red paper boat

If you just do a keyword search of the indexed entries at sites like Ancestry or Findmypast, you miss really interesting stuff. I especially like notations at the fronts of some of the Irish Catholic Parish Registers. I’ve seen recipes for barm, to do lists, payment annotations for services (adding hobnails on boots or baking bread for the parish priest). This one addresses some of the gaps in Irish records and why the parish registers are so important. I wish I could make out the priest’s name at the end.

Baptismal Register, Diocese of Achonry, Parish of Castlemore and Kilcolman, Baptisms Nov 1851-17 Nov 1861 and 25 Jan 1864-2 Jun 1872, image 3.
https://registers.nli.ie/registers/vtls000632290#page/3/mode/1up

This is an important book and it should be carefully preserved for the following reasons —
The Census returns of 1861 and 1871 have long since been destroyed. Twelve years hence in the year 1921, the people coming up for Old Age Pensions will begin to be these born in or subsequent to 1851, for those the Census returns will no longer be available unless indeed, they fall back on those of 1881 taken when they were grown men and women of thirty years or there abouts. This would be a course open to much objection, for adults generally return figures far short of the correct age. The people therefore born between the ages of 1851 and 1864 (the year when public registration begins) will unless their Church records have been preserved be hard set to prove their ages in a satisfactory way. Now this book contains fairly accurate –the baptismal records from 1851 to 1864 –hence the importance of taking care of it.

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20th October 1909

P. S. See large Register too for baptisms from 1860 on.