Irish ancestry: The best websites<\/h2>1. Irish Genealogy<\/a><\/h3>The best place to start with tracing your Irish ancestry is searching Irish Genealogy, where you can view Irish civil records<\/a> for free. At present there are indexes to births (1864\u20131922), marriages (1845\u20131947) and deaths (1871-1972). There are also some church records, including both Catholic and Church of Ireland registers from County Carlow, Cork and Ross, Dublin and County Kerry.<\/p>2. National Archives of Ireland<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2021\/10\/Screenshot-2022-03-17-at-08.12.11-907979d.png\")
<\/figure>The National Archives of Ireland’s genealogy portal is one of the key websites for tracing Irish ancestry. It offers free access to the surviving census<\/a> fragments from 1901\/1911, as well as substitute sources. You can search raw census data, then view PDF copies of the original documents. Other important collections available free of charge include tithe applotment books<\/a> (1823\u20131837), soldiers\u2019 wills (1914\u20131918), diocesan and prerogative marriage licence bonds indexes (1623\u20131866), shipping agreements and crew lists (1863\u20131921), and Irish wills<\/a>. The site also offers insights into life in 20th century Ireland divided into areas and then chapters on topics such as ‘Sporting and cultural life’ or ‘Poverty and health’ with accompanying images from the archives.<\/p>3. National Library of Ireland<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2020\/05\/NLI-7f3ee2f.jpg?w=800\")
<\/figure>This image-only Irish ancestry service enables you to browse digitised microfilms of Catholic parish registers covering most parishes across the island of Ireland up to 1880. Just enter the name of a specific parish in the search box, or choose between \u2018Show Counties\u2019 and \u2018Show Dioceses\u2019 on the map then drill down to a particular parish, before accessing tens or even hundreds of images of specific microfilms. This can be time-consuming if you\u2019re unsure of the details, so you may need to seek out an index first. There are indexes available on Findmypast<\/a> and Ancestry<\/a>. The National Library of Ireland parent website<\/a> has lots of guidance and research tools, and you can browse some highlights here<\/a>.<\/p>4. Irish Ancestors<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-12-17-at-10.06.06-854cf32.png\")
<\/figure>Try a simple surname<\/a> search on this website from Irish ancestry expert John Grenham and you are presented with a map showing numbers and locations of households in the 1850s, as well as heads of households in the 1901<\/a> and 1911 census<\/a>. Alternatively, you can use interactive maps to drill down by county and then parish to various types of information, linking to external sources.<\/p>5. Irish War Memorials<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-12-17-at-10.07.52-b32e45d.png\")
<\/figure>If your Irish ancestors were killed while serving in the army, here you can explore a growing database of cross-conflict memorials in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland<\/a>. They also include memorials from the First World War<\/a> and (for Northern Ireland) the Second World War<\/a>. Each memorial is accompanied by details of its exact location and images, from where you can either search the names recorded, or download a PDF containing a full transcription. The website covers all kinds of memorials, from free-standing monuments such as crosses, obelisks and statues, to plaques and even paper records if they are on display, making it extremely useful even though graves are not included.<\/p>6. Expert\u2019s choice: RootsIreland<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>![\"Irish](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2020\/05\/Screenshot-2020-12-17-at-10.11.10-845946d.png\")
<\/figure>Chosen by John Grenham, author of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, 5th Edition<\/em><\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>“RootsIreland is the website of the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), the umbrella body for Irish ancestry centres that began transcribing parish registers back in the 1980s. These two factors \u2013 the IFHF\u2019s highly decentralised structure and the organisation\u2019s origins before the start of the web \u2013 have both left their mark.<\/p>
“On the positive side, RootsIreland\u2019s transcripts of church registers come from the original records held locally, not the very poor microfilms used by Ancestry and Findmypast. That head start makes them orders of magnitude more accurate, even allowing for sometimes dodgy transcription. The site\u2019s surname variants listing is also much better, tailored to the mind-bending weirdness of Irish surnames. And its search interface (once you get down to county level) is spectacularly flexible, allowing you to base Irish ancestry research on anything that appears in state or church birth, marriage and death records including godparents, witnesses, place names and mother\u2019s forename. Many of the website\u2019s transcripts are also much later than those available elsewhere, in some cases reaching well into the 1920s.<\/p>
“On the negative side, the site remains transcript-only, far off the now gold-standard transcript-with-image. The local centres\u2019 independence of each other has also left coverage of some areas patchy. In addition, the site is not good at listing what\u2019s missing. Membership is also expensive, currently costing \u00a3198 for a year (or \u00a313 for a day). But as long as you use it carefully, it\u2019s the only absolutely essential Irish ancestry site.”<\/p>
