many churches don't have records back to 1810 or, if the records do exist, they may not be on-line.  What denomination was this family? Also what was William's occupation, as per Joseph's 1869 death cert? By any chance did Joseph have any children born in Scotland in 1855? If he did, then the birth cert for that year (only) should give Joseph's place of birth in Ireland.

@Patricia - thanks for that - I'll follow those up and see if they come to anything

@Elwyn - unfortunately Joseph and his wife only had 3 children, who were born in 1848, 1849 and 1851, so I only have parish records for them.

For Joseph's records, the only records I have with his birthplace are:

• 1846 parish marriage record: 'from the country of Donegal'
• 1851 census: Londonderry, Ireland
• 1861 census: Ireland

William's occupation on Joseph's death certificate is Farm Labourer, so I know that's going to limit what records exist for them

As far as I can tell, the family was Church of Ireland - there's no evidence to show they were Catholic that I have found - Joseph's asylum admission papers from 1867 note him as Protestant

Fingers crossed I come up with something from the Poor Law records!

Ali,

As you obviously know, if William Ramsey was a farm labourer that will make him harder to trace. Labourers often moved around a lot (to follow the available wiork) and so can be very elusive. Moving around may explain the apparent confusion between Donegal and Derry. The answer might be that the family lived in both over the years.

Knowing that William was a labourer probably rules out the two in the Donegal tithe applotment records as they would have been farmers.

The term Protestant includes a wide variety of denominations, not just Church of Ireland. The most common in that general area would be Presbyterian (mostly descendants of Scots who moved to the area in the 1600s) but includes Methodist, Baptist, Reformed Presbyterians and so on.  Do you know what church they used in Scotland? Was it Church of Scotland? If so, that points to them being Presbyterian.

If you can narrow the deno0mination down you could try searching the surviving records for the area. Many of them are not on-line and it would involve you or a researcher going through them in PRONI. William & Rose must have been born in 1790 or earlier and not all churches have records that far back but you might get lucky. But it would be a bit of a needle in a  haystack.

Death registration only started in Ireland in 1864. I searched the records for Rose Ramsey/Ramsay died 1864 – 1869 but there were none, so that suggests she died before 1864. There are a lot of William R deaths in the same period. If you narrow them by location and likely age there are 5 or 6. Those records are not on-line free though and are pay to view. But if he too died pre 1864 then there's probably no record. Also if he was a labourer, then the family probably wouldn’t be able to afford a gravestone so they may be in unmarked graves.

The 1831 census of Co. Derry has survived. There was just 1 William Ramsay in it. He lived alone in Kildoag, and was Church of Ireland:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1831/Londonderry/Tirkeeran/Tirkeran/Kildoag/6/

Kildoag is in the parish of Cumber Lower, just outside the city of Londonderry. Cumber Lower’s baptisms start in 1804, marriages in 1806. Copy in PRONI plus some years are on rootsireland (subscription). Might be worth checking. Kildoag is/was a largely agricultural area. In the 1831 census there were 22 households in it.

The 1831 census for Donegal has not survived.

Possibly DNA testing may be a way of matching with others who have additional information about where the family originate. Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them or, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results to them for no fee.

The North of Ireland Family History Society is running an Ulster DNA project in conjunction with FTDNA and can offer testing kits at a reduced price.  http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).

@Elwyn - thank you so much, that's loads of information! I already have a DNA test from FTDNA, so will look into getting it added to that project, that might be really useful! And that's loads of great leads - I'll see if I can get anything from it, thank you