Wednesday 18 July 2018

FamilySearch adds C19th Irish & British Family Notices

Family Search has uploaded a collection of  'Family Notices' of births, marriages and deaths reported in a selection of 19th-century publications in the online British Newspaper Archive (BNA). The index to the Notices holds some 5.9million entries.

Click for enlarged view
Click for enlarged view
As far as I can tell, more than 103,000 records relate to people connected with Ireland in some way. The Irish newspaper titles appear to be from Belfast, Cork and Sligo.

Images of the Family Notices can be accessed online only by LDS members or at an LDS Family History Center. Those researchers who are not LDS Members or able to visit an FHC may find the indexed data provides them with good information, even if it doesn't provide source details. See the sample to the right.

The Family Notices record-set joins a sister collection of 1.8million 'Obituaries' printed in newspaper titles held in the BNA.

It joined Family Search in March, and a quick search of the index suggests about 7,000 of the records relate to people with Irish connections. This seems a surprisingly small proportion, so don't take it as certain.

The two collections have been imaged and digitised in a collaborative project with FindMyPast.