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| Roz McCutcheon FIGRS, the force behind both the Early Irish Marriage Index and the new Early Irish Birth Index |
Like the Early Irish Marriage Index launched just under two years ago and now offering details of more than 66,000 marriages, this new database is being managed by Roz McCutcheon FIGRS; she officially launched it yesterday during her 'Irish records: Beyond the Obvious' presentation at RootsTech in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
"My early Irish Marriage Index was launched in 2012 and received an enthusiastic response," she said. "It has continued to grow, and I have been assured by many researchers that it has been an invaluable aid in breaking down their brick walls.
"This has encouraged me to launch an Early Irish Birth Index, using the same sources as the Marriage Index, and covering the same period – 1660 to 1863. Again, no birth will be included from parish registers, as all the surviving registers are being gradually placed online elsewhere."
The first upload for the Birth Index sees more than 5,000 entries drawn mainly from newspapers, gravestones and early census fragments. Roz has also collated details of births culled from Memorials held by the Registry of Deeds, from Naval records at the UK National Archives in Kew, from evidence of birth provided for Trinity College Dublin admissions, from private diaries and from the occurrence books kept by various people, recording interesting occurrences in their neighbourhoods.While the Early Marriage Index is fully and freely accessible to the public, the Early Irish Births Index is available only to members of the IGRS, via the Members-Only area of IrishAncestors.ie. However, a restricted surname-only search is available to non-members and tells users how many matching entries are within the full database.