What Irish genealogy records are online?



  • General Register Office records

    • IrishGenealogy.ie has a freely searchable online version of the GRO's own digital index up to 100 years ago for births, 75 years ago for marriages and 50 years ago for deaths. There are full images of all these birth records, the marriage records starting in 1845 and deaths in 1871. Wonderful.
      Unlike the FamilySearch copy (see below), these birth indexes show the mother's maiden name from about 1900 and marriage records include both parties' names from the start.
    • FamilySearch: The Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) website includes a partial transcript of Irish birth records 1864-1881, as well as a complete transcript of their microflims of GRO indexes up to 1922 (all-Ireland) and 1958 (Republic of Ireland). Ancestry and FindMyPast.ie each a copy of both.
    • Eleven of the heritage centres whose records are at Rootsireland (€) have transcribed at least some local Superintendent Registrar's registers, usually up to 1921. Some areas (e.g. Donegal) are complete.
    • All historic GRO records within the six counties now part of Northern Ireland (births to 1921, marriages to 1946, deaths to 1971) are searchable online at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk (€).
    • Assorted: Various individuals and organisations have transcribed records covering their area of interest.
    • See also the overview at the Irish Family History Centre.

  • Census records

  • Church records

    • IrishGenealogy.ie has images and transcripts of Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland records for Carlow, Cork, Dublin city and Kerry.
    • Ancestry.com (€) transcribed 46 Roman Catholic parishes from National Library microfilm records, mainly in the diocese of Meath, (2013).
    • Ancestry.com (€) also has fresh record images and transcripts of 71 other Roman Catholic parishes (2014).
    • Registers.nli.ie is the National Library of Ireland's online Catholic parish register microfilm site. All the records are untranscribed and almost all end in 1880 or before.
    • Approximately 85% of Roman Catholic records before 1900, 60% (?) of Church of Ireland records and an increasing proportion of Presbyterian and other denomination records are transcribed at rootsireland.ie (€).
    • Ancestry.com (€) and Findmypast.ie (€) have collaborated to make a full transcript of the Registers.nli.ie Catholic parish register microfilms. The copy at FindMyPast is free.
    • The Representative Church Body Library has records of twenty-six Church of Ireland parishes available for download at the Anglican Record Project
    • Assorted: Various individuals and organisations have transcribed church registers covering their area of interest.
    • FindMyPast has a complete set of the records of the Dublin Quaker Library.

  • Property records

  • Wills

    • The National Archives of Ireland has a complete, searchable set of Will Calendars 1858-1920.
    • Post-1858 District Will books to 1900 are also online, along with most surviving pre-1858 will books. FindMyPast has a free, better-organised version.
    • The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland website has the Calendars of Wills and Administrations for areas now in Northern Ireland from 1858 to 1965. Early records are linked to images of the surviving pre-1922 transcripts of full wills for Armagh, Belfast or Londonderry district registries.
    • The National Archives of Ireland has images of its will calendars from 1922 to 1982
    • PRONI's "Name Search" includes its pre-1858 wills indexes
    • Findmypast.ie (€) has a copy of the National Archives of Ireland card index to wills Findmypast.ie also has a large collection of printed pre-1858 wills indexes.
    • The NAI card index is also imaged on LDS digitised microfilm, free on FamilySearch
    • Assorted: Various individuals and organisations have transcribed will indexes covering their area of interest.
    • The Irish Manuscripts Commission has an online copy of the three-wolume Abstracts of Wills from the Registry of Deeds, 1703-1832.

  • Emigration

    • Ellis Island has arrivals records for the port of New York from 1897.
    • Castle Garden has arrivals records for the port of New York from 1830.
    • The U.S National Archives has a database of Irish Famine immigrants to New York, 1846-51.
    • The Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild includes a vast range of passenger lists.
    • Ancestry (€) has a large collection of passenger lists. A good guide is at genealogybranches.com.
    • Steve Morse provides excellent one-step free searches for the main online U.S. records.
    • Boston College has a searchable database (1831 to 1921) of Boston Pilot advertisements from people looking for "lost" friends and relatives who had emigrated from Ireland.
    • FamilySearch has New England Petitions for Naturalization, 1787-1931.

  • Newspapers

    • The Irish Times (€) has a relatively complete archive from 1859.
    • Irish Newspaper archives (€) has the Freemans' Journal from 1763, The Irish Independent from 1905, The Irish Press from 1931 to 1995, and many twentieth-century provincial papers.
    • Biographical information from the Belfast News-letter is extracted from 1737 to 1800.
    • The British Newspaper Archive (€) has the largest single collection of nineteenth-century Irish newspapers, taken from the British Library collection.

  • Directories

  • Occupational

    • FindMyPast.co.uk (€) has excellent British Army service records.
    • Ancestry.co.uk (€) has World War One service records.
    • Royal Navy ratings' service records 1853-1923 (€) are on the UK National Archives site.
    • Fold3 has good British Army records as well as a superb collection of US Civil War pension applications, giving extensive family details in the US and back in Ireland.
    • FindMyPast.ie (€) has the Royal Irish Constabulary service registers, along with RIC pension records and other related material.
    • Irish Prison registers and Petty Session Court records are available at Findmypast.ie. (€)
    • The Irish Manuscripts Commission has King's Inns Admission Papers 1607-1867, giving family details of solicitors and barristers to 1867.
    • Coastguards

  • Graveyards

    • Glasnevin cemetery (€) has more than 1.5 million burial records for the greater Dublin area starting in 1828.
    • Dublin City Library and Archives has a complete guide to graveyards and their records in the Dublin area, as well as the burial registers for Clontarf, Drimnagh and Finglas cemeteries.
    • FindMyPast (€) has the Cantwell gravestone transcripts for Wicklow, Wexford and much of Atlantic Galway and Mayo.
    • HistoricGraves has records of more than 400 graveyards, mainly in Munster. Not all have headstone transcripts.
    • History from headstones has the UHF gravestone transcripts for the six counties of Northern Ireland.
    • Discover Ever After is based in Northern Ireland and provides a cemetery records management system to churches and local authorities including, in most cases, on-line headstone transcripts and cemetery maps. So far they have worked mainly in Ulster, also covering some cemeteries in north Connacht and north Leinster.
    • Clare County Library has transcriptions from more than 120 graveyards in the county.
    • Limerick City Archives has the burial registers of Mount St. Lawrence and Mount St. Oliver
    • Limerick's Life has photos and transcripts of headstones from old graveyards in Limerick city.
    • Skibbereen Heritage Centre has photos and transcripts of headstones from 11 graveyards in the west Cork area.
    • Kerry Local Authority burials includes the burial records of 140 Kerry Local Authority Cemeteries.
    • Belfast city burials, (€) about 360,000 records from 1869 are available on the Belfast City Council website.
    • Cork Archives has burial records for a number of cemeteries in the Cork city area.
    • Waterford Libraries has burial records for five Co. Waterford cemeteries.
    • Galway archives has burial registers for a large number of Galway cemeteries.
    • Buried in Fingal has burial registers from 32 cemeteries in what was north Co. Dublin.

  • Other

    • Eighty-seven Genealogical Office manuscripts online. More detail here and here.

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