Save 30% on 3- and 12-month subscriptions to FindMyPast UK

FindMyPast UK is offering eggcellent (ho ho ho) Easter savings to researchers taking out 3-month or 12-month subscriptions to the Plus, Pro or Premium packages.

The discount offer is valid from today until 9:59am (IST/BST) on Monday 1 April.

This discount will be available only via the UK site.

To take advantage of this generous price reduction, click the image, right. On the landing page you'll see the discount has already been applied, and you'll be able to compare the different packages.

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

Easter closures of archives and libraries across Ireland

It's a long weekend across the island but with different closure patterns on either side of the border. Here are the main arrangements for the main repositories:

Northern Ireland
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and all libraries will be open on Friday 29 March and closed on Easter Monday and Tuesday, 1 and 2 April.

Republic of Ireland
The National Archives of Ireland and all public county and branch libraries will be closed from Good Friday 29 March until Monday 1 April inclusive, returning to normal hours on Tuesday 2 April. While the Reading Rooms at the National Library of Ireland will also be closed over the same period, the NLI's Exhibitions (Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and People & Places) have bespoke arrangements, which you can check here.

Recent releases & updates for English, Scottish & Welsh genealogy

Below is a two-week summary of newly-released and updated genealogy collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major family history database providers. (For previous list, see 12 March blogpost.)

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

By default, it will also be useful to anyone carrying out research in those three nations, regardless of the origin of their ancestors.

The figures in parentheses in the New Collections section are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parentheses in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made this figure available so the figure is the new total. Where two figures are given, the first is the number of additions, the second is the new total.

Please note that I don't usually include updates of fewer than 1,000 records.

NEW COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• Isle of Man, Birth, Marriage and Death Civil Registration Index, 1849-2015 (349,789)
• Aberdeen & North-East Scotland, Index, Memorial Inscription Bklets 1500-2021 (185,928)

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

• Scarborough Evening News
• Gravesend Messenger
• The Regiment
• Kent County Examiner and Ashford Chronicle
• Halifax Daily Guardian
• Prisoners of War News
• Country Life

FindMyPast

• Scotland, Mental Health Institutions Registers & Admissions 1858–1921 (220,7317)

MyHeritage

• Wales, Glamorgan Parish Marriages, 1802–1958 (199,906)
• Cheshire Parish Marriages, from 1538 (1,617,527)

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK & Ireland, FindAGrave Index (193,032 / 19,716,828)
• Global, FindAGrave Index for Burials at Sea and other Locations (381,182 / 15,823,357)

FamilySearch

• England, Manchester, Miscellaneous Records, 1700-1916 (678,488)
• Scotland, Death Records,1998-2015 (429,095)

FindMyPast

• Scotland, Poor Law & Poor Lists Wigownshire and Scottish Borders added (7,906)
• Scotland, Court & Criminal Database (more than 1m transcriptions added)

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

Free booklet published exploring the Great Famine in Co. Donegal

An illustrated booklet that explores the Famine in County Donegal has been published as a free flip-book on ISSUU.

Donegal County Council hosted Ireland's National Famine Commemmoration in Milford last year and marked the event by commissioning Historian in Residence Dr C. Hilary Mc Laughlin-Stonham to research and write about this period in Donegal's history using surviving workhouse records (and other collections) held by the County Archives and other institutions.

The booklet, which has been widely distributed in paper format to schools, libraries, colleges and heritage centres across Donegal and beyond, is entitled The Consequences will be fearful: The Great Famine in County Donegal. It presents four essays, as follows:

• The impact of the Great Famine on County Donegal
• Life and Death in Letterkenny during the Great Famine
• Inishowen Workhouse in a time of crisis
• Emigration: Farewells and Beginnings

An excellent list of reference material and digital sources is also provided.

I'm sure any family historian with Donegal ancestors who lived through the mid-1800s would find this publication very informative and helpful to their own research. Click the cover image to start reading.

