Tuesday 10 February 2015

Limerick's Genealogy Day returns on 14 March

Following last year's successful inaugural event when Limerick was Ireland's City of Culture, Genealogy Day will be returning to ChristChurch on Saturday 14 March. 

The organisers are Christ Church United Presbyterian and Methodist Church in partnership with the Irish Ancestry Research Centre (IARC) and, as last year, they will be bringing together the historical church registers from several denominations in Limerick including Methodist, Presbyterian, the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland (Quaker) and the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon).

"It's an unusual event," says IARC's John King. "It invites the local community to take a rare opportunity to view original baptism and marriage records, to discuss local history and to sit down with experts to discover something about their own ancestors."

Genealogy Day will take place in Christ Church at  51A O'Connell Street at the start of the city's week-long St Patrick's Festival. It's completely free to attend and there's no need to book. Hours are 10am to 3pm. The day will conclude with a lecture on the Special Collections of the University of Limerick Library.

As well as the historical church registers, professional genealogical research services such as Eneclann, Find my Past, IARC and Limerick Genealogy will be attending. So too will institutional repositories such as Limerick Museum & Archives and the University of Limerick. Local groups such as the Irish Georgian Society and the Thomond Archaeological & Historical Society have also been invited.