As promised last month (see blogpost), Limerick City Archives has launched its online, fully searchable and free database of the Mount St. Lawrence Cemetery records.
More than 70,000 burial records have been indexed, right back to the opening of the cemetery in 1849 and its first interment in 1855. They cover all those interred in the 16-acre cemetery in the medieval parish of St Lawrence, which included Limerick Prison and Mental Hospital, plus those in the 1960's 5.5-acre extension.
This new database marks the first in a series of Limerick Archives projects to document the City's social history. It has been successfully completed through a partnership with the History Department of Mary Immaculate College of Education who have spent two years manually transcribing the thousands of handwritten burial records.
A second stage to the project will see an online map created of all the burial plots. This is already underway.
You can search the database at www.limerick.ie/cityarchives.