Lookup - Glencolumbekille - Inglis

[MO1]

Paula,
Henry, Katherine, and Elizabeth, although they sound English, are all common names among the Inglises in all parts of Scotland.  My ancestors didn't move to Dublin until 1842, but there was another Inglis family there before them.  I have talked to a couple of the members of that family (they are still there, as are a few of my family), and they tell me that their family records go back to the 16th century in Ireland. Inglis is a very rare name there, but not completely unknown.

The problem is is that there aren't many records in Ireland to begin with, especially not for Protestants.  I've had a hard time researching my ancestors there as well.

[kintree]

Inglis is often considered to be a Gaelicised spelling of the name English (the pronunciation would thus be approximately the same). Other versions are Ingles, Engles etc. No search should discount other spellings.

I have to disagree with MO1: you are more likely to find records for Protestants (especially of the established church) than for Catholics in the 18th and early 19th century, as Catholics were so discriminated-against in that period.

Adrian

[MO1]

Adrian,
The problem is that no-one, not even the Mormons with their massive world genealogy project, seems to have copied or indexed the Irish Protestant records; so where they still exist, they reside only at the church itself or its successor church.  Since most of the 19th-century Protestant churches are now gone, it is quite a project just to find out where the records currently are, and the only way I have found to get copies is to write to the church, send a donation and ask some-one to make a search of the records.  I have not been able to find any of the church records of my family in South Dublin; I don't know which church they attended (or even whether they were Baptist or Presbyterian) much less where the records are now.  My Irish relatives have been unable to find them either.  Some of the local heritage societies have copies of Protestant records, but their charges are so high that I haven't considered them except as a last resort; they want a large fee just to say what records they have, so I expect their fee for actually searching and copying those records would be substantial.

One fellow researcher told me that she found it cheaper to fly to Dublin and search the records herself, rather than pay the fees of the heritage society or a professional researcher.  Which is probably the point; the Irish economy depended for many years on genealogical tourism.  If you know of a better way of researching Irish Protestant church records, please let us know!

[kintree]

MO1

I am a professional researcher. I would certainly not advise anyone to use a Heritage centre for Protestant church records.

Historical church records of the (once established) Church of Ireland are public documents, and are (if deposited, and not destroyed by fire in 1922) freely available to researchers at the National Archives (Dublin), or the Representative Church Body (Dublin), or the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (Belfast).  Records of other protestant churches may be harder to come by - check the holdings of the above and other repositories. If you wish to consult registers still held locally, you must expect to pay a charge.

There are many other types of documentary records for the period in question (late 18th and early 19th century). Each type of document has its own quirks, but usually repays investigation.

Adrian

[MO1]

Adrian,
Thanks; everything helps.  It has been difficult to research my Irish connections, especially after researching Scotland where the government has nicely indexed all their records and put them on line.

By the way, there is a DNA study investigating the theories you mentioned about the Inglis & English names at www.englishdna.com/  ; you can do further investigation at www.ysearch.org/ by selecting "search by last name" and typing in "Inglis". So far, it looks as if there is one major Inglis family in Scotland and perhaps a few smaller ones; all the Inglises in this and other studies match each other, with one exception so far, and one Irish English matches as well, so all are descended from one man.  Most of the Englishes don't match, however, not even all the Irish ones; the name seems to have had a number of origins.  Ingalls, Ingle, Engle and a number of likely spelling variants don't match either, at least none yet.  Unfortunately, no member of the Irish Inglis family has joined the project, so we don't know if they are also part of the Scottish family.

[kintree]

Yes but ...  the DNA tests do not lead to the conclusions you have formed! They show a tiny sample, from which a few appear to be closely related.

When you have a multi-rooted name such as English (ie the surname can be shown to have arisen in many different places at many different times), it is inevitable that if you test one known family-group against a random sample from "outside" that known family group, you tend to show that known family-group as fairly unrelated to the rest.

Only when we have compulsory DNA testing for all (!!) will we be able to come to easy genealogical conclusions based on DNA.

There are serious ethical problems involved in DNA testing for genealogical purposes, in that we must be sure that we really want to suspect that any of our grandmothers was talking too much to the milkman.

Adrian

[PER]

Hi All,

Thanks for the advice, i havent ruled out that my Inglis line could be from anwhere in the UK/Eire but Glencombekille seemed line a good place to start, well not really start ive spent a lot of time looing through Scottish and Englsh records and have been in touch with a number of researchers. I take on board some worries about teh DNA profiling but after reading that web link am feeling quiet interested, we only know of one male though that has carried the name through and would have to see if he would do it. Ive very much hit a brick wall with this line as you will see from my above details, im lucky in that i have a very good cousin in canada who is a very detailed researcher and can pretty much say for definate we have tried all the options available that end of the pond.

Kind Regards

Paula

[PER]

Hi All,

Just thought i would let you know i think ive managed to knock a couple of bricks out of that brick wall ive had on the Inglis family. Ive just been revisiting the IGI website and found this.

Elizabeth Inglass born 18 May 1807 baptised 26 May 1807 daughter of Henry Inglass and Catherine the baptism is down for Saint John, Limerick, Ireland

Right forename, wrong surname spelling but still phonetic, around right date and right parents christian names so im almost positive this is my girl.

So it looks like my search is now going to centre on Limerick though i think this could be hard as it was/is a port so they were maybe en-route to Canada when they had Elizabeth and so far i cant find any ship passenger list pre 1821 for Limerick.

Please though can i thank you again for all your invaluable advice, im felling pretty jubulant right now as this will be the first ancestor ive managed to bring back from Canada to the UK and Eire after many years of research. My lot wernt your usual Canadian emigrants they left too early to make it easy all around the turn of the 1800's.

Many Thanks

Paula