Tracing Irish ancestry
What survived the 1922 Public Record Office fire and what didn't, the free 1901 and 1911 censuses, civil registration from 1864, Griffith's Valuation, church records and the main free Irish sites.
Irish research has a reputation for being impossible, and it isn't. The 1922 fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin destroyed the nineteenth-century censuses, most pre-1858 wills and about half the Church of Ireland parish registers, but civil registration, the 1901 and 1911 censuses, Catholic registers, land records and a great deal else survived, and much of it is free online. The key is knowing what exists and working around the gaps.
What was lost and what survived
| Lost in 1922 | Censuses 1821-1851 (fragments survive), 1861-1891 (destroyed earlier by government), most wills proved before 1858, about half of Church of Ireland registers, many court records. |
|---|---|
| Survived | Civil registration from 1864 (non-Catholic marriages from 1845), the 1901 and 1911 censuses complete, Catholic parish registers, Griffith's Valuation and the Tithe Applotment Books, will calendars and abstracts, Registry of Deeds, estate papers, newspapers, the 1766 religious census fragments, many Presbyterian and Methodist registers. |
Start with the free official sites
- irishgenealogy.ie: civil birth, marriage and death indexes and register images (births over 100 years, marriages over 75, deaths over 50) for the whole island to 1921 and the Republic after, free. Also some church records for Dublin, Kerry, Cork and Carlow.
- census.nationalarchives.ie: the complete 1901 and 1911 censuses with images, free. Every person, age, religion, literacy, occupation, county of birth, Irish speaker, and in 1911 years married and children born.
- registers.nli.ie: images of Catholic parish registers to about 1880 from the National Library of Ireland, free but unindexed (indexes on Ancestry and Findmypast).
- Griffith's Valuation (askaboutireland.ie, free): every landholder and householder 1847-1864, with maps: the census substitute for the famine generation.
- PRONI (nidirect.gov.uk/proni) for Northern Ireland: will calendars, street directories, freeholders' records, and the 1766 and 1740 returns, free.
Civil registration
Births, deaths and Catholic marriages were registered from 1864; non-Catholic marriages from 1845. The records resemble English ones (a death gives age and informant, not parents) and are free to view on irishgenealogy.ie within the age limits. Registration districts followed the Poor Law Unions, which cross county boundaries, so note the union as well as the county.
Church records
For most families before 1864 the Catholic register is the main record: baptisms (with both parents, mother's maiden name and sponsors) and marriages (with witnesses), typically from the 1820s or 1830s in rural parishes, earlier in towns. Church of Ireland registers that escaped 1922 are mostly in the Representative Church Body Library in Dublin or PRONI; Presbyterian registers are often still with the congregation or at PRONI.
Land and the famine generation
With no census between 1851 and 1901, land records stand in. The Tithe Applotment Books (1823-37) and Griffith's Valuation (1847-64) list occupiers by townland, and the Valuation Office revision books carry each holding forward to the twentieth century, showing when a name changes: often a death or emigration. Knowing the townland is everything in Irish research; get it from a civil record, a gravestone or an emigrant's documents.
Emigrants
Most people researching Irish ancestry are doing it from outside Ireland. The records at the destination (passenger lists, naturalisation papers, US and Canadian censuses, British censuses giving a county of birth, obituaries) often supply the parish or townland that unlocks the Irish records. Work the destination side hard first.
Where to pay
Findmypast has the largest Irish collection on a subscription site (including Catholic register indexes, Petty Sessions court registers and landed estate records); Ancestry has the Catholic registers indexed and much else; RootsIreland (a subscription from the heritage centres) has transcribed church records by county that aren't elsewhere. The comparison guide covers the trade-offs; for Scottish records see Scottish ancestry.