If a surname is missing from a county table, does that prove no families lived there?
No. Matheson's county tables list only the leading names in each county in 1890, the names principally found there. A surname missing from a county table was present in numbers too small to make that county's list, or was returned under a variant spelling that the table groups elsewhere. Families also lived in counties where their name was never numerous: a single household leaves no mark on a table of leaders. Treat absence as no evidence either way. The better check is the surname's own page, which shows its heartland and well represented counties, followed by the census and civil records for the county in question, which name actual households.
Useful pages: The Irish surnames map · Trace your Irish roots · The 1926 Census guide · Coming home · Irish around the world · Plan your journey
Sources
- R. E. Matheson, Special Report on Surnames in Ireland; Patrick Woulfe, Irish Names and Surnames (1923)
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