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Latest Irish Genealogy News
Rolling news for Irish family historians
Irish Genealogy News: March 2025
Newspapers.com, one of Ancestry's sister databases, has added
2.5 million+ pages of Irish newspapers
to its offering. This upload features eight titles that circulated across the island, plus the Evening Herald which covered national news but was predominently a Dublin paper. More titles will join the database soon.
And another St Patrick's Day gift comes from BritishNewspaperArchive, and it's a big one for Irish family historians: Eleven titles have been added to the database, and some 32 others have seen welcome expansions to their existing individual holdings (mostly from the first or second decade of the C20th). You'll find all the details in the BNA's blogpost here. The same changes will be made to FindMyPast's Irish Newspaper Collection.
Ancestry has added Ireland, Quarter Session Licences to Keep Arms, 1832-1836, a collection of transcribed records noting licences granted to 4,700 named individuals (none Catholic), their residences, and the number and type of their weapons eg muskets, blunderbusses, bayonets, pistols and swords.
Ancestry DNA test kits are on sale to researchers in the UK and Ireland until 11:59pm on Sunday 30 March. Find out more on the Special Offers page.
FindMyPast's St Patrick's Day releases are as follow:
Ireland Huguenot Histories: This new collection, exclusive to FindMyPast, tells the story of Ireland's Huguenots - a group of French Protestants who settled in Ireland (among other places) between the 16th and 19th centuries. It is searchable by name and holds 2,578 records.
The Irish cemetery records collection has also been expanded, with 3,600 additions ready for searching.
Also joining the database are the four new newspaper titles that were recently added to the BNA holding. See the last news item. (FindMyPast and the BritishNewspaperArchive are sister companies; they share access to the collection.)
The BritishNewspaperArchive (BNA) has added four new Irish titles to its database. They are: New Ross Reporter, 1897-1901, 1903 and 1907-1910; Clare Champion, 1910-1916; Offaly Independent, 1910-1911; and Zozimos: 1870-1872.
Additionally, the BNA's holding of The Londonderry Standard has been expanded, with editions from 1901, 1903, 1907-1908, 1925 now available.
The BNA now holds more than 90.3million pages of published newspapers, journals and magazines.
RootsIreland.ie is offering a 25% discount on new 12-month subscriptions to its database. Offer ends 31 March. See Special Offers page.
Free DNA unlock: If you have already taken a DNA test with another provider, you can upload the DNA data to MyHeritage for free this week (expires 9 March 2025). Not only will you not be charged the usual
$29 unlock fee per file, you will receive all the company's advanced DNA features free forever.
Women's History Month is being celebrated this March at Ancestry UK with free access to the 1911 and 1921 Censuses of England, Wales, and the Channel Islands; the WW2 Women's Land Army Index cards, the 1939 Register of England and Wales, and the outgoing UK & Ireland Ships’ Passenger Lists 1890-1960. The Free Access ends at 11:59pm on Sunday 9 March 2025. You need to register for a free account if you don't already have one. Find out more here.
Irish Genealogy News: February 2025
The Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS) has added to its exclusive Early Irish Birth, Death & Marriage Indexes collection. Some 2,500 new records have been uploaded, bringing the total number of individuals recorded across the three databases to about 275,000. The collection is the work of volunteers gathering evidence of BMDs drawn from alternative and lesser known historical sources. Access to the marriage index is completely free to all, while the birth and death indexes allow free name searches for non-members.
IrishGenealogy.ie, the state managed database holding indexes of Ireland's civil Birth, Marriage and Death records indexes and, for most years, BMD registration images, has been redesigned. Some of the new features work well. Some do not. These will, hopefully, be ironed out in due course. For a thorough overview of the new site, see this review by Dublin-based professional genealogist Claire Bradley.
