Wednesday 25 March 2020

Irish Registry of Deeds Index Project: latest news

The volunteer-led Registry of Deeds Index Project has had an update this week. There are now 345,327 index entries from 37,323 memorials of deeds in the main index.

Nick Reddan FIGRS, who manages the site, hopes that if researchers with Irish connections are under lockdown or self-isolating, they might donate some time to help the Index Project grow and, in the process, help other genealogists searching for details of their Irish ancestors hidden away in this deep resource.

The collection, held in Dublin, dates from 1708 and holds memorials of deeds and conveyances representing transfers of property across the island. These documents often contain valuable genealogical information such as names, occupations and addresses as well as relationships between individuals, maiden names of women, married names of sisters, and details of marriage settlements and beneficiaries and other particulars of wills.

"Volunteers can help improve access to these important records by either indexing memorials or transcribing Registry of Deeds Grantors and/or Townland Indexes," says Nick. "All the records from 1708 to 1929 are free to view online through FamilySearch.org and you can learn how to contribute using the many guides at https://irishdeedsindex.net/guides/index.php. Contact the webmaster if you need more guidance. Just start helping other researchers by contributing to this important project."

The output of the project is fully searchable and completely free to all researchers at https://irishdeedsindex.net/search/search.php.