Irish Genealogy

Ireland counties map from https://www.wikipedia.org/

Because one of the main reasons people take an interest in traveling to Ireland is having an ancestral connection to the Emerald Isle, I thought I’d spend September sharing some links for researching your Irish genealogy.  Fully researching your Irish family tree would be a trip in itself, but even with our limited free-time on tour you can still take some time to connect with your ancestors if so inclined.

The biggest key is to do the bulk of your research before you leave for Ireland.  Having a firm foundation is essential to knowing what records and information you’ll be looking for while in Ireland.  Especially with limited time for genealogical research, knowing exactly what you want to find will make the search far less frustrating.  Plus knowing where your family came from ahead of time can make your travels in Ireland all the more meaningful; this tour will take our group to stops in 7 Irish counties, including County Tipperary, where some of my husband’s ancestors were born.  Knowing this makes our time at the Rock of Cashel and just driving through that county all the more exciting.

There are numerous online resources for tracing your Irish roots.  Many have membership fees but also a great deal of resources and records to offer.  Ancestry.com is a common choice for amateur genealogists regardless of where your family lines trace back to.  Ancestry.com includes vast resources and a large community to discuss leads with.  The downside is, of course, the cost.  While you can build your tree and see some records on ancestry.com for free, a U.S. only membership is just under $20 a month (or less if you can do an annual payment), and an international membership (which would be essential for researching your ancestors in Ireland) has a monthly fee of just under $35.

image of family tree on https://www.ancestry.com/

Once you have some basic genealogy information, you may need a more focused site to find additional documents specific to your Irish relatives.  Among the most popular paid membership sites for Irish genealogy is rootsireland.ie.  Similar to ancestry.com, rootsireland.ie offers a wide variety of records and some additional resources.  Being able to narrow your search by county is also a big plus on this site.  You can also check out irishancestors.ie for membership in the Irish Genealogical Research Society.

There are also a few free sites to take advantage of for genealogy research.  Though administered by the Mormon Church, familysearch.org, is actually a very broad and useful site to find genealogy records and connections through other’s family trees.  Like ancestry.com, this site allows you to create your family tree and connect the records it houses to members of your tree.  Another great free source of information that offers international records is findagrave.com.  

The Irish government also offers several free genealogical sites, including irishgenealogy.ie.  For some free Ireland specific sites, try The National Archives of Ireland, which includes free searches for census records.  Church records can also provide treasure-trove of information.  Many Catholic Parish Registers are available registers.nli.ie.  While some of these records can be searched for a very specific date, be prepared to scroll through many, often difficult to read records for a given year.  The interactive map at the bottom of the page will help you determine the parish(es) you are looking for if you know the county, or better still the town or approximate location in the county, your ancestors came from.

 

image of record found at http://www.nli.ie/

And if you’re looking for tips from others doing Irish genealogy research, Facebook is host to many groups and communities.  Members can often give tips on where to look for information and occasionally will even provide information they have access to on common relatives.  Most communities on Facebook are quite welcoming and eager to help, but you will need some basic information (names, dates of birth and/or death, county or names of connected relatives) on those ancestors you are researching to begin with.  Try the following groups for a start:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2231876262/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/17880606040/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/402752829736679/

For more suggestions on Irish genealogy online resources, check out these links:

                http://timeline.ie/tracing-irish-ancestors-online/

http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-services-recreation-culture-dublin-city-public-libraries-and-archive-heritage-and-histo-56

So if you’d like to track down your Irish ancestors as part of our upcoming tour, now is the time to start researching!  I’ll be posting later in the month about genealogical services and archives in Ireland that you may be able to fit into your free time on our tour.