The Place Index
The index of Places can be accessed now via link above or by going onto "Data" on the menu and clicking Places Indexed by Catholic Parish from there. The Catholic Parish has been used to provide high-level groupings of townlands as I believe it to be the best known division today, unlike the now defunct Civil Parish. This is a geographical grouping only, for purposes of organising the data, and clarly those living within a Catholic Parish were not all Catholics. It is hoped that use of this as a handy and well-known local divisional marker is acceptable to all.
When selected the Place Index presents a screen similar to that below.
In this example, Aghavas is a Catholic Parish, as are Annaduff and Bornacoola. The absence of any indented entries under Aghavas indicates that in this example there are no townlands held, while Cuilmore is the only townland in Annaduff for which we have data. As can be seen there are a number of townlands within Bornacoola for which data is held. A click on the parish name of Bornacoola will show results similar to the example below.
In this example, Patrick Beirne (1884-1949) is associated with Bornacoola Parish in some way but we have not identified a specific townland. But beneath him can be seen the townland of Acres and a listing of all those people associated with it. This association indicates that some key event in the person's life took place in the townland.
Selecting any person from this listing will bring up his or her details screen - see Sample Details Page. Once you've selected the entry for a person, you will find "prev" and "next" buttons on the end of the page, and on the main menu bar, which will allow you browse through all people on the database.
Because the data shown online is summarised, there are no townland details, but to an extent this Places Index allows a searcher some ways around this.