Society of Genealogists' online Irish genealogy course starts 2 April

The Society of Genealogists (SoG) is to host an 8-week online Irish family history course starting next week.

Jill Williams FIGRS

Jill Williams, a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society, will present this new practical course which requires no previous experience with Irish records and will focus on collections available online.

The course will highlight the differences between Irish records and those from English and Welsh sources, and will use two families – one Catholic from county Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, the other Protestant from Ulster in the north of the island – as case studies.

Each online presentation will be followed by an optional short exercise for delegates to undertake at home and a handout covering key websites mentioned in the session.

Video recordings of each weekly class (excluding Q&A elements), will be made available the day after the session and for one month after the course ends.

The course will be held on zoom from 18:30hrs* to 20:30hrs* on Tuesdays, from 2 April to 21 May.

For further details and to book your place on this course, see the SoG website.

If you're not sure if this course is for you, why not consider taking the first session as a taster? Find out more about this option here.

* UK & Irish Summer time

Deansgrange and Shananagh burial registers return online

Regular readers of Irish Genealogy News will recall that images of burial registers for Dublin's Deansgrange and Shananagh cemeteries disappeared from view on the EverAfter/PlotBox website towards the tail end of last year. (See my belated blogpost.)

I'm happy to report that the burial registers have been safely returned to the public pages. This means that headstone photos, transcribed inscriptions, cemetery maps and digisted burial registers can once again be viewed on the free to access website here.

Register entries usually include the deceased's name, age, religion, address of last residence and, for most men, profession or occupation, plus date of death, date of burial, a precise location of the grave or plot, fees paid, and the name of the funeral director. The example below is from 1948.

For enlarged view, click image

There's a party going down, and everyone's invited!

TheGenealogist uploads more than 3million Irish records

Also getting in on St Patrick's Day celebrations is TheGenealogist database. Principally known for its extensive collections covering England and Wales, TheGenealogist has extended its Irish and, to a lesser extent, Scottish coverage recently.

This week's releases aee more than three million records join the database. They fall into two categories: parish registers and probate, as follows:

Irish Catholic Parish Records: Some 1,769,007 individuals have been indexed from the Baptism and Marriage registers for more than 80 County Tipperary parishes. Additionally, Baptism and Marriage registers in four County Carlow parishes have made their way into the county's existing collection. This means the database now has significant collection of parish registers for Counties Carlow, Kildare, Laois, Tipperary and Wexford. You can see the list of available parishes, and the dates of the registers, on this page.

Irish Wills: Six probate collections have been released, making available a further 1,263,399 records. They are listed below:

• Dublin Will and Grant Books 1272-1858
• Calendar of Wills and Administrations 1858-1922
• Irish Will Indexes 1484-1858
• Prerogative and Diocesan Copies of Wills and Indexes 1596-1858
• Will Registers 1858-1900
• Soldiers’ Wills 1914-1918

If you're interested to see what TheGenealogist offers Irish genealogists, you might like to take up the offer of a free trial. Click the logo above to find out more.

FindMyPast Ireland adds three record-sets and three directories

This year's St Patrick's Day delivery from FindMyPast.ie comprises three new 18th-century record sets and a significant expansion of the existing Directories collection. These additions to the Irish database tot up to fewer than 8,000 short of a cool one million records.

18th century census substitutes

The originals of this trio of record sets were lost in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office of Ireland. Fortunately for Irish family historians, antiquarian and professional genealogist Tenison Groves had spent the previous twenty-odd years transcribing many of the documents that went up in flames. The transcriptions are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and have been digitised by other suppliers. Their arrival in the FindMyPast collection will help many researchers. In chronological order, the record sets are:

Ireland, Census of Protestant Householders 1740: The 15,957 individuals recorded in this listing are arranged by their parish and county. Geographical coverage includes the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone and in some instances include the townland of residence. The purpose of the 'census' is not certain, but may have been connected with the Hearth Tax. See PRONI's article, here, for further background.