Irish ancestry: More websites<\/h3>7. DIPPAM<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>Many of our Irish ancestors emigrated to Britain, the USA, Canada<\/a>, Australia<\/a> and many other destinations in search of a better life. The website Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration (DIPPAM) includes an \u2018Irish Emigration Database\u2019 and the oral archive and database \u2018Voices of Migration and Return\u2019.<\/p>8. Emerald Ancestors<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>This commercial Irish ancestry website boasts over 1.5 million genealogy records for Northern Ireland. Emerald Ancestors also has a useful tool that you can use to identify individual townlands.<\/p>
9. Griffith\u2019s Valuation<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>Griffith\u2019s Valuation<\/a> was compiled between 1848 and 1864 to determine liability for paying rates to support the poor and destitute within each of Ireland\u2019s Poor Law<\/a> unions. It\u2019s the closest thing to a census available for 19th century Ireland, with detailed information about where our ancestors lived.<\/p>10. IMC Digital Editions<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>Explore the results of the Irish Manuscripts Commission\u2019s digitisation programme.<\/p>
11. Irish Family History Society<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>This Irish ancestry group was formed in 1984.<\/p>
12. Military Archives<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>This is another good resource for tracing Irish ancestors who served in the army. It\u2019s the official home of the records of the Department of Defence, the Defence Forces and the Army Pensions Board.<\/p>
13. PRONI<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>The website of the official repository the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has all sorts of valuable free search tools including directories, cemetery records and tithes.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Scott Published: Wednesday, 08 November 2023 at 09:23 AM Traditionally, Irish ancestry research was described as difficult because the Public Record Office of Ireland in Dublin was destroyed in a fire during the Irish Civil War and hundreds of years of Irish records were lost. Fortunately, the Beyond 2022 project has now launched, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":28919,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-scaled.jpg",2560,1698,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-300x199.jpg",300,199,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-768x510.jpg",768,510,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-1024x679.jpg",800,530,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-1536x1019.jpg",1536,1019,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-2048x1359.jpg",2048,1359,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jonathan Scott Published: Wednesday, 08 November 2023 at 09:23 AM Traditionally, Irish ancestry research was described as difficult because the Public Record Office of Ireland in Dublin was destroyed in a fire during the Irish Civil War and hundreds of years of Irish records were lost. Fortunately, the Beyond 2022 project has now launched,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/28918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The best place to start with tracing your Irish ancestry is searching Irish Genealogy, where you can view Irish civil records<\/a> for free. At present there are indexes to births (1864\u20131922), marriages (1845\u20131947) and deaths (1871-1972). There are also some church records, including both Catholic and Church of Ireland registers from County Carlow, Cork and Ross, Dublin and County Kerry.<\/p> The National Archives of Ireland’s genealogy portal is one of the key websites for tracing Irish ancestry. It offers free access to the surviving census<\/a> fragments from 1901\/1911, as well as substitute sources. You can search raw census data, then view PDF copies of the original documents. Other important collections available free of charge include tithe applotment books<\/a> (1823\u20131837), soldiers\u2019 wills (1914\u20131918), diocesan and prerogative marriage licence bonds indexes (1623\u20131866), shipping agreements and crew lists (1863\u20131921), and Irish wills<\/a>. The site also offers insights into life in 20th century Ireland divided into areas and then chapters on topics such as ‘Sporting and cultural life’ or ‘Poverty and health’ with accompanying images from the archives.<\/p> This image-only Irish ancestry service enables you to browse digitised microfilms of Catholic parish registers covering most parishes across the island of Ireland up to 1880. Just enter the name of a specific parish in the search box, or choose between \u2018Show Counties\u2019 and \u2018Show Dioceses\u2019 on the map then drill down to a particular parish, before accessing tens or even hundreds of images of specific microfilms. This can be time-consuming if you\u2019re unsure of the details, so you may need to seek out an index first. There are indexes available on Findmypast<\/a> and Ancestry<\/a>. The National Library of Ireland parent website<\/a> has lots of guidance and research tools, and you can browse some highlights here<\/a>.<\/p> Try a simple surname<\/a> search on this website from Irish ancestry expert John Grenham and you are presented with a map showing numbers and locations of households in the 1850s, as well as heads of households in the 1901<\/a> and 1911 census<\/a>. Alternatively, you can use interactive maps to drill down by county and then parish to various types of information, linking to external sources.<\/p> If your Irish ancestors were killed while serving in the army, here you can explore a growing database of cross-conflict memorials in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland<\/a>. They also include memorials from the First World War<\/a> and (for Northern Ireland) the Second World War<\/a>. Each memorial is accompanied by details of its exact location and images, from where you can either search the names recorded, or download a PDF containing a full transcription. The website covers all kinds of memorials, from free-standing monuments such as crosses, obelisks and statues, to plaques and even paper records if they are on display, making it extremely useful even though graves are not included.