The latest update from the Registry of Deeds Index Project shows there are now 177,253 indexed entries available to search, absolutely free. The entries cover names recorded in 20,734 memorials of deeds.
The Index is the product of volunteers who using both microfilms of the memorial volumes obtained through the LDS Family History Library and actual volumes at the Registry of Deeds in Henrietta Street, Dublin.
Memorials of deeds can be a rich source of genealogical information. They include marriage settlements, land transactions and many other types of sales or transfers of ownership, sometimes of quite modest value.
While this inevitably means that the majority of memorials relate to the gentry and middle classes, these records are not the exclusive reserve of the toffs. Occasionally, deeds deign to mention the tenants/occupiers of the land involved, and it was sometimes pertinent for people of much more modest means, including merchants and traders, to register deeds for security or inheritance reasons.
