The National Archives of Ireland (NAI) recorded 20 million hits to its website following the release of the first census of the Irish Free State in 1926 on Saturday.
NAI director Orlaith McBride said the service has been “overwhelmed by the response” to the release.
Over the course of the first two days of the release, there were one million individual site visits.
The 1926 individual census returns have been made searchable online for the first time, with the data detailing the ages, occupations, religions and genders of citizens in the then newly established Irish Free State.
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In addition, the website recorded one million downloads over the weekend. Traffic to the site is coming predominantly from Ireland followed by the UK, the US, Australia and Canada, respectively.
“It’s been so positive. People have waited so long for it,” McBride said. “People have been very moved and touched. Many people have contacted me saying how emotional they were when they found their family returns.”
From Friday, April 17th, to Monday, April 20th, Google search terms “census”, “1926″ and “census 1926″ spiked by 120 per cent according to the search engine’s own Google Trends data.
“There will always be a spike in the first weekend,” said McBride. “Thankfully we had anticipated it from an infrastructure perspective. We built that scaleability into the system to ensure it could cope with the level of traffic.”
Search functions on the website are released on a phased basis, according to the NAI director, with an upcoming table feature due to be introduced. “Over the next number of months we are developing a table builder as part of the next phase.
“Say if you were really interested in looking at people under the occupations of teacher, you could see how many Church of Ireland teachers lived along the Border in 1926, for example.”
She also encourages members of the public to contact the archives if they have noticed any mistakes in the uploading of the census records.
“There are 35 million pieces of data relating to three million people. It [is] a huge amount of data so people are coming back really helpfully and saying ‘Oh there’s an error there, can you fix that’, so we will fix it.”
Brendan Murphy, senior statistician in the census division at the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said that although it is “early days”, the response to the release of the 1926 census data has been “really positive so far”.
“From talking to people there is definitely a real buzz around. Seeing the old records for the first time and having a think back to how much things have changed in the last 100 years, it’s fascinating,” Murphy said.
The details which stood out to the statistician were the size and profile of the population at that time.
“It’s the first census in the Free State, with 2.97 million people. It was a time when the population was in decline. When we look at population we look at this thing called population pyramids, which looks at the age profile of the population. The 1926 population is the shape you’d get in a developing country where you would have a lot of young children and fewer older people,” Murphy said.
“That’s obviously completely changed now. We have much more older people in the 2022 census.″
Other differences Murphy noticed was the absence of diversity in the population.
“We had a much more homogenous population. Over half the people at work were working in agricultural occupations. It completely dominated the labour market at the time. Ninety-seven per cent of people were born here, and 93 per cent were Roman Catholic.”
The 1926 census data release inspired Murphy to look at his own family history. “I had a look back and I was able to find my four grandparents. Interestingly enough, two of them were from farming families, 50 per cent. It was exactly aligned with the national figures of 50 per cent of the population having a farming background. I loved the link up between the two farming families and the rest of the population.”
[ Census 1926 released: What can you find out about your family?Opens in new window ]
