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County
Laois, Laoise, Leix or Queen’s County, Ireland,
Laois
is 34 miles long at its longest point and 30 miles wide at its greatest
width. Within the county there are or were approximately 55 or 56
civil parishes (depending on which reference you use and the time
frame), 28 Roman Catholic parishes, and Grenham lists seven Church
of Ireland parishes. There are and were other religions in the county,
but I have no figures for the number of circuits or meeting houses
for any of these. Some of these civil parishes really belong to
another county, but a townland or two within the parish occurs in
County Laois. The same goes for religious parishes, some of them
which we would associate with another county take in a few townlands
in Laois, and again, with civil registration districts, some of
them take in some townlands in Laois but the vast majority of the
townlands lie in another county.
So,
if you have ancestors supposedly from any of the areas on the County
Laois borders, don’t ignore records from those counties.
The
percentage of the population of various religions from 1861-1911
varied, Roman Catholics (1861, 88.3% - 1911, 88.74%) ; Church of
Ireland (1861, 10.7% - 1911, 9.71%) ; Methodists (1861, 0.5% - 1911,
0.68%) ; Presbyterian (1861, 0.3% - 1911, 0.62%) with other religions
combined (1861, 0.3% - 1911, 0.52%).
The
total population of the county in 1821 was 134,275, in 1841 before
the Great Famine it had reached 153,930 and in 1861 this had dropped
to 90,650, with a further fall by 1926 to 51,540.
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