After a few years of intermittent sleuthing, I've finally made a breakthrough with my James Beatty, Farmer of Fermanagh. People used to ask "Do you have a townland" and I'd roll my eyes... Well now I actually do!!! He had 30+ acres at Aghavoory, near Fivemiletown from at least 1829 to c1880, and had at least 4 other children besides my gg grandfather James (who married Marcella). My research progress is detailed on my website:
https://taggerty.wordpress.com/I'm hoping for advice from Fermanagh experts now. Firstly, I think this family were members of the congregation of the Presbyterian church at Cavanaleck, but how can I access those parish records without going to Belfast? At PRONI they're MIC 1P/80 and MIC 1P/230/4. As far as I can tell, they can't be borrowed from LDS - anyway they don't seem to be in the LDS catalogue. I emailed PRONI to see how much they'd charge to copy them for me and after a week they still haven't replied
Secondly, Aghavoory is on the Colebrook estate of the Brooke family, whose papers are (again) held by PRONI (D3004 and D998). I guess there's no way to browse them long distance (sigh!). I can't be too cross with PRONI, because it's so fantastic that they've copied all the Valuation Revision Books for Northern Ireland so that you can browse them online.
Can anybody help? I'd be grateful for suggestions as to where to go from here. I think I've pretty much exhausted the obvious online sources.