I’ve been loving finding out where my family was in 1911.

My maternal grandmother, Mary, was one year old. Her dad, Denis, was a “General Labourer”.  Her mother was Julia, née O’Reilly. They lived in a room in a tenement block with her infant brother in Smithfield North Side, Dublin. (Probably within a stone’s throw of the Cobblestone pub.) There were five other families living in the same house. This is Denis and Julia’s wedding photograph, c. 1908/09.  My great-grandparents.

Denis and Julia

Mary, or Mamie, was to marry a “Master Carpenter”‘s son, Dermod, who was five in 1911. (I’m named after him, so his name definitely was spelled Dermod, but weirdly he’s listed as Dermot in the census, in his own father’s handwriting). He lived in Drumcondra with his parents Michael and Elizabeth (née Smyth) and paternal grandmother Jane, née Hambrook, (who spoke Irish, the only one of my family in this census to claim it), and his two younger sisters.

All my mother’s side of the family are Dubliners and Catholics.

My paternal grandmother, Mai, was born in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, and was Catholic. She had a troubled upbringing, her father Michael died when she was an infant. I must find out more of the story. She was aged 17 in 1911. She and her older brother, (as well as her younger half-sister and half-brother who were born in South Africa), were all taken in by their mother’s sister, who lived in Dún Laoghaire.  Poor Aunt Annie, so the story goes, worked herself to the bone to look after four children who weren’t her own. She’s listed as single, and a “Boarding House Keeper and Landlady”. Two lodgers are listed as living in the house.

My paternal grandfather Henry was 22 in 1911, and was born in Boyle, Co. Roscommon. He was single and living in lodgings in Athlone, while he worked in a bank. He is listed as “Church of England”.

He was following his father’s footsteps, who, in 1911, was manager of a bank in Scarriff, Co. Clare. In those days, bank managers travelled around wherever they were appointed, and they used to live above the bank.  (My dad lived above a bank or two when he was a boy).

Henry Senior, my great-grandfather, was 55 years old. He was born in Limerick City. He was living with his second wife, Elizabeth, in 1911. Also in the household was Emily, the 24-year-old daughter of Henry and his first wife (my great-grandmother, who was also called Elizabeth, née Black. She died  in 1897, when my grandfather was 9 years old). There was also their own 9 year old daughter, again called Elizabeth*. Their religion is listed as “Church of Ireland”. They lived well enough to have a 16 year old Catholic servant girl living with them. Also called Elizabeth!

All these people are my ancestors. And they are all so different. I like that.

*I am lucky enough to be able to trace Henry’s lineage right back to the 12th Century, thanks to the work of Elizabeth’s son. The Mores or de la Mores were a “noble family” of French origin, and settled in England after the Norman Conquest. Then they came over to Ireland and the family became the Moores, Earls of Drogheda. I am not directly in line to anything, but Henry Street and Moore Street are named after them, and one or two of them are buried in Christchurch Cathedral. Must have a wander.

If you’re on facebook, join this group and tell stories about other people in the census returns.