We are now awaiting the annual update of another 'rolling year' of registration entries. In the meantime the following records are available, free:
Births:
- Republic of Ireland 1864 to 1923 indexes and images
- Northern Ireland 1864 to 1922 indexes and images
Marriages:
- Republic of Ireland 1845* to 1948 indexes and images
- Northern Ireland 1845* to 1922 indexes and images
Deaths:
- All Ireland 1864 to 1870 indexes only
- Republic of Ireland 1871 to 1973 indexes and images
- Northern Ireland 1871 to 1922 indexes and images
* Only non-Catholic marriages were recorded in the civil registration system from 1845 to 1863. From 1864, all marriages were recorded.
NOTE: Due to data protection rules irishgenealogy.ie provides access only to records of Births over 100 years old, Marriages over 75 years old and Deaths over 50 years old.
New at Ancestry is the Ireland, Police Report Abstracts, 1845-1885 Index. It provides indexed information (no images) from police reports of principal Outrages filed in counties Tipperary, Limerick, Clare, Leitrim and Roscommon. It holds 28,880 records. It includes details of people involved or injured in the crimes, some of which occurred in counties outside the five counties noted above.
Another addition to the Ancestry database is the Ballymena, Antrim, Northern Ireland, Internments, 1875-1934. This record set is an Index of 9,600 transcribed high-quality primary historical sources of burial records. The originals are held at the local Briad Museum. (See also last month's upload of headstone inscriptions.)
RootsIreland.ie has added 5,282 Roman Catholic baptismal records from the parish of Kilcummin, Co. Kerry, dating from 1821-1900. The parish is a few miles north of Killarney. See an up to date list of sources at kerry.rootsireland.ie.
RootsIreland.ie has added to its County Cork database with 1,350 RC baptismal records dating from the year 1924 and 196 RC marriage records
for the year 1949. All the topped up parishes (see list) are in the North or East of the county.
Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives: The following records (headstone photos + inscriptions) were added to the free database during January:
- County Carlow - St. Brigids Part 2, Clonegal (Updated)
- County Kerry - Ahavoher Burial Ground, Parts 4 & 5 (Completed)
- County Kilkenny - Regina Caeli Cemetery, Mooncoin - Pt 4 (Completed)
- County Limerick - Reilig Ide Naofa, Abbeyfeale (Updated)
- County Wexford - St. John's Graveyard, Kilturk, Ballyhealy.
Irish Genealogy News: January 2025
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast has launched an online payments system for its copy and search enquiries service.
MilitaryArchives.ie has released the National Army fatalities roll, 1922 -1923. It can be viewed free as part of an online exhibition here.
It provides summary details of those who died as a consequence of their service during the Irish Civil War.
FamilySearch has run an AI reading thingey over its images of memorials held by the Registry of Deeds in Dublin. The result is searchable text of the deeds, marriage settlements, wills, property and land conveyances, leases and other legal instruments that the Irish aristocracy, merchants and middle classes drew up to protect their wealth and place in the social hierarchy.
The lower ranks of society are less likely to appear for obvious reasons.
The Registry of Deeds collection dates back to 1704, and is one of the BIG 3 record sets still not fully digitised and searchable in a regular genealogy database. Even so, you can take this release from FamilySearch as a HUGE development for Irish family historians.
FamilySearch microfilmed the memorials back in the 1880s, or thereabouts. The resulting images were uploaded to the site's free database a few years ago, but in their unindexed form were of little help to the majority of family historians.
This latest upgrade allows you to search using keywords such as names and places, with or without dates. Search results provide you with listings of memorials that match your keywords, and you can then select those you want to explore. With each selection, you'll find an image of the memorial page and a transcription created by the reading machine.
It isn't pretty; the transcription text is dense and often difficult to decipher. This isn't surprising; that's what the originals look like. But for all that, its an enormous leap forward for mankind! Get stuck in here.
Storm Éowyn - Friday 23 January. A rare red alert has been issued in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as Storm Éowyn arrives from the west during Thursday night and through to Friday late afternoon.
If you're a researcher based outside Ireland, be aware that the entire island is expected to be at a standstill. Public transport, shops, schools, state-owned services including libraries, archives, museums, and even non-urgent health services will not be operating, at least until the worst of the storm has blown through.
