County Longford’s Griffith’s Valuation was published in 1854. It records occupiers, immediate lessors and the assessed value of holdings, arranged by civil parish and townland.
This was a property valuation, not a list of everyone in a house. A wife, child, lodger or labourer may have lived at an address without appearing under their own name.
Ask About Ireland makes the valuation searchable and links entries to historic maps. The maps are especially useful where the same surname appears in several neighbouring townlands.
Keep three things separate: the person occupying a holding, the person from whom it was held and the valuation assigned to it. None, by itself, proves that the occupier owned the land or that two people with the same surname were related.
Read a valuation entry in context
Note the townland, civil parish, plot reference, occupier, immediate lessor and whether buildings and land are listed. Inspect the original page if possible and record the map sheet.
If a location has several same-name occupiers, resist merging them without supporting evidence.
Link old and new geography
Use the Longford 1837 survey map and library field name books as aids. Treat nineteenth-century plot lines as historical evidence, not present-day cadastral boundaries.
Try searching by townland as well as surname. Do not confuse the person recorded as occupier with the owner of the land.
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