Lesson 8 - Irish Records


Irish Records

Northern Ireland Records

Most will have heard that many records were destroyed during the “troubles” in 1922. While this is true GRONI (Government Record Office of Northern Ireland) and PRONI (Public Record of Northern Ireland) have tried to replace and reconstruct these records where possible.

This link will take you to a page with further links to GRONI, PRONI [1901 & 1911 census], National Archives and the National Library, plus more.

The 1901 and 1911 census is free to search and to view the results. You can also search partial census’ 1831-1851.


Go to the page and enter your search terms.







You will get a result screen like this:







Tick the box to Show all information. You will get more information to the right.
Click on any name you are interested in. I’m using James McMinn aged 67.



Selecting Show all information will again give you more information to the right. However if you click on view census images….Household Return (Form A) you can view the actual record.



Use the same method for the 1911 census.


Birth, Death & Marriages.


Did you know that all BDM’s were administered by the General Registry Ireland? From 1864 to 1922 for Northern Ireland and 1864 to current for Eire. There is a link from the above link page.



Recommend you take some time and explore the above site.

The Ulster Historical Foundation https://www.ancestryireland.com/
Mainly covers the counties of Antrim and Down.
Has a free searchable database for BDM’s in Ulster but you have to pay-to-view the results. Mainly covers Antrim and Down.
  
Pre-1864 you will need to use Parish Records. Unfortunately, a lot of Churches were not filmed by the LDS. You may need to hire a researcher to view the actual registers (or plan a trip and do it yourself LOL).
[The LDS will be ceasing their film service from September 2017]. So even if your parish was filmed, you won’t be able to access it.


There is a blog/article about Irish Parish Registers here:

More information on Presbyterian records can be found here:

Church of Ireland, Parish Register information:

Irish Catholic Parish Registers can be browsed for free here:

The RC records are only browseable so you need to know what county and parish your family came from.

There are various Family History Groups for Ireland and Facebook pages. Just type “family history group Ireland” into Google and find one for your area of interest.
The last section, Irish Catholic Parish Records, was compiled by Tracey Evans.
Thanks, Tracey.

  
IRISH CATHOLIC PARISH RECORDS

The Registers are available online for these records at :-

The only way that they are searchable by index is on Ancestry.uk  or Find My Past. 

I have to say though that not all are listed there – I have found a few of mine manually searching that were on no index at all.  Which is time consuming – however depends on how desperately you want the document J.

To search the Parish records at the NLI (National Library of Ireland), you have to do so manually.  Which means that you need to know the County and place that your ancestor was born, married or died. 



You can either start to enter the Parish (and suggestions will come up) or alternative you can search the map





Not all records are available – there are some that just no longer exists. 

Below is an example from Donegal – Parish of Tullaghobegley West – as you can see it only has records for Baptisms 1868 -1881. 





The dates available and type of records vary – unfortunately it is a case of having a look to see what is there.  Some records will be from late 1700’s to mid 1800’s, others won’t start until mid 1800’s.
1880 is about the cut-off point for these records.



When you click on the record it will take you to this page.  Select the Event and the Year that you want then click Apply.





It is worth noting here that some of the records will be written in Latin – so therefore whilst searching through you may not recognise a first name – for example Patricius is Patrick,   So you will need to search carefully.

Below is an example from 1881 for the above parish – notice that the columns are in Latin:-



So the first entry would be:-
Bridget                 COLL      6              December           Patricius COLL                   
                                                                                                Sara COLL
Translation:- 







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