Storm Éowyn - Friday 23 January. A rare red alert has been issued in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as Storm Éowyn arrives from the west during Thursday night and through to Friday late afternoon. If you're a researcher based outside Ireland and UK, be aware that the entire island is expected to be at a standstill. Buses, trains, schools, state-owned services including libraries, archives, museums, even all but emergency or high priority health services will not be operating. Most shops will also be closed, at least until the worst of the storm has blown through.
The RCB Library has updated its List of Church of Ireland parish registers,
an essential reference aid that provides details of which registers
survive and where they are held (offline and online). It is free to
download via the link above (the page currently says it was updated in
May 2024 but the file itself shows it was updated in December 2024).
The National Archives of Ireland has announced that its main website, which has been in redevelopment for some time, will go live on Wednesday 5 February. The relaunch will include many current errors and broken links; these will be corrected in due course. (The main website is not the genealogy database, but does include the online catalogue.)
Ancestry adds Ballymena headstone inscriptions: A collection of some 10,100 headstone inscriptions from 41 historical graveyards in the Ballymena area of County Antrim is now available to search on Ancestry. It was produced by The Braid, a museum and community hub in the town (you can search the Braid's database here). The records span 1671-1996.
PRONI extends opening hours from February. The extensions will see a late opening until 8pm (last document orders at 7:15pm) every other Thursday from 13 February, and the introduction of a one-a-month Saturday opening. The latter will start on 8 February and will offer a full service from 10am to 2pm (last document orders at 1:15pm). I'd call this a very welcome development, as it gives genealogists and historians much greater flexibility in organising their research around other commitments. Well done, PRONI. Take note NAI and NLI!
RootsIreland.ie - Downtime, 14 January 2025. Scheduled maintenance to the site's servers may see RootsIreland.ie offline evening from 8pm IrishTime/GMT. The downtime is not expected to last more than an hour, but it could be longer.
General Register Office of Ireland 'Dublin Research Room': After its closure in November with building maintenance issues, the GRO Research Room in Werburgh Street reopened on 7 January 2025, currently offering walk-in (no booking required) on Tuesdays only from 9:30am to 12:30 pm and 2pm to 4:30pm. It's a wise researcher who checks opening status before heading any distance. See GRO here.
1921 Censuses of England & Wales. Having been available to search and view exclusively on FindMyPast since their launch three years ago, the 1921 censuses
of England & Wales
are now also available at Ancestry. The records of some 360,000 individuals born in Ireland are hiding within, together with countless others of Irish heritage.
Ancestors from Kilkenny? The Virtual Record Treasure of Ireland is busy digitising and uploading records from the 1821, 1841 and 1851 censuses. They are not available anywhere else online and their launch on the Virtual Treasury is expected towards the end of the month. They are from the Carrigan Collection, held by St Kieran's in Kilkenny, and were extracted and transcribed by Canon W Carriagan from the originals before they were lost in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office.
A rant about Irish burial records: Genealogist and author John Grenham is first out of the blocks this year with a valid moan about FindAGrave. His criticisms have moved him to update his excellent website with more geographical finding aids and maps designed to help lost and confused researchers. Check them out!
RootsIreland.ie: Notice of downtime. Scheduled maintenance is taking place on Monday 7 October from 7pm to 11:59pm (Irish time). The database may be unavailable for much of this time.
My Irish Genealogy News blog was published from April 2011 to July 2024. It proved extremely popular and for many genealogists - ever eager to keep abreast of the latest record releases, events, discounts, book launches and other developments - "Claire Santry's blog" was the day's first online stop.
The decision to close it was difficult but, in the end, pretty much forced upon me due to family and other commitments. Its content will remain online, with no further updates, and will do so for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime, I still have writing commitments to fulfil this year so I need to keep up-to-date with what's going on in Irish genealogy. I'll be keeping notes, and I may as well share them. They'll be brief - very brief - and, unlike my blogposts, these news snippets won't provide details or opinion/comment and they definitely won't be daily!
Please feel free to bookmark this temporary and very-much honed-down version of Irish Genealogy News.
30 August 2024
