PRONI - Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Search freeholders' records

Search and view digitised images of pre-1840 freeholders' registers and poll books.

Before you start

To carry out a search, input the search criteria in the right field(s) and press the 'find' button.

The freeholders' records can be searched by any of the criteria listed below, however surname is the recommended method:

  • surname
  • forename
  • address
  • occupation of Freeholder
  • name or address of landlord
  • county
  • parish
  • date of registry
  • candidates

Addresses can be difficult to search because, in some cases, the name of a town is given, but not the street, but in others the street name is given, but no town.

 

Search freeholders' records

Additional information

You may enter more than one search criteria. Refining your search is recommended in order to restrict results to a manageable number, for example searching simply on surname for 'Wilson' returns more than 950 hits, but searching for surname 'Wilson' and forename 'Joseph' returns 25 hits.

Wildcard search

A 'wildcard' feature has been built into the search facility.  This feature may help you to find a name or address when you are unsure of the spelling.  For example, inputting 'Bally' in the address field will retrieve addresses such as Ballymena, Ballymoney, Ballycross.  The wildcard feature is built into each of the following search fields:

  • surname
  • forename 
  • address

Sort search results

Sort options are available on the freeholders search page.  You can sort your results alphabetically by surname, forename or address.  Results can be organised into ascending or descending order.

Download viewer

Images can be viewed as 'png' (Portable Network Graphics) - a web optimised version of the document; or 'DjVu' - an image of the original scanned document.

To view images using DjVu you must first download a DjVu viewer. You can do this by clicking on the DjVu download button found on the Results pages.

Other features

Selecting the 'Clear' button resets all search fields to their default values.
You can specify the number of 'Results per Page' by selecting an alternative value from the drop-down menu. The default value of 10 can be changed up to a value of 50.

Once a set of results has been returned it is possible to select the 'Modify Search' button at the bottom of the results page. This allows you to further refine their search without having to retype the original search criteria.

Once an image has been opened, you can save a copy of the image to your local hard disk by clicking on the image with the right-mouse button. Select the ‘Save File As’ option and save as a DjVu image.  You can print a copy of the image/s if required.  Closing the image window will take you back to results page.

More useful links

 

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