08 Wednesday Jul 2015
Posted in Church Records, Libraries, News
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The National Library of Ireland today officially launches a new web-repository of Catholic parish records, dating from the 1740s to the 1880s.
The new website will be available worldwide from 2pm on 8 July.
03 Sunday May 2015
Posted in Church Records, Libraries
Although as a society we focus on England, Scotland, and Wales many of us have ancestors and so this will be of interest – thanks to http://britishgenes.blogspot.com/ for bringing this to my attention.
Note that it says they will not be indexed – so you will probably have to know the parish name, and as my ancestors tended just to say Ireland and not be more specific I wonder how much use they will be to me. I suspect that one of the big online suppliers will come to some arrangement with the NLI to index them.
National Library of Ireland Announces Launch Date for New Online Genealogy Resource
– Almost 400,000 images of Catholic parish register microfilms to be available online for free from 8th July 2015 –
The entire collection of Catholic parish register microfilms held by the National Library of Ireland (NLI) will be made available online – for free – from 8th July 2015 onwards. On that date, a dedicated website will go live, with over 390,000 digital images of the microfilm reels on which the parish registers are recorded.
The NLI has been working to digitise the microfilms for over three years under its most ambitious digitisation programme to date.
The parish register records are considered the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census. Dating from the 1740s to the 1880s, they cover 1,091 parishes throughout the island of Ireland, and consist primarily of baptismal and marriage records.
Commenting today, the NLI’s Ciara Kerrigan, who is managing the digitisation of the parish registers, said:
“We announced initial details of this project last December, and received a hugely enthusiastic response from people worldwide with an interest in Irish family history. We are delighted to announce that the project has been progressing well, and we will be able to publish all the digitised records online from 8th July onwards.
“This is the most significant ever genealogy project in the history of the NLI. The microfilms have been available to visitors to the NLI since the 1970s. However, their digitisation means that, for the first time, anyone who likes will be able to access these registers without having to travel to Dublin.”
Typically, the parish registers include information such as the dates of baptisms and marriages, and the names of the key people involved, including godparents or witnesses. The digital images of the registers will be searchable by parish location only, and will not be transcribed or indexed by the NLI.
“The images will be in black and white, and will be of the microfilms of the original registers,” explained Ms. Kerrigan. “There will not be transcripts or indexes for the images. However, the nationwide network of local family history centres holds indexes and transcripts of parish registers for their local areas. So those who access our new online resource will be able to cross-reference the information they uncover, and identify wider links and connections to their ancestral community by also liaising with the relevant local family history centre.”
The NLI is planning an official launch event for the new online resource on 8th July. Further details will be available in the coming weeks.
16 Monday Mar 2015
Posted in Church Records, Libraries, News
The National Library of Ireland will make their entire collection of Catholic parish register microfilms freely available on-line by summer 2015.
The records are considered the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census. Dating from the 1740s to the 1880s, they cover 1,091 parishes throughout Ireland, and consist primarily of baptismal and marriage records.
I will post more information as it becomes available.
16 Monday Mar 2015
Posted in General Information, Societies
As many of us have Irish ancestors I though this might be of interest. Thanks to Sylvia for sending me the article. The IGRS is the Irish Genealogical Research Society.
The IGRS – “The Great Granddaddy of all Irish Family History Societies” – announces the launch of an exciting enhancement to its ‘Irish Genealogist Database’.
The Irish Genealogist (TIG) has been published annually since 1937 and comprises thousands of articles relating to Irish genealogy, noting details on family histories, pedigrees, leases, memorial inscriptions, deeds, newspaper extracts and transcripts of parish registers, voters lists, census substitutes, wills, letters, family bibles, rentals and militia & army rolls. The list is endless!
A free online Names Index to TIG, comprising in excess of a quarter of a million names, has been available on the Society’s website since autumn 2013. Now, following an intensive project to scan images of the journal’s articles, the database will link researchers directly to articles that match their search criteria. Initially, the Society is launching images of volume 10 of TIG (covering the years 1998-2001) and these will be followed with regular releases right up to volume 13 (up to 2013).
Announcing details of the enhanced database, IGRS Chairman Steven Smyrl said: “The Society’s annual journal has been to the forefront of Irish genealogy for almost 80 years. With the launch of this new database, those pursuing their Irish ancestors, no matter where they live, will now be able to access the treasure of data locked away in its pages.”
This links to the TIG database page: www.irishancestors.ie/?page_id=3039
17 Saturday Jan 2015
Posted in Church Records
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I don’t normally blog about Irish records as our society really only deals with Catholic Family History for England, Wales, and Scotland, but I found out about these newly available records from the The British GENES Blog and quite a few readers will be interested in them.
Roman Catholic parish records from County Carlow have been transcribed and made available on RootsIreland. The following are the parishes available, followed by year ranges for baptisms (146,000 entries) and then marriages (58,000 records):
The digitised images for these and all Roman Catholic parish registers up to 1880 or 1900 (varies between parishes) will be available on the National Library of Ireland website in the middle of this year, though will not be indexed, only browsable.
RootsIreland is a subscription site, not a free site. The British GENES Blog is well worth a look, always lots of useful information.
23 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in Church Records, General Information
Ancestry has added several Irish Catholic Registers:
Clicking on the links above will show the parishes included.
Catholic Family History 