Monday 14 March 2011

Ancestry updates Irish genealogy collection

Ancestry.com has added to its collection of 19th-century Irish records and images.

Two new resources are the Lawrence collection of photos 1870-1910 and Ordnance Survey maps 1824-1846.

The former, which can be searched by subject, location and county, is a collection of 21,000 wonderful images of Ireland taken by Robert French, who worked for the Dublin-based William Lawrence studio. He photographed scenes from every county of Ireland and many later reappeared on postcards.

The detailed Ordnance Survey maps were produced by a team of surveyors at a scale of six inches to one mile, making them useful to the Government (who commissioned them) for land valuation and tax purposes. The collection covers almost the entire island.

Ancestry say their Griffith's Valuation and Tithe Applotment Books Collections have also been updated, but don't give any indication as to what improvements have been made.