It’s fair to say that no one in my family was surprised to hear that, at precisely 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, 18 April 2026, I was sitting with my laptop open, ready to dive into the newly released 1926 Census records the very moment they became available. And I was not disappointed. It was quite emotional to see my late parents’ names printed on a census return for the first time—my Mam, aged 1 year and 11 months; my Dad, aged 5—his father, it seems, wasn’t inclined to note the actual months. I spent nearly two hours browsing that first night!
On Sunday I began exploring the returns from the Lucan District Electoral Division, which has 28 townlands—many of whose names are now familiar thanks to the area’s rapid housing growth. Imagine this, in 1926, only 23 people lived in Adamstown and just 52 in Laraghcon. Main Street had the largest number of people, 391 (or 83 families in 77 houses), while eight other townlands had over 100 people living in each of them. Weir View had 25 families living in the 23 houses, 106 people in total. Of these, 58 were under 30 years old and 65 were single. One interesting occupation of a young woman in Weir View was a model in the School of Art.
The following is the Population Pyramid by Age and Sex from the National Archives website.
While studying the returns, I looked into two people listed as the oldest residents on Main Street. Unfortunately, some transcription errors had crept in—a man shown as aged 99 turned out to be a 22‑year‑old clerical student, while the woman recorded as 99 was actually 79, living with her sister‑in‑law of the same age.
The person who impressed me most was Annie Freeman (née Clarke), wife of William Henry Freeman, a foreman in the flour mills. Over 31 years of marriage, she had twelve children—eight of whom appeared on the 1926 return. The youngest, Arthur, was a 9-year-old schoolboy while Frederick, aged 26, also worked for the Shackletons. Two other sons were employed as an electrician and a dairy engineer apprentice, and a daughter was working in the Co‑Op Stores.
After tracing some of their birth and death records on irishgenealogy.ie, I began searching for Annie’s ‘missing’ four children. Fortunately, I found a family tree on the Ancestry website (managed by an American researcher) which listed of four additional daughters. Annie and Nora both appeared on the census return from the hospital where they both worked as nurses. Winifred married Alfred Beehan in 1923 and she was living in Lucan Demesne townland with her husband, a painter, and a young son. I could not locate a 1926 record—or any marriage or death record—for Helen, who was born in 1907. Annie died at Mill House in 1942, aged 71. The family later moved to 6 Fair View, Lucan, where her husband passed away in 1948.
The 1926 Census was the first in Ireland to use bilingual forms—printed in both Irish and English—though it wasn’t the first time responses had appeared in Irish. In Lucan, there were 199 Irish speakers. One return was from a 62‑year‑old retired schoolteacher, from Valentia Island, Co. Kerry, living with his wife (born in Michigan) and his sister‑in‑law, from Bere Island. All three indicated that they were native Irish speakers who also spoke English. Ten years later, his 1936 death record shows that the family had moved across the city.
Two features I especially appreciate in these returns are the inclusion of the address—placed vertically on the front of Form A—and the detailed information about employers, which reveals much about local life and industry.
If you’d like to explore your own family’s return, in a friendly group, you’re welcome to join one of the Thursday sessions in the St. Mary’s Parish Bungalow, after daily Mass. To book a place, please email mjneleven@gmail.com.
Mary Jackson
21 April 2026
[Search the 1926 Census here: https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/search-the-1926-census/ ]
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