The Registry of Deeds

The following words of wisdom are based on my own experiences and the wiser words of others who have been researching with this resource for far longer than I have. Roz McCutcheon in particular, of the Irish Genealogical Research Society, has posted a very informative talk on YouTube in which she illustrates some of the things you can expect to find. Please get in touch if you can add to this advice with other interesting examples you have found.

What is this archive and what might you find there?

The Registry of Deeds (RoD), located at Kings Inn, off Henrietta St. in Dublin, was established right at the outset of the 18th Century to allow people to formally register their interests in lands by lodging "memorials" (essentially copies) of conveyancing deeds. Marriage settlements or articles - the pre-nuptials of their day - were also lodged to ensure that should a woman be widowed, she would still enjoy an income from land that she may have brought into the marriage. Finally, there were also a significant number of wills registered, presumably when they too involved transferring lands to beneficiaries or probably because they were likely to prove contentious! John Grenham's Registry of Deeds information pages on his website go into some more detail on the history and format of the resource (Click on the link to opening page above and be sure to read the ones which follow too.)

I've enjoyed a couple of trips to this Dublin archive as previously reported on my Kindred Ancestry blog. If you do visit in person, the genealogy room on the top floor of the building is an amazing place where you can literally rummage through history, thumbing though 200+ year old index books to find the references you will need to locate abstracts of memorials in the copy ledgers or day books next door (whimsically nick-named "tombstones" - ledgers so big and heavy that if one of them falls on you from a high shelf, you're going to see stars!) The Townlands Index room down the corridor feels a bit like stepping into a Hobbit library - all low ceilings and mezzanine floors, with cubby holes for consulting more huge tomes with tiny writing - seriously, bring a magnifying glass.

They have 2 main finding aids - the Grantors Indexes and the Townlands Indexes - which essentially should cross-reference the same physical deeds. Once you have the reference numbers, you can look up an abstract of the deed in one of the copy ledgers or day books. You can also order a copy of the deed to made from the original memorial which is stored securely elsewhere in the building. Read on for more detailed information on all of this...

How to find your way to treasure in this archive, in person or remotely?

The actual archive is accessible from Henrietta St. in Dublin - check local buses and tram services for public transport link. The Registry of Deeds is also part of the modern Property Registry Authority of Ireland and as such there is not much on-line to specifically address the needs of the genealogist versus say current-day land-owners, property developers etc. There are some rudimentary notes on their Registry of Deeds Services page but personally, I don't think these are very helpful.
There are probably 2 things to be very aware of if you do visit in person - firstly you are not allowed to take photographs of the memorials because secondly, if you don't want to transcribe everything you find, you will have to shell out 22Euro for a copy of the deed. To be fair, the copy is actually made from the original memorial lodged in the basement of the building and can be a thing of beauty with the actual signatures of your ancestors. It's also sometimes worth shelling out for an official copy if you have found that the clerk who copied out the memorial had dreadful handwriting and/or was rather too fond of using illegible abbreviations. This was how I found out my 4x great grandfather was actually called Joshua, not Joseph or James as I had previously guessed from the scrawled "Jos." or was it "Jas." in the memorial.
The older records which are probably most interesting to genealogists are NOT accessible on-line via the RoD. However, there are 3 ways of getting access to these records, either in whole or part;
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) filmed the indexes and deed books over 50 years ago and as of April 2017, the LDS London Family History Centre's collection of RoD microfilms are in the process of being moved from their temporary home at the National Archives in Kew to the Society of Genealogists in London, where you can visit on a day pass if you are not a member and view them there. There are over 2800 microfilm reels in all in the collection which you will find in their main catalogue under Transcripts of memorials of deeds, conveyances and wills, 1708-1929. However, the really big news is that the LDS have also committed to putting all of these same microfilms online to browse for free! If you would like to learn more about this resource, see my page on LDS Registry of Deeds Microfilms.
- The Registry of Deeds Index Project Ireland is a significant volunteer project which has been going for several years and is slowly building up an index of transcribed name entries from the actual memorial deeds, not just the indexes. They have over 233,000 names from nearly 27,000 memorials so far (as of April 2017) - search their index and you may be lucky. If you have some copies of deeds yourself, please take a little time to add to their index - see their website for a template you can use. The team have also started working with the Townland Indexes so, in theory, you ought to be able to search on a townland (aka denomination), but I'm not sure what the geographical coverage is for this data as all my searches for Co. Wicklow and Co. Carlow townlands have come back as zero so far? The web site is designed in a very particular style that I confess I'm not a fan of, but I have found some useful pointers on this site thanks to the generous contributions of other genies.
- I mentioned that there are also some wills registered too - well, raise your glass to Beryl Eustace who made it her mission to produce an index to those registered up to 1832 in 3 volumes. You can search and browse both Volumes 1 and 2 on Ancestry via the Registry of Deeds, Dublin - Abstract of Wills collection if you have a subscription. Else you can find all 3 volumes for free well hidden on the Irish Manuscripts Commission digitised out of print publications (where you may find other treasure ...) Again, a word of warning about the style of presentation and trying to navigate these resources online - I've noted my best advice at the bottom of my page on Church of Ireland Dioceses and Diocesan Records.

