How can I help myself?

[coughlinja]

In the last few days, the community has helped find my grandfather, his siblings and his parents. Very exciting. When I looked at the 1901 Censuses for my grandfather (Coughlan) and grandmother (McCarthy), I checked the their Townlands and the adjacent Townlands and I found many more Coughlans and McCarthys. I fact, enough so that I could add to my tree 2nd great grandparents, their children and the children's children. Also exciting, right? All I need is proof. Is it likely that families live within small areas, and if so, where are the best places to go for evidence?

I have been to the sites the community used to find my grandfather, but I have not found much.

[ballydw]

Have you looked at www.irishgenealogy.ie Baptism & Marriage records for Diocese of Cork & Ross.
If you check the Sources list it will give the time frame covered for individual parishes.
www.nationalarchives.ie has Griffith Valuation & Tithe Applotment records. When there is frequency of Surnames in the same area , it can prove difficult.  The only alternative is to purchase the Civil Record for clarification purposes www.groireland.ie 4€ for a Photo Copy of Certs.

[aghadowey]

Sometimes it can be difficult to prove families were connected to each other, especially if the connection is quite a while ago.

My in-laws knew there were at least 2 previous marriages between the families. We know that his cousin married her aunt but the other (probably) is when his family raised her orphaned great-grandfather (living over 30 miles away) but we can't go back a generation further to confirm our suspicions.

[Sinann]

The bug has bit
When the records exist it's straight forward enough to step back from your parents, grandparents and so on but moving sideways isn't so easy as you don't have the younger generations names to work back from.
You need to work with what you know and expand from there.

Ideally you need to find marriages for the siblings, you have their first names and father's name hopefully the church record will include the mother's name as well so you can be sure it the right one.

The danger is cousins with the same names may live in the area to cause confusion also marriages usually happen in the brides parish so if any of the men married a woman from another parish you may not find them.
Witnesses can be a good clue so always take note of them.
You might also want to extend your search to Newspapers, a death notice can help identify relations and sisters or aunts marriage surnames.
My great grandmother's funeral report gave her 3 brothers names and her home address, pure gold.

Petty Sessions court cases are also useful, more for adding a bit of flesh on the bones but you never know. Almost everyone ended up in court at some point. My great grandfather was up in court for fighting with his dead daughter's sister in law, which helped me pin point the husband's family.

https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list/?page=1&countryId=1927084

Also have a look at the other records the National Archives have
http://www.genealogy.nationalarchives.ie/


The more familiar you get with the family names and the area they lived in the pieces of the puzzle will start to fall into place just take your time, once you have everything on the immediate family you may find you have gathered up names of relations that can be followed and connections are made to some of those other families you have seen in the Census.