Sources for Researching Irish Ancestry
Check Records Online and on Both Sides of the Atlantic
Mar 4, 2009
Ireland is “user-friendly” for genealogists. A few decades ago the government decided to use genealogy to promote tourism. It worked. Thousands of North Americans wanted to see where their Irish ancestors lived and took advantage of inexpensive “visit Ireland” packages catering to visiting genealogists.
Resources for tracing Irish ancestors are like shamrocks. Once you start looking, they are plentiful! Here is an overview of ten of them.
The Irish Family History Foundation coordinates access to records of a network of government-approved genealogy research centers. This collection of roughly 40 million records is derived primarily from church records. There is free access to indices, but one must pay to view the detailed record. Online credit can be purchased to enable instant access.
Ancestry.com's Irish Genealogy section is a major online source for databases, sources, how-to advice, searchable indices and some digitalized images. This fee-based subscription service is recommended for searchers with multi-surname Irish ancestry. It accesses sources in Ireland. The general ancestry.com site also contains several databases listing Irish families in the U.S. The search engine for the Kelly surname shows more than a million Kelly references from immigration records, U. S. census records and historical newspapers.
The Ireland GenWeb Project has help lists and records for the various Irish counties. In addition to the individual county pages, there are an Irish interest email list, query boards and a surname registration list. Access is through the WorldGenWeb Project and its subdivision, the BritishIslesGenWeb Project. All GenWeb projects are no-cost data sources. Births were not recorded by the Irish government until 1864. The mother lode for birth, marriages and deaths in Ireland is parish records.
The Centre for Irish Genealogy and Historical Society website has a wide variety of Irish material of genealogical interest, including directories for both the National Archives of Ireland and the General Register Office of Ireland.
Clans of Ireland maintains a website for the modern day reorganized Irish clans. In the 1940s, Edward MacLysaght, the first Chief Herald of Ireland, drew up a list of 243 Irish clans. They now have worldwide representation.
Irish "Famine" Emigrants in the Mid 19th Century--Ellis Island was the principal U.S. immigration station from 1892 to 1954. More than 12 million immigrants were processed there. It now houses a museum operated by the National Park Service. The large database of immigrants arriving there can be searched online. The National Archives also has two large online immigrant databases and estimates that 70% of these immigrants are Irish.
The Ulster Historical Foundation in Belfast offers research services and also publishes genealogical and historical material. It has a long list of searchable online databases, but there is a charge for accessing most of them even though the foundation is listed as a non-profit organization. Discounts are available to members. People do not have to pay to look at the list of databases. It is a helpful list showing what records have been compiled.
LDS Church Records--Many Irish parish records have been transcribed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and can be searched for free on their site. at FamilySearch.org.
The Fianna Guide to Irish Genealogy has online transcriptions of some primary documents and records, but is equally valuable for its excellent guides for researching ancestry in Ireland.
The United Irish Cultural Center of San Francisco includes the Patrick J. Dowling Library. An online search engine calls up its holdings. There are several books with guidelines and sources for tracing Irish ancestry. There are no online databases, but the library is a good resource for people living in the San Francisco area.
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