How do you navigate the indexes?

You will need 4 pieces of information in order to find a copy of any deed, namely;

The Year the deed was registered i.e. the year indicated by the index within which you find the reference,
The Number of the Book into which an abstract was copied (generally prefaced with the words "Bk" or "Lib"),
The Page Number of the book,
The Memorial or Deed number, generally a 5 or 6 digit number.

You will need to use the 2 main finding aids in the form of indexes compiled at the same time as the deeds were being registered to get this reference information. Theoretically, both indexes where updated simultaneously but I'm sure mistakes and omissions were rife.

The Grantor or Name indexes;

These are arranged by year(s) and then alphabetically by the surname of the first Grantor named i.e. the person(s) granting the lease. So, if your ancestor was a landholder/landlord or worked as an agent, then searching the Grantor indexes might prove fruitful. What can you expect to find?

The surname of the Grantor.
The surname of the first Grantee i.e. the person taking out the lease, is usually in the next column of each entry. You may also see a cryptic but regularly occurring phrase after any name that looks like "& Ors" which means "and others" - a good clue as to other named individuals in the deed. If you are hunting for marriage articles, for example, look for both the bride's and the groom's surname in either of these name columns.
You may also see "do" which is short for "ditto" so refer to the preceding entries. This is often used when there are many deeds granted by large landholders, often members of the gentry indexed by their title e.g. Marquis of Drogheda.
The entry should then be followed by a book number, a page number and lastly the all important memorial number, all of which should help you locate the correct day book within which you will find the copy of the deed.
And that's it, until 1833 when the county was added to the index, although I'm not entirely sure what this indicates if multiple lands in different counties are referenced?

Unfortunately there is no index to the Grantees, who are probably the people whom we are all most interested in - the Grantors I've come across for my family were not surprisingly big landowners, landed gentry or their middlemen who might be listed hundreds of times over and over again as they made money from their estates through granting new leases. So, if you are hunting for leases or marriage articles taken out by your named ancestors, you are going to have to pick a relevant year and page through it all, scanning the Grantee column for their surname. Time consuming I know, but quite frankly, this is what you would be doing in the lovely big room at the top of the Registry of Deeds in Dublin too. Hopefully, the inclusion of the county after 1833 will make searching a bit easier. Note all the references carefully and then go to the next section for advice on finding the actual deeds.

The Townland indexes;

These indexes record the same deeds referenced in the Grantor index but indexed with reference to to specific townlands. Brace yourself, you're going to find this challenging!

These are also arranged by year, usually in decades for each county.
Later books may be sub-divided by Barony. To find out which barony a townland is in, start with this simple website, Irish Townlands, which has about half the townlands in Ireland mapped so far or try the IreAtlas Townland Database which I think has them all - whatever you prefer to search on.
Finally all the townlands are listed more or less alphabetically, but do watch out for multiple spellings!
Within the Townland Indexes, I also advise you to scan through the entire list for each letter for your chosen townland as later transactions for the same townland may be added to the end of the lists. This was especially true of townlands on which a large number of deeds had been generated as the clerks tried to squeeze ever more information into the space they had originally allocated before admitting defeat and starting a new entry at the end of the alphabetical list. This can make some entries very hard to read, especially the all-important numbers that you need to locate the deed. Add to this the fact that the original books that have been filmed have been well thumbed by grubby hands over the years, resulting in lower corners especially becoming worn away.
Each entry consists of a standard phrase which you ought to be able to decipher something like this, "Brass to Hopkins, Bk:20 Pg:183 No:93561". This decodes to Grantor Brass to Grantee Hopkins, deed number 93561 to be found in book 120 for the given year on page 183.

How do you find a copy of the deed?

Once you have the reference information, you will need to find the correct LDS film via their catalogue entry. Scroll down through the long list until you come to a series of entries that begin with the words "Deeds, etc., ..." followed by a volume number and a range of years. Here's what to look out for with the numbering system;

Deeds registered between 1708 and 1832 were copied into volumes numbered 1 to 890, with each volume containing deeds registered in the year(s) indicated.
As the number of deeds being registered increased, it would appear that several volumes were in use during many years as indicated by duplicate and overlapping year ranges. I suppose this makes sense as there were probably several clerks employed at any one time, all copying in the entries at the same time, so they probably had their own volumes to work on. You could probably test this theory some more by studying the handwriting in more detail.
From 1833-4 onwards, the numbering restarts with each single year generating a span of volumes usually numbered from 1 up to the mid 20's. This is why it is important to note which year the deed was registered in after 1833 as there are now multiple volumes with the same number!