Ireland, 1766 Religious Census: These 20,505 transcriptions include returns from the six counties now in Northern Ireland and fifteen counties in the Republic of Ireland, and are arranged by parish. Geographical coverage is far from complete and the information collected is far from consistent; in some parishes, only a headcount was taken of each commuinity, while in others the names of the heads of household were noted. See PRONI's article, here, for further background.

Ireland, 1775 Dissenters' Petition: Presbyterian congregations across Ireland petitioned the Dublin parliament to repeal laws that restricted political, civic and professional postitions/occupations to communicant members of the Established Church of Ireland. Some members of the Established Church were also signatories. The petitions consist of dissenters' names categorized by parish, congregation, town, neighbourhood, or, in one case, barony. This small collection of 4,683 records includes parishes in Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone. For more details, see PRONI's article here.

Belfast & Ulster Directories

FindMyPast's existing collection of Belfast and Ulster Directories has been extended with the addition of three more titles and more than 951,000 names. It means that this collection now consists of 58 Belfast and/or Ulster directory titles spanning 1831 to 1900 and offer a total of 2,874,586 indexed name entries. (View the full list of titles here.) Both transcriptions and original page images can be explored to locate your ancestors by name, residence, occupation, and year.

Sample entries from the 1865 edition of The Belfast And Province Of Ulster Directory

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

Free access to MyHeritage's Irish Collection until Monday

For St Patrick's Day, MyHeritage has opened up its entire Irish collection of nearly 14 million records.

These are held in 104 record sets including censuses, census substitutes, births and marriages, wills and a good spread of publications and directories. It's a collection thiat is growing but in my opinion it is still quite a way from being a go-to database for Irish researchers.

However, for any family historians making their first foray into Irish records, it might be worth a free weekend dip.

You can find brief details and links to each of the record sets in the Ireland catalogue. Select one and enter your search criteria. You'll then be prompted to create a free account. Go ahead. It's free and doesn't require you to hand over any financial information.

Big discounts from IrishNewspaperArchives mark St Patrick's Day

With St Patrick's weekend just around the corner, here's an opportunity to grab yourself a tidy discount from the Dublin-based IrishNewspaperArchive.com. Two offers are available as follows:

• Gold Membership: 35% off monthly and annual subscriptions
• Silver Membership: 30% off monthly and annual subsriptions

Gold membership includes full access to the main Irish Newspapers Archive, which holds some 158 titles, AND full access to its unique Radical Newspapers Archive, which holds 103 titles.

Silver membership includes full access to the main Irish Newspaper Archive, which holds some 158 titles.

The archives offer more than ten million pages of newspaper content from titles published and circulated across the island, some of them dating back to 1738.

Archival content is regularly updated, and new titles added. Here's a list of the updates and new releases over the past five months:

Connaught Journal 1793–1828
Celtic Times 1887
Rights of the Irishmen 1792
The Press 1797–1798
Sligo Weekender 2005–2008
Belfast Newsletter 2006
Andersonstown News 1972–2000
Post 1955,1958-1959
Evening Echo 2001–2002
Evening Telegraph 1916–1919

The generous savings will be available until Sunday 24 March.

Click the image to type in the promo code and view the discounted price for your choice of Membership, or, to view the list of titles available in each archive, click here.

PRONI's Reading Room closed for six weeks

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has introduced some temporary changes to the in-person service provided at its offices in Belfast's Titanic Quarter.

To facilitate some construction work to the building, the Reading Room has been closed and will remain so until about the middle of April.

Researchers visiting the site will still be able to access original records in the PRONI Search Room and, although they've been relocated within that room, the self-service microfilms will be available as usual.

If you're planning to visit the site over the next few weeks, be sure to check this PRONI webpage where any important changes to the above will be posted.

Latest updates/releases for English, Scottish and Welsh genealogy

Below is a two-week summary of newly-released and updated genealogy collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major family history database providers. (For previous list, see 16 February blogpost.)

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

By default, it will also be useful to anyone carrying out research in those three nations, regardless of the origin of their ancestors.

