MyHeritage adds pre-1840 Ulster freeholders records

MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com) has added a new collection for those with ancestors from the Irish province of Ulster:

Ireland, Ulster Freeholders

This collection contains records of freeholders in the province of Ulster, Ireland, between the years 1662 and 1839. Freeholders are men who owned or held land in lease for the duration of a lifetime, giving them the right to vote in an election. Records typically include the name of the freeholder, and the year and residence of the freeholder at the time the election occurred.

Due to the scarcity of records in Ireland from this period of history, they can be invaluable to deduce more about the residence, living conditions and social class of your ancestors.

Although these records can contain details of the candidates that individuals voted for, before the 1872 Ballot Act, voters had to publicly declare their allegiance, which could lead to landlords putting pressure on their tenants to support their chosen candidate. The people allowed to vote also changed through this period, notably with only Protestants with a freehold of at least 40 shillings a year able from 1727 to 1793, both Protestants and Catholics with 40 shilling freeholds could vote from 1793 to 1829. After 1829 the rate was increased to 10 pounds, removing the right to vote from all 40 shilling freeholders and confining the electorate to those with considerable property and money.

This collection Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government License v3.0.

COMMENT: This is the same collection that is found on PRONI's website as 'Freeholders' records' (https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/information-and-services/search-archives-online/freeholders-records), with MyHeritage helpfully giving the catalogue reefrence with each search result, even if not noting which archive it came from! There are 138,778 individual name records available.

For additional MyHeritage records released this week visit https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/10/myheritage-publishes-30-new-historical-record-collections-and-31-million-records-in-september-2022/

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.