A Guide to Tracing your Limerick Ancestors by Margaret Franklin

Author:Margaret Franklin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: FlyLeaf Press

Chapter 9 Commercial Directories

In the eighteenth and nineteenth century, directories of traders, professionals and gentry were published for various towns. Some were national, while others specialized in certain parts of the country. Many of them contain useful information on local administration, such as the police, militia, and dates of court sessions and fairs. They are a major resource for ancestors who were business owners or professionals, or who held some form of public office. As they were commercial ventures, the earliest directories cover the larger towns, but gradually all parts of the country, and a wide range of even small towns, are featured. The directories can mainly be used to identify trades people e.g., coopers, spirit merchants, breeches makers etc. Limerick has the proud distinction of being the first provincial city to publish a directory in 1769. The historian John Ferrar published it and therein identifies people in the city with trades such as salt-boiler, brush-maker, grocer, tinsman and several others. Names associated with Limerick such as Bennis, Bourke and Barry figure prominently.

Ferrar’s Directory was followed in 1788 by the General directory of the Kingdom of Ireland by Richard Lucas and several others as can be seen from the list below. Sources for gentry include Taylor and Skinner’s Road Maps of Ireland (London, pub. by the authors, 1783) lists the principal gentry seats (i.e. properties) along the main roads. You should also look at The Post Chaise Companion through Ireland (Dublin, J. & J. H. Fleming, 1805) which has ‘particulars of the noblemen and gentlemen’s seats’. Both of these titles are available in the Limerick public library service (see Chapter 15).

Limerick City Library Local Studies Dept. holds a number of directories in hard copy book format and has made several of them available online in its Limerick city trades register 1769-1925: www.limerickcity.ie/Library/Local/Studies. This register is compiled from directories published between 1769 and 1725 and contains about 60,000 records of more than 1,000 trades. The directories can point to the rise and sometimes fall of prominent Limerick families as well as the time span in which a business family was active in the city.

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