1841/1851 Census Abstracts NI

The story behind this reconstruction is not without interest. The Old Age Pension Act was introduced in 1908, but as the civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths was not begun in Ireland until 1864, birth certificates were not available for persons of eligible age (70 years). For persons applying to the local Pensions Office without proof of age, the Pensions Officer sent particulars of the claimant to be checked in the 1841 and 1851 censuses held at the Public Record Office in Dublin. Details were recorded by the Search Officer and returned to the Pensions Office. Significantly, this checking was completed before the Public Record Office fire of 1922!

The Old Age Pension search summaries for Northern Ireland, bound in books and held in Belfast, cover the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone. In some cases a fairly complete family census record was written in the summary book, and it is from these summary books that this present series of census abstracts derives. (Most of the Old Age Pension records contain only brief notes recording whether or not a census record was found for the applicant and whether the age given by the applicant matched the census information.)