Thursday 11 February 2016

Ancestry to add 10million Irish RC parish records

In case the headline above is giving you déjà vu, I should point out that last week's news of the release of the same 10million Irish Roman Catholic parish registers was by FindMyPast. Today is Ancestry's turn.

So, just as the rumour mill foretold, both major databases will be adding an index and transcriptions to the National Library of Ireland's registers collection.

As with the intended FindMyPast upload, the new index will link to the NLI's images and will be released next month. The collection is made up of Baptism, Marriage and (a small number of) Burial records from over 1,000 Catholic parishes across the whole of the island of Ireland. The cut-off date for the collection is 1881/2.

John Slyne, VP, International Operations at Ancestry comments: “The Ireland Catholic Parish Registers is the single most important collection needed to trace Roman Catholic ancestors in Ireland in the 1800s and we are delighted to make it available through Ancestry. Providing the very best Irish records to our members is important to us and this collection helps us do that, taking the total number of Irish records to over 55 million. It also means we continue to provide the largest online collection of Irish Catholic parish records available anywhere, which is good for those in Ireland and also those across the World with Irish roots."

Ancestry already has several collections of RC parish records, including the complete collections for at least 73 parishes added two years ago, and only this morning released baptism, marriage, burial and confirmations records for Cusheen, a parish in Co Clare (see blogpost).