The frustration of 19th century census information

This summer I wrote here about finding two of my ancestors, Thomas Doherty and Joshuah Doherty in a transcribed 1831 census for Camnish, which is near Dungiven.

Recently, many new Irish record sets have been released through Find My Past and the National Archives of Ireland. I decided today to explore some of these new records, and found more 1831 Dungiven census records. How exciting!

I found a James Doherty. in whose Roman Catholic household seven people lived. Hmmmm. Some of my ancestors? Perhaps. More research is needed.

But I also found three households whose head was Widow Doherty -- here are two of them. In all three cases, the households are Roman Catholic. One household had six people living there, while the other household had nine people. And the household head warrants only "Widow" and not a given name.

Right religion, right place, but lacking given names.

This information gap isn't limited to Irish records, but these records today set a new record in frustration for me. Sometimes genealogy research is full of frustration.

The never ending story continues....