<\/p> Chosen by John Grenham, author of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, 5th Edition<\/em><\/a>:<\/strong><\/p> “RootsIreland is the website of the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), the umbrella body for Irish ancestry centres that began transcribing parish registers back in the 1980s. These two factors \u2013 the IFHF\u2019s highly decentralised structure and the organisation\u2019s origins before the start of the web \u2013 have both left their mark.<\/p> “On the positive side, RootsIreland\u2019s transcripts of church registers come from the original records held locally, not the very poor microfilms used by Ancestry and Findmypast. That head start makes them orders of magnitude more accurate, even allowing for sometimes dodgy transcription. The site\u2019s surname variants listing is also much better, tailored to the mind-bending weirdness of Irish surnames. And its search interface (once you get down to county level) is spectacularly flexible, allowing you to base Irish ancestry research on anything that appears in state or church birth, marriage and death records including godparents, witnesses, place names and mother\u2019s forename. Many of the website\u2019s transcripts are also much later than those available elsewhere, in some cases reaching well into the 1920s.<\/p> “On the negative side, the site remains transcript-only, far off the now gold-standard transcript-with-image. The local centres\u2019 independence of each other has also left coverage of some areas patchy. In addition, the site is not good at listing what\u2019s missing. Membership is also expensive, currently costing \u00a3198 for a year (or \u00a313 for a day). But as long as you use it carefully, it\u2019s the only absolutely essential Irish ancestry site.”<\/p> Many of our Irish ancestors emigrated to Britain, the USA, Canada<\/a>, Australia<\/a> and many other destinations in search of a better life. The website Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration (DIPPAM) includes an \u2018Irish Emigration Database\u2019 and the oral archive and database \u2018Voices of Migration and Return\u2019.<\/p> This commercial Irish ancestry website boasts over 1.5 million genealogy records for Northern Ireland. Emerald Ancestors also has a useful tool that you can use to identify individual townlands.<\/p> Griffith\u2019s Valuation<\/a> was compiled between 1848 and 1864 to determine liability for paying rates to support the poor and destitute within each of Ireland\u2019s Poor Law<\/a> unions. It\u2019s the closest thing to a census available for 19th century Ireland, with detailed information about where our ancestors lived.<\/p> Explore the results of the Irish Manuscripts Commission\u2019s digitisation programme.<\/p> This Irish ancestry group was formed in 1984.<\/p> This is another good resource for tracing Irish ancestors who served in the army. It\u2019s the official home of the records of the Department of Defence, the Defence Forces and the Army Pensions Board.<\/p> The website of the official repository the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has all sorts of valuable free search tools including directories, cemetery records and tithes.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Jonathan Scott Published: Wednesday, 08 November 2023 at 09:23 AM Traditionally, Irish ancestry research was described as difficult because the Public Record Office of Ireland in Dublin was destroyed in a fire during the Irish Civil War and hundreds of years of Irish records were lost. Fortunately, the Beyond 2022 project has now launched, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":28919,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-scaled.jpg",2560,1698,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-300x199.jpg",300,199,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-768x510.jpg",768,510,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-1024x679.jpg",800,530,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-1536x1019.jpg",1536,1019,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/irish-ancestry-how-to-trace-irish-ancestry-2048x1359.jpg",2048,1359,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jonathan Scott Published: Wednesday, 08 November 2023 at 09:23 AM Traditionally, Irish ancestry research was described as difficult because the Public Record Office of Ireland in Dublin was destroyed in a fire during the Irish Civil War and hundreds of years of Irish records were lost. Fortunately, the Beyond 2022 project has now launched,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/28918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. National Archives of Ireland<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>
<\/figure>3. National Library of Ireland<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>
<\/figure>4. Irish Ancestors<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>
<\/figure>5. Irish War Memorials<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>
<\/figure>6. Expert\u2019s choice: RootsIreland<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>
<\/figure>Irish ancestry: More websites<\/h3>
7. DIPPAM<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
8. Emerald Ancestors<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
9. Griffith\u2019s Valuation<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
10. IMC Digital Editions<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
11. Irish Family History Society<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
12. Military Archives<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
13. PRONI<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>
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