Purpose

The purpose of this page is to make more widely available a handout given out at the recent WDYTYA live

Background

The following is based on the talk given by one of the Society's Fellows, Roz McCutcheon, at the Who do You Think You Are Live in February 2012.

Basic sources

Civil Registration: Non-Catholic marriages registered from 1845 & deaths available from 1864. Indexes available at www.familysearch.org

Parish Records: The Irish Government is committed to making all surviving parish records available free online to researchers. Some counties are already online. Check www.irishgenealogy.ie For certificates, apply via www.groireland.ie

Recommended books

• Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, by John Grenham. Published in Dublin: Gill & Macmillan – 4th edition due out
• Irish Records; Sources for Family & Local History, by James G Ryan, Salt Lake City, UT: Ancestry Publishing [sources arranged by county]
• Irish Church Records, edited by James G Ryan [includes details of Presbyterians, Methodists, Jews, Baptists & Huguenots]

Interesting sources

The Irish Genealogical Research Society [IGRS] celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2011. It maintains a valuable library of rare books & unique manuscripts in London. It publishes a substantial Journal plus two newsletters a year & issues an e-bulletin monthly. It also maintains a very active Facebook page See link below.

There is also a members’ section on the website www.igrsoc.org where a rolling programme of material is uploaded, and there is also a members’ discussion forum & look-up service online.

Claire Santry is a member of the IGRS council. She is a journalist, & writes a regular blog on Irish genealogy. Her website is full of useful links: www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/

Quaker Records: The Friends' Historical Library in Dublin has uploaded a comprehensive collection of records of births, marriages and deaths. See www.quakers-in-ireland.org

Newspapers: Vast holdings in both the National Library of Ireland and at the British Newspaper Library in Colindale, London. Many collections of biographical extracts are available at the Irish Genealogical Research Society [IGRS]. Several Irish newspapers were included as part of the British Library 1800-1900 newspaper project where all issues are fully digitised and searchable.

There are several also several sites online:

• www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk This is a ten-year project to scan a variety of national and regional newspapers and place them online. You can search free by subject or by name, but a pay-per-view fee applies to view the actual newspaper page. The quality of the OCR scanning is not good, but hopefully this will improve. At present, for Ireland, the coverage includes:
  • Belfast Newsletter, from 1828
  • Freeman’s Journal, Dublin, from 1820
  • Cork Examiner, from 1841
• A fully searchable digital archive of The Irish Times, from the newspaper's first edition almost 150 years ago up to the present day, is accessible through www.ireland.com/search. Pricing starts at €10 for a 24-hour pass.
• Irish Newspaper Archives has launched a very ambitious and exciting project: the complete digitisation of Ireland’s newspaper heritage. Titles such as the Irish Independent (1905 – current), Sunday Independent, The Freeman’s Journal (1763 – 1924), the Nation and many more of Ireland’s leading regional newspapers will be rendered fully word searchable at www.irishnewspaperarchives.com. The information will be stored and viewed in the exact format of the original newspaper – every page, article, word and picture as it was originally published. Titles already available include: The Irish Independent, The Freemans Journal, The Anglo-Celt, The Leitrim Observer, The Meath Chronicle, The Sunday Independent, The Connaught Telegraph, and The Tuam Herald.

Wills: See the above mentioned recommended books for will sources, and also:

• Betham’s abstracts up to 1800 – available on widely on microfilm
• The IGRS has vast holdings
• www.nationalarchives.ie
• www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives/will_calendars/wills_search
• The Irish Manuscripts Commission is now making available many of its publications for free on the web. Included in those publications uploaded so far include the 3 volumes of Beryl Eustace’s Wills at the Registry of Deeds. See: www.irishmanuscripts.ie/servlet/Controller?action=digitisation_backlist

Census: For a useful guide to what is currently available online see: www.censusfinder.com/ireland.htm

The examples used in this talk were taken from:

• 1821 census: LDS Microfilm 0597736 Co. Offaly: covering Aughincon, Birr, Ettagh, Kilcolman, Kinnitty, Letterluna, Roscrea, Roscumroe, Seirkieran.
• Census fragments, – mainly Co Cork: LDS Microfilm 0101767
• Greene Manuscripts at the Genealogical Office, Dublin, – from LDS Microfilm 0100237

Pension searches: These can be found at: www.ireland-genealogy.com (formerly pensear.org). You can now quickly search through the database of hundreds of thousands of names from the lost Irish census of 1841 and 1851, and even view thumbnails of the records you will purchase. The collection is especially rich for Ulster.

Registry of Deeds: This vast resource in Dublin contains memorials of all deeds of the registered since the Registry was opened in 1708. The coverage is nationwide. Nick Reddan, who founded and hosts this website, reports that we now have over 85,000 index records from 10,643 memorials of deeds. The coverage of the index entries is here: freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~registryofdeeds