1821 census for Forkhill Parish, Armagh

The 1821 census for Forkhill Parish, County Armagh was discovered a few years ago in the Church of Ireland vestry room in Forkhill by a Canadian research student Kyla Madden. Kyla, whose roots are in Forkhill was there with the kind permission of Rector Mervyn Kingston. What she discovered amongst the papers wasn’t the actual 1821 census returns. It was, in fact even more important. It was the Field Books, compiled and collated by local men Robert Balmer and John McCoy. They had visited all the houses in the parish and filled in an ‘estate copy’ and then returned to the village where they transcribed their findings and sent these to Dublin.

 The 1821 census covers 22 townlands in Forkhill Parish and include Lisnalee, a detached townland close to Mountnorris. Unlike the actual returns the field books contain some ‘gems’ which the collectors found interesting but which never found their way to Dublin Castle.

 For example in Aughadanove John McCoy 78, wife Margaret 77, grandchild Rose 22 ‘and has 42 grandchildren living and 73? great grandchildren now all living’.

 Also in Aughadanove George Robinson 54, schoolmaster, teacher of one of the Charity Schools belonging to the Trustees of the charities of the Late Red. Richard Jackson Esq. of Forkhill erected AD 1811, No of Males 120.

In Shean townland John Little 77, Farmer and pensioner, David 40 son pensioner, Martha 45, wife to David, grandchildren Elizabeth 19, spinner and Mary Anne 16, spinner. Alongside this entry in another hand, the following remark: Betty Smyth, daughter of above Mary Anne Little 16, granddaughter of David Little and great granddaughter of John Little told me that her great grandfather John and four of his sons were at the Battle of Waterloo and that John was 103 years old when he died.

Many other army ‘pensioners’ were recorded in the 1821 Forkhill census including in Tullymacrieve townland Patrick Duffy aged 50 who ‘wants one arm’.

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