Finding memorials when you only have the number
Purpose
The purpose of this page is to provide strategies to finding a memorial in the memorial books when you only have the memorial number.
Background
Sometimes you get a reference to a memorial that only gives the memorial. This may arise if the (land or grantors) index is missing the volume and page numbers or the volume in the index is incorrect.
Some tools that may help
The first 209 memorials were all copied into Book 1. After that there were always more than one transcription book and presumably clerk doing the copying. Thus there are always gaps in the memorial books. If we know a memorial in in a particular book we can do a binary search and find it quite quickly. See this guide. From 1833 the memorials again sequential in each volume. Thus, the problem only exists for memorials registered between 8 December 1708 and 31 December 1832. All memorials in some of the early volumes have been indexed completely so there are very few gaps in the early memorial numbers.
The question boils down to, which book is the memorial of interets in. I have set up a couple tools that help with this question.
The first is the next 25 memorials tool accessible through the Browse menu. It will privide links to all 25 memorials starting with the number entered in the form. It will show the jumping around of the volumes used for the returned memorials. It will also give you an idea of how big the gaps in the index are around the memorial of interest.
The second tool that might be used is the "Summary by volume" also appearing in the same submenu. It provides a link to all volumes with at least one memorial indexed. The links also provide information on the largest and smallest memorial numbers indexed in the volume. Together with the earliest and latest year of the indexed memorials.
Both these tools give indications to which memorial volume the memorial may be found in. This approach is not guaranteed to get the answer you want as is shown by this story. All is not lost, however, as the original memorial will still be in the basement of the Registry of Deeds and can be consulted if in Dublin or a copy ordered from at a price.
Further, to the above one of our wonderful volunteers, Don C, points out that Starting from book 678 (April 1814) Memorial 466736 the memorials fill the books sequentially, they were only using one book at a time. So it's very easy to find the volume from that point on. This means the problem is much simpler from April 1814 on.
Moreover, Starting from book 703 they stopped using actual page numbers, after that, the "page number" is actually the order of the memorial within that book; it is (memorial id) minus (id of first memorial in that book) plus 1. The numbering approach for 1833 onward seems to be a combination of the two previous ones.
Books from 475 to 500 (id of #298000 or higher, starting about 1790) seem to have been filled in at a chaotic time at the land deeds office, all those books were active at the same time, and were not filled systematically. For example Book 495 was started long after book 499. They made many mistakes during this time period. Sometimes no book and page are given. For memorial ids from 290000 to 400000 memorials without book and pages numbers appear not to have been entered in the memorial books at all. (Of course it's possible that one of those chaotic books has all the missing memorials; that'd be a major discovery if true).
For memorials after 1805, there do not seem to be any cases where the memorial was missing from the transcription books.