cavantownlands.ie is excited to bring you the recently published data for the 1926 Census – the first census of the Irish Free State. The 1926 Census took place on 18 April 1926.
IMPORTANT
This search facility requires the user to filter by Parish first. If you do not know the parish, please use the Search by Name page instead.
Re-indexation of records by townland and parish
Anyone who has used the NAI website to search these records will know that their dataset is indexed by Townland and DED (District Electoral Division). Prior to the 1901 Census, returns and earlier surveys were compiled by townland and parish and it is the townland which is most relevant for historical research. Townland records can be traced back to the 17th century and beyond. The DED is a relatively new denomination and it’s use only commenced in 1898 (previously known as poor law electoral divisions which had boundaries redrawn in many instances and were renamed district electoral divisions) thus limiting the ability to compare with earlier records. The NAI website search by townland does not take into account issues we have identified with older name versions, misspellings and incorrect transcriptions which we believe may conceal c.50% of searches carried out by townland name. We have rectified this issue here by re-indexing the entire dataset in accordance with the approved Logainm.ie categorisation (the official placename database of Ireland).
Search the records
Results have been grouped by parish to speed the search process and to reduce the amount of data that is downloaded. Use the map to select a parish. All records for the selected parish will be displayed in the table below. Use the filters in the column headings to further filter the data. Each sequence of characters entered will be matched with the same sequence occurring anywhere in the values for that column.
Tip: If you are searching for a name starting with O’ (for example, O’Brien), enter “brien” in the column filter. Or if searching for “Mc” names (for example, McCormack), enter “cormack” in the column filter.
Click on a parish to populate the table beneath.
Parish Records
This work includes content from records of the 1926 Census of Ireland, made available by the National Archives of Ireland under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.