I have previously outlined the number of times that the Buggy name appears in the counties of Ireland in the 1901 census. To accompany this I have created a map to show the location of every Buggy that is listed.
Each person is listed by first name, relationship to the head of family and age. The placement arrows are located beside the names of the townlands, or streets in urban areas, where they live. The placing of townland names on Google Maps is not 100% accurate, but gives a very good indication of their location.
For those of you unfamiliar with Irish geography and civil administration, a townland is the smallest administrative area of land in Ireland. They can vary in size from a few acres to many square kilometres, with some townlands having no inhabitants. There are about 64,000 townlands in Ireland. If you live in rural Ireland you usually say you are from ‘x’ townland in county ‘x’. Of course, to make matters confusing, townlands can share the same name as a church or civil parish. Many counties also have two or three townlands with the same name.
Local government authorities (county councils) have online digital mapping features where you can see the exact location and size of all townlands in each county. Here are the links for Kilkenny and Laois, the two counties with the highest frequency of names.
Hey now that’s actually pretty cool!