The Hearth Money Rolls in the half-barony of Arra

 

We nearly all know the story about the Fourcourts being burned down during the Civil War in 1922 and the priceless loss of records.

However in Tipperary we are extremely fortunate in that in 1911 Dr. Thomas Laffan made a copy of one such record that was destroyed in 1922 - known now as the Hearth Money Records - 1665-6-7.

It records a tax that was imposed on every fireplace in the country and was "payable by practically all the householders in the country. The exemptions, applicable only to the poorest of the people, were granted too freely which led to amending the Act of 1665. Copies of the rolls have been wholly or partially preserved for eleven counties in the north and east of the country and for Co. Sligo, but for the rest of Ireland there are none extant except those for Co. Tipperary". ( MacLysaght, North Munster Studies, 533).

So this record will include a far larger number of people in it than the Civil Survey circa 1654 or the Pender Census of 1659.

It is difficult to get your head around, some of the townlands are in older forms, others don't make sense at all. Some townlands are included under the wrong parish.

Then when you look at the surnames, some are likely to have been transcribed incorrectly by either the original person writing it down in the 1600s or by Laffan.

However what is there is literally priceless and with a bit of work could be an invaluable research tool for genealogy and history from that period.

One example of this is researcher Mary Fitzgerald's book that tracks every McKeogh mentioned in the Hearth Money Rolls in North Tipperary and has descendant trees for the majority of them.

https://lettertecbookstore.com/.../the-mckeogh-family.../

I've started to do a bit of work on the ones in the barony of Owney & Arra. Initially I had hoped to do an article on the Hearth Money Rolls but it seems like the article would be defunct as soon as I figured the location of a townland that I couldn’t at the time of publication or what a particular surname is that was recorded.

So to start I will put the relevant areas up on a spreadsheet online and maybe look at it in posts on a townland by townland basis.

I have created this map based on the townlands that we DO have information from in the Hearth Money Rolls in the half-barony of Arra.

Personally, I didn't realise it covered such an extensive area. Also there are at least 10 townlands that I haven't been able to figure out but are likely to relate to the area.

For the half-barony of Arra by my analysis currently it features 520 individuals.

Not surprisingly O'Brien (or variants) is the most populous name recorded with over 10% of those recorded being O'Briens. Hogan is next with about 9% and then Maloney, McDonagh, Hickey, Tuohy, Minogue, Flannery, Cormican, Ryan & Casey are on much smaller numbers.

I would also be glad to help people that are looking at other areas around the County with my limited understanding of how the rolls work and how something similar could be done.

A copy of Laffan’s work on the rolls is available here

https://askaboutireland.ie/.../laffan-tipperarys-familie/

For a detailed look at the Hearth Money Rolls in the half-barony of Arra in a spreadsheet

click HERE