This site represents the product of many years’ research, beginning in 1983. The author was unable to trace his own Parke Irish family, because his g-grandfather, John, left Ireland (‘under a cloud’, according to family tradition) and married in Liverpool, England in 1884. He gave little detail of his prior life, but his marriage certificate informs that he was born in Ireland and his father was Charles Parke. Various birth, marriage and death certificates show his surname as Park, Parks, Parke and Parkes. He was present in the 1881 and 1891 UK Census as born in Ireland, but was missing in 1901 and 1911, although his children were present and he was still living.
Because of the difficulty in accessing church records in Ireland at that time (most registers were in the personal possession of the incumbent clergy and very few records were publicly available) and the date range of John’s probable birth (before Civil records began), the author wrote all Parke persons in the Irish telephone directories.
This led, eventually, to correspondence with 4 researchers who were facing similar problems and who provided me vast stores of knowledge that they had accumulated over many decades:
- Dr Shirley Walker (then living in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia: – data from Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo);
- Anstice Parke – now deceased (then living in New Mills, Stockport, Cheshire, England: – data from Leitrim, Sligo);
- Patrick Parkes – now deceased (then living in Corpus Christi, Texas, USA: – data from Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo). Patrick provided extracts of many films and fiches that he had laboriously extracted over many years from the collection held by the LDS church. This information will be referred to as “Deeds etc”;
- William Parke – now deceased (then living in Derrygonnely, Co. Fermanagh, Northern Ireland: – data from Fermanagh, Leitrim, Sligo);
Data interchange and discussion also occurred with several other persons:- Maureen Williams; Susan Kennedy; Valina and Tony Rainer who were researching other families that seemed to belong to the same general group.
This discussion begins with the earliest Park/e/s families that can be deduced from readily accessible (pre-2000) sources, centering on Sligo and Leitrim at the cusp of the 17th and 18th centuries. It will attempt to show how to use various records, especially the Registry of Deeds, in building a credible family tree for the first few generations from that date. The researchers, who are already mentioned during the introduction, have all provided me with detailed trees beginning in the late 17th and early 18th centuries – many with links back to the earliest families.