The 1926 Census of Ireland

An interesting little booklet arrived in the post yesterday. It gives an overview of the 1926 census, which has just been made available online. This was the first census to be taken after the end of the War of Independence , the Irish Civil War, and the creation of the Irish Free State.

The census was taken on April 18th 1926 (i.e. 100 years ago yesterday) and the total population recorded was just 2,971, 992, a drop of 168,000 compared to the 1911 census (for the same 26 counties; this being after partition, the six counties of Northern Ireland are not included). The current population of the Republic is around 5.3 million.

This is indeed a full release of the census: not only names and numbers but also complete digital scans of all the returns can be downloaded. It’s fascinating to see the actually hand-written forms.

Out of curiosity I searched for the surname “Coles” in the 1926 census using the online platform and found only 25 entries, most of them in Wexford but also a small cluster in County Cork (in Cobh, actually). I know that “Coles” is not a common name in Ireland – it’s associated with England and Wales – but I hadn’t expected so few. There are a couple of entries in Dublin: one refers to a 32-year old woman called “Alfa Coles”. The latter record is completed in Irish – most of the others are in English. It seems people had much nicer handwriting in those days!

Some years ago I found that there is a Coles Coat of Arms and subsequently found that in Burkes General Armory (which details all the Coats of Arms registered in the UK and Ireland) the first entry under the surname Coles is indeed in Ireland, where it was confirmed in 1647. That date is during the Irish Confederate Wars, a couple of years before Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland with his army. One might surmise that this particular branch of the Coles lineage was somehow caught up in these hostilities, probably on the English side.

Anyway, as well as being a goldmine for historians, those of you out there with Irish lineage will no doubt find it interesting to search the 1926 census to find the records pertaining to your ancestors.

The next census of Ireland takes place on 9th May 2027.

P.S. If you do search the archive and find a record in Irish please remember that in Irish “man” is fear and “woman” is “bean” so “F” actually means “male” in Irish and “B” stands for “female” (unlike “M” and “F” in the English version).

A ceasefire in the Irish War of Independence began on 11 July 1921. The post-ceasefire talks led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921. This ended British rule in most of Ireland and, after a ten-month transitional period overseen by a provisional government, the Irish Free State was created as a self-governing Dominion on 6 December 1922.

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