Since 1994 I have been talking to relatives, delving through the resources in the Irish National Library, Irish National Archives and, more recently, searching the internet. The result of this research is presented on the following pages.
What prompted my interest in family history is the comparitive rarity of my surname: Bruton. In the 1990 US census, Bruton is the 4136th most common surname (Source: Entisoft). In Ireland, it was the 81st most common name in 1891, based on nine births that year - eight in Dublin, one in Galway.
According to McLysaght, Bruton is an English toponymic, deriving from an English placename. The town of Bruton in Somerset is a possible candidate. Another interesting location, though with no family connections, is the parish of Bruton in Williamsburg Virginia.
As I delve more deeply there are of course many more surnames in my family tree. Most are Irish names, some English and a few have French origins. See my father's family names and my mother's family names for more detailed information.
The information I gleaned from the baptism and marriage records in the National Library and National Archives is invaluable in piecing together a family tree. Occasionally there are missing pages and names are sometimes spelt differently, especially farther back in the early 19th century. The ages quoted on census forms are notoriously innacurate for adults and are often underestimated by 10-15 years. Records are stored chronologically and an index is rare. One notable exception to this is the index of baptisms and marriages drawn up between 1890 and 1894 by James Murphy for the Parish of St. Pauls arran Quay in Dublin. I am indebted to this man for the work he did.
Despite the difficulties and inaccuracies in the records, I found it possible to draw up a reasonably accurate family tree back to the middle of the nineteenth century. I have also drawn up a family history for both my father's and my mother's families.
The family tree data is presented in two different formats. The HTML format displays a list of all the people in the family on the left-hand-side. Click on any of the underlined terms in this list and the right hand side will scroll to show the information.
The display on the right is a table with a layout of a family. The parents are on the top row and the children are layed out beneath. Note that there are underlined links in this table also, allowing you navigate to a person's parents, children and spouse. Click here to see the HTML display.
The second format is a Java(TM) applet which will fill the whole screen with a picture of the complete family tree. This is useful for getting an overview of the interrelationship between people. To move through this tree, use the left hand scrollbar to change the magnification and the right hand and bottom scrollbars to pan across the image. You can also click and drag the mouse on the image to pan around. Click here to see a java applet suitable for 640x480 display, or here to see a version suitable for a 1024x768 display. The Java applet is best displayed in a high resolution.
Relevant Links: Peter Bruton's genealogy page