Once you open the correct day book by clicking on the camera icon to the far right of the entry, you will need to work your way through the thumbnail screenshots, noting the page numbers. These are usually on the top outside corners of the images which usually cover 2 original pages. You can use the arrows at the top of the screen either side of the image number to page back and forth or enter another higher or lower image number to move more quickly. Remember, this number is for images and does not correspond exactly with page numbers in the books because there are always extra images for title and end pages etc.

Another good tip when you have found the deed you are looking for is to spend a bit of time studying the preceding and following deeds. You might just find an additional deed or two for your party of interest that you did not know about as you may have just been following up a reference from a later deed. As deeds had to be registered in person at the offices in Dublin, it makes sense that perhaps several deeds, which may actually date from years before, would have been registered on any one trip to the capital.

What to do if you cannot find your deed on the page indicated

Clerks made mistakes when transcribing into the indexes so page numbers can be unreliable. If the deed you seek is not on the page indicated, hunt back and forwards a few pages. Deed numbers were not always entered in sequence in the day books either, so if you can't find your deed easily, there is no substitute for a good read through I'm afraid... It's also possible that the clerk made a mistake with the book number in the indexes, so this is where you will need to look at the year ranges for each volume. Note which other books cover the same year you know that your deed was registered in and try hunting them with the same page number and memorial number.

Who registered deeds?

There seem to be different schools of thought on who actually made most use of this route to legal land title. Some claim that it was mostly the Protestant land owning / leasing classes who registered deeds, whilst others have posited that you are as likely to find deeds registered by people of faiths persecuted under the Penal Laws and/or of considerably lesser means. This is because registered deeds "out-ranked" any competing unregistered deeds and thus established legal tenure in difficult times. According to Roz McCutcheon's talk referenced at the top of the page, there are also fascinating occurrences of Protestants registering deeds to lands belonging to Catholic friends in order to circumvent the Penal Laws - presumably reversing the situation when the laws were changed? We probably won't know the reality until the resource is fully indexed and further research published. OK, it's true it might still cover only a relatively small proportion of the contemporary population but I encourage you to at least take a look if you can. If you do find relations here, you might just hit pay dirt!

Who might you find in the deeds?

Deeds were usually drawn up between a number of different parties, mainly Grantor(s) bestowing the lease or marriage portion to Grantee(s). However, there were often many others who were named in supporting or descriptive roles e.g.

Named individuals i.e. "Lives" on which the length of leases depended. These were often relations, especially younger sons or nephews who might be described as such, or bizarrely to our modern eyes perhaps but prudently loyal for the times, they may have been prominent members of the British Royal family. Whoever they were, they were chosen for their prospective longevity as costs were incurred when a lease had to be redrawn on the death of a named life.
Tenants of the lands that were the subject of the deed or local residents who enjoyed certain rights in relation to the lands e.g. the right of passage to reach their own fields or the right to draw water from a shared source.
Past Grantors and Grantees named in older deeds or wills that may cover the lands mentioned in the current deed - this can be a particularly good way of identifying previous generations of a family when land has been passed down through generations as lease renewals.
Other Parties whose inclusion was to safeguard the interests of one of the grantees e.g. brothers of married woman named in marriage settlements as trustees who were expected to ensure her rights to promised income if she were widowed.
Witnesses of which there were usually two groups. Witnesses to the original deed which is likely to have been drawn up locally, and witnesses to the memorial when it was registered in Dublin. They may have been members of the extended family (look out for the family names who may have married into your family line in previous generations, making witnesses cousins who may have reciprocated the favour for each other across a number of deeds.) Equally, they may have been other local landowners in the area or as has been suggested at one presentation I went to, they might have been respectable and crucially, literate members of the local community e.g. clergy, schoolteachers or law clerks. Witnesses in Dublin are often law clerks associated with the Registry but usually at least one of the witnesses to the original deed also witnesses the memorial and may have been responsible for physically transporting it to Dublin. Whomever they were, they had to have a pulse in order to witness the deed on the date stated, so this can be a good way to narrow down death dates for them!
Members of the legal profession such as the Registrar or his Deputy and the solicitors who drew up the deed were also likely to be named.

Opening phrases from a memorial deed - image from LDS microfilm digital image

How do you decipher a deed?