The figures in parentheses in the New Collections section are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parentheses in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made this figure available so the figure is the new total. Where two figures are given, the first is the number of additions, the second is the new total.

Please note that I don't usually include updates of fewer than 1,000 records.

NEW COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK, Admiralty Records of Marriages and Baptisms, 1754-1878 (7,206)
• London, England, Parish Maps, 1860-1880
• UK, Imperial Gazetteer Maps, 1900

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

• Kent County Standard
• Fashion and Craft (Creative Needlecraft)
• Halifax Daily Guardian
• Kent Evening Post
• Tunbridge Wells Standard
• Brighouse Echo

FindMyPast

• Canada: British Home Children Inspection Reports (25,534 images and transcriptions)
• Canada, Home Children Board of Guardian Records, 1880s–1916 (10,678 trans/images)
• Lancashire, Liverpool, Children Sent To Canada 1883-1925 (466)
• Britain, Children's Legislation Correspondence Browse Browse only.
• Women's Land Army Service Cards 1939-1950 (128,440)

MyHeritage

• England, Cheshire Bishop’s Transcripts Baptisms, 1526-1909 (2,987,072)
• Cheshire Bishop’s Transcripts Marriages (478,468)
• England, Cheshire Parish Deaths and Burials (2,009,427)
• England, Cheshire Parish Births & Baptisms, 1538–1969 (5,136,832)
• Wales, West Glamorgan Electoral Registers 1839-1925 (1,643,484)
• United Kingdom Newspapers from OldNews.com (3,894,581 pages/3 newspaper titles)

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK and Ireland, Find a Grave® Index, 1300s-Current (374,863 / 19,716,828)
• Global, Find a Grave® Index, Burials at Sea/Select Locations (174,193/15,823,357)
• UK and Ireland, Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current (710,497 / 15,823,357)
• UK, World War II War Diaries, 1939-1946
• UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856 (28,256)

FindMyPast

• 1871 England & Wales Census (occupation and birthplace added to 22,808,909 entries)
• England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935 (62,569 / 6,662,616)
• Teachers' Registration Council Registers 1914-1948 (612 new plus improvements to existing records / 102,118)
• Northamptonshire Militia Lists 1762-1819 (13,351/26,819)

FreeBMD

• Civil birth, marriage, death registrations from 1837 (new total: 293,635,325 unique entries)

TheGenealogist

• Worcestershire parish records (120,000 / 2,650,000)

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

The Spring edition of Irish Roots Magazine has been published

The latest edition of Irish Roots magazine, Ireland's only independent magazine dedicated to Irish genealogy, has been published.

It is, as always, filled with helpful guidance, informative features and all the latest news and developments to help researchers discover more about their ancestral heritage, whether their family remained on the island or emigrated to near or distant new homes.

You'll find the following articles in the new issue:

- Visiting the UCG Archives: The James Joyce Library
- Local resources for family history research: County Mayo
- Mayo's connection to Saint Thomas More
- St Patrick's Day in Holyoke, Massachusetts
- Genealogy tips from the IGRS
- What's New? Review of latest record releases
- Surnames of County Mayo
- Tracing my ancestors from Wisconsin to Westmeath Pt2
- Australian Connections: Irish in the North End
- Using Irish naming conventions to research
- Overcoming the pitfalls of online church records
- DNA research: Frequent queries answered

Irish Roots is published quarterly and is available in print and digital formats, in single issues or on subscription.

To find out more, and to download a sample copy of this new edition, click the cover image.

Records from 15 more Cork graveyards join SkibbHeritage database

Skibbereen Heritage's excellent Cork Graveyard Database has been updated with another tranche of burial register records. This upload of 27,000 records brings the total number of burials in the collection to 82,702, while the number of cemeteries and burial grounds covered has risen to 128.

Most of the deaths occurred in the 20th century and early 21st. Burials in the last ten years are not included.

The records have been made available to Skibbereen Heritage Centre by Cork County Council, who are now responsible for each