Wednesday 18 August 2021

FamilySearch adds 4million Irish Merchant Navy and Crime records

FamilySearch.org has added two Irish collections to its free database, as follows:

1. Ireland, Merchant Navy Crew Lists, 1857-1922
This collection holds a good index to 832,770 records held by the National Archives of Ireland. You can see an example of the index entry, right, from one of my fishermen ancestors, who was born in Scilly, at Kinsale harbour in 1799. Don't you wish all indexes gave you this much information!

The full imaged collection is online, free at NAI's Genealogy website, and some of the individual records contain great details about pay, apprenticeships, voyages around the globe, skill levels and promotions and more. William Santry's record, for example, consists of five documents.


2. Ireland, Prison Registers, 1798-1928
This is another NAI collection, but unlike the Merchant Navy lists above, this one is not available via the NAI Genealogy website. Instead, it is available on Ancestry and FindMyPast, for a fee.

FamilySearch's collection is an index of 3,127,594 records. Unfortunately, the index information is not particularly informative. A search for Hannah Santry returned the following details: Place of imprisonment: Ireland, age 23, birthplace BallinaCarriger Dunmanway (sic), but in most entries, even those for this Hannah, no birthplace is recorded. Images can be viewed when you are researching at a Family History Center.