30/03/2024
Rail travel in Ireland was not accessible to most people until the mid to late 19th Century, and motor vehicles were still quite rare (less than 1000 in Ireland) in the early 1900s. For rural communities this meant that the coach or cart was the only means of transport for most people, and travel was both time-consuming and expensive. The average coach was capable of about 20 miles travel in one day (unless a change of horses was available along the way), which meant that a trip from anywhere in Ireland to the capital took days.
This is useful information to keep in mind when researching family history - the average Irish family could ill afford to spend time and money on travel, and market days were probably the only rare opportunities most young people had to step outside of their own communities. For this reason, you will find that, unless they were terribly affluent, or their work gave them the opportunity to travel (coach drivers, itinerant labourers, higher ranked household staff of gentry, for example), your ancestors were far more likely to marry their neighbours, and even second or third cousins within their own communities, than someone in another county or at the opposite end of the country.
