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community weblog
I found The Da
The first census of Saorstát Éireann = the Irish Free State was taken on 18th April 1926, 3½ years after Independence. 12 hours ago, a searchable index of the citizenry was released. Under GDPR, 1,000+ centenarians were given the option of having their names redacted. Background, context, ExecSumm, quirks on RTE, the state broadcaster.
posted by BobTheScientist on Apr 18, 2026 at 3:55 AM
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I'm not sure I would have guessed there were that many of them. By my calculation that's .02% of the population!
posted by InTheYear2017 at 4:59 AM
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Looking at the "quirks" link now...excellent post, and title of the week for me!
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 5:13 AM
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I'm not sure I would have guessed there were that many of them.
Me neither. Especially considering being a centenarian in 1926 would have put you living squarely during the Great Famine.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:50 AM
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@Thorzdad : You got it backward, it's current centenarians who could (understandably) opt out from being included in the public, searchable index.
posted by dragondollar at 6:04 AM
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Thorzdad, they mean people who are currently 100 years old and who's names appear in the 1926 census as a wee one.
posted by saucysault at 6:05 AM
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I've noticed that all the ones I've looked at so far have beautiful handwriting. A lost art. And these were mostly people with little education.
posted by night_train at 7:20 AM
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Thanks for the post, I think this will be of great interest to an Irish relative interested in family history.
posted by mokey at 9:06 AM
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Fascinating to see my great grandfathers signature, and imagine my maternal grandmother as a small girl with a bunch of even smaller sisters, women I knew as matriarchs of their own grown families.
Searching for mine leads me on wrong turns, to the homes of strangers. The tightness of the childrens ages on so many of these families, tightens my chest. I saw here a family with children aged 12, 13, 15, 17 and 24. A number nine under the "children born alive", and a mother listed as deceased tells a sad tale.
I found my paternal grandfather too, and learning he was a native Irish speaker gave me a twist of shame in my stomach, and reinvigorated my will to get my own Irish up to speed. Was hard to find him, his name is recorded with a slightly different spelling than I have always seen used.
My paternal grandmother however is in the Northern Irish census that was done on the same day in the less than 5 year old partition. That data is believed to have been destroyed somehow during WWII, but aggregated reports exist.
My maternal grandfather is easy to find, we have him 1911 census, so it's old news, but I am saddened to learn that in the intervening years he had lost both his parents and was the head of the small household of siblings in their teens and early 20's.
posted by Iteki at 1:30 PM
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Multiple relatives in there with occupations listed as "RIC Retired." Come out ye black and tans indeed.
posted by meehawl at 5:03 PM
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My house was built in the 1890s and it seems like the same family lived in it from when it was built until the 1950s. It's been so interesting to follow this family's history through the 1901, 1911, and now 1926 censuses.
In 1901 the head of the house is a widowed mother of five. In 1911, she's still here as are all of the kids except in the intervening ten years the eldest daughter was married and widowed and is back in the house with her five year old daughter.
In 1926, the eldest son is the head of the household, he never married, his mother gone but his widowed sister and her daughter still living in the house with him. A search of death certs reveals that he died a year later and his sister was still living here when she died in the early 50s.
I've always felt a sense of stewardship towards this house but being able to find connections like this really deepens it.
posted by minifigs at 3:48 AM
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The Central Statistics Office has some good visualisations and digs into the data. For example, there are 20% less people living in Mayo now than there were a century ago ; People with some Irish language ability has risen from 18%-40%; People employed in agricultural work has fallen from 51% to 4%.
posted by BigCalm at 6:15 AM
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