The deeds were usually paraphrased and copied into the "day books" in one long uninterrupted stream of legalese, no punctuation and no gaps, so no room for misinterpretation or adding bits later. The copied deeds are also full of abbreviations that you will boggle at to begin with, but once you've got your eye in, so to speak, you'll start to fly through the text. There are also some standard phrases and, certainly in the ones I've looked at, a sort of "top" and "tail" to them as follows;

They usually open with the phrase "To the Registrar appointed by Act of Parliament for registering Deeds Wills and so Forth"
This is usually followed with an opening description of something like "A Memorial of an article bearing date ..." , the date being spelled out in words. Note, this is the date on which the original deed was drawn up. The actual date of registration may appear in the margin or more likely at the end of the deed, also spelled out in words. The interval between the 2 dates could be days but several years are not unusual, so check all dates very carefully.
The parties to the deed are then listed in order i.e. "of the first part", "of the second part" etc. This is where you should be able to verify your relations by their addresses and/or occupations perhaps. Married woman are often referred to by both their married and maiden names thus "Jane Jones otherwise Barker" (otherwise often being abbreviated to "other.", "owise" or even just "o/w".)
Clerks loved their abbreviations too - here are a few that seem to crop up regularly in the deeds I've worked with (last letters often appear as superscripts);
- "afsd" = Aforesaid - name or place already spelled out higher in the document. Often cropped to just "said" or "sd" too.
- "Coy." = County
- "decd." = Deceased
- "Esqr." = Esquire i.e. Gentleman. Not sure it there were rules for styling yourself thus e.g. must be a landowner or perhaps educated?
- "Exors." = Executors
- "Admors" = Administrators
- "mentd." = mentioned
- "Survr." = Survivor
Thereafter, you will find details of the land parcels in various townlands referenced, perhaps by current tenant or maybe by reference to a earlier deed. You may get luckier and there will be acreages expressed in acres, roods & perches and possibly a description of the location of the land with reference to other landmarks - often these land parcels were preserved in their entirety or new portions were described in relation to older descriptions of acreage. If the land was the subject of an earlier deed, this is where it gets very interesting and can take you further back into earlier generations of your family. However, whilst a particularly detailed deed may contain lots of references to previous deeds to set you off on this hunt, remember not all deeds were registered so you may not find them all. Additionally, I don't think for one minute that the clerks dragged out the old books and checked all the cross references and probably wrote what they were told by the parties and so the previous deeds may be hidden from you in the Grantor indexes under a different name. This is why double checking via the Townland Indexes is always a good idea.
The last couple of paragraphs are usually taken up with lots of swearing ... no, not profanities, but all the witnesses saying who they were and yes, they were there and saw with their own eyes everyone sign and seal the deed.

Photo from archive.org

Confused by legal terms?

I must confess I'm no expert on 18th century law ... but I know a man who was! Jacob's Law Dictionary published in 1739 was the seminal work of one Giles Jacob and therein you will find just about any archaic term you come across explained ... in equally archaic terms!

OK, it's never going to be a bit of light reading but actually it's not too difficult to get a sense of the logic of the legal language which may help you to understand a bit more of what was being communicated in the deeds you find.

Expect quite a bit in Latin too, or at least be based upon Latin words. For example, you will see lots of mentions of "Indentured Deeds", which is a term based upon the Latin root for "tooth or teeth". Apparently copies of the deed where torn along irregular lines leaving indents and each side of the deal held one half each, so that if they needed to prove they were the genuine parties to the deed at some later date, then they would be able to match up their unique pieces along the imperfectly torn edges - quite clever really!

How best to construct a citation for a deed?

Yes, I know, citation style is a thorny issue / can of worms and there are whole books and rants on blogs devoted to the subject, but these deeds do need to be referenced carefully. Of course you should download images of the deeds when you find them but you will also want to be able to reliably find them again online or perhaps tell someone else where they can find them - the only true test of a good citation in my opinion.

These deeds are actually a good example of what Diana Elder calls a layered source (see my blog article for a link to her Rootstech talk.) The original source are the entries in the day books or even a purchased copy of the memorial deed from the Registry of Deeds in Dublin with the named parties and reference numbers as described above. However, if you have actually accessed the digitised image online via the LDS, then the second "layer" is their unindexed online image file. So, here is what I do, copy if you like;

I use Family Tree Maker (FTM) software so I set up a source - "Memorial Deeds, IRE" - and set the author to be "Registry of Deeds, Henrietta St., Dublin, Ireland" but I make the publisher "LDS" and the publisher location, "(online unindexed images)". The source repository is "www.familysearch.org".

I then construct a source citation with the following format (fictitious example);

RD: 1859A RD for Registered Deed, Year of Registration and alphabetical letters starting with A for first deed found for that year
JONES to BROWN & COOKE Grantor was Jones, Grantees were Brown and Cooke
Dated: 9 JUL 1859 Date of deed as found in document
Registered: 5 SEP 1859 Date deed was registered
Bk:26, Pg:123, Deed:269 Book number, page number and deed number
LDS FHL Film No: 561233 LDS Family History Library Film number
Image No: 266 Image number in online file

If you adopt this style, then FTM should construct a reasonably comprehensive source citation in generated reports.