Introduction to Griffith’s Valuation for Irish Genealogy
Let's just say Griffith's Valuation is to Irish genealogy as the Federal Census is to U.S. genealogy: it is comprehensive in its details, it covers the whole country, and it's where you should start when researching your Irish ancestors prior to the 1901 census.
What is Griffith's Valuation?
The Primary Valuation of Ireland, more commonly known as Griffith's Valuation, was a property valuation survey carried out under Sir Richard Griffith, and these surveys give detailed valuation of every taxable piece of land in order to estimate the annual income that any given property should have produced at the time.
The valuations were published county by county, and some counties were published early than others, beginning with Carlow in 1853 and ending with Armagh in 1865. If your ancestors emigrated from Ireland between these years, they may or may not be enumerated in the Griffith's Valuation. Refer to the chart on Griffith's Valuation Wikipedia page for dates when each county's valuation was published.
What information can I find in the Griffith's Valuation?
The Griffith's Valuation will give you the names of any property renters, along with the landlords. It won't name all the people living in the house, so the Griffith's Valuation will not help you reconstruct families. It will, however, name everyone who rented property, whether it be a house, an office, or land, and you'll see plenty of women's names too!
The Valuation will give you the first and last name of the renter, the name of the person they leased their property from, the description of the property (house, office, or land), the size of the property, and the valuation of the property. It will also tell you the parish and townland in which they lived, and if you don't quite know what these are, you may want to read this blog post on Irish places.
Griffith's Valuation Maps
One of the absolute best things about Griffith's Valuation are the accompanying interactive Ordnance Survey maps. In the first column of Griffith's Valuation there are numbers corresponding to the plots of land delineated in the accompanying map. These numbers allow you to find your ancestor's plot of land quickly and easily, and locate where the property is today. Watch this tutorial on how to search and navigate the maps!
Name Books
Accompanying Griffith's Valuation maps are 'Name Books', which were compiled in the first half of the 19th century in order to determine the correct spelling for each place name. They collected data on towns and villages and compiled the different spellings and pronunciations of them, and all this is viewable in the name books! The books also give detailed description of the area.
These name books may be particularly helpful when researching a place in Ireland for which the contemporary name does not match the historical name. You may find reference to a parish in a historical document that today goes by a different name in modern maps; thus, researching the name books may lend insight into where exactly you should be looking.
How can I get started?
Griffith's Valuation and its accompanying maps are available and searchable for free on askaboutireland.ie. They are searchable by name and location.
For a quick, 10-minute overview on how to search and read the valuation, watch the tutorial below!