King: County Kerry Past and Present

	King, Jeremiah. County Kerry past and present: A handbook to the local and family history of the county. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1931.
	Size: 38.8M bytesModified: 6 May 2009, 17:12

Title Page

King, Jeremiah. County Kerry past and present: A handbook to the local and family history of the county. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1931.

Title Page

King, Jeremiah. County Kerry past and present: A handbook to the local and family history of the county. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., 1931.

Enlarge image

County Kerry Past and Present: A Handbook to the Local and Family History of the County by Jeremiah King was published in 1931 after his death. It is an invaluable source for researchers of family history and local history in Co. Kerry.

Over 350 pages with topics and subjects arranged alphabetically, it gives a thorough and comprehensive history of the locality in fascinating detail. Throughout his life King consistently noted a huge variety of local curiosities, antiquities, customs, anecdotes, oral history, census records, Griffth's Valuation records, various published histories of the county, manuscripts, folklore and much more.

He provides details on the origin of placenames and townland names, acreages, surnames of prominent families often with a full geneaology and descriptions of famous individuals and their exploits. He backs up his information with sources many of which are obscure and difficult to locate decades later.

King's work preserves and makes available for future generations a fountain of historical information which is still used by local historians and researchers in the 21st century. It is the nature of local history that it is often neglected and valuable knowledge is lost forever when individuals pass on and that incomplete sources and records leave significant frustrating gaps.

Previous - Crane: Kerry