1821 Census
Parts of County Cavan

Ireland Census Returns. The earliest complete census surviving for the entire country is that of 1901, and the only other currently open to the public is that of 1911. The first full census of Ireland was conducted in 1821 and thereafter there was one every ten years. However, after the statistics were extracted from the 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891 censuses, the returns themselves were routinely destroyed by government order. The bulk of the 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 returns were subsequently destroyed when the Public Record Office was burned during the Civil War in 1922. What survive of them are fragmentary. The charts below show information from the census returns for parts of County Cavan. The first chart below lists the heads of household alphabetically by name. The second chart has the same information but is listed first by parish then by townland. This second chart is helpful because it shows all the individuals who lived near each other. In general, individuals with the same last name who lived near each other were usually related.

 Note: There have been numerous instances where the name Fay has sometimes been used in the place of Foy in the Griffith’s Valuation, Ireland death records, Catholic church records and possibly other records. This is certainly true regarding the name Fay found in County Cavan in the civil parish of Drung. Therefore, all the individuals with the surname Fay who lived within the parish of Drung are included in this table. It is possible that some of the Fays listed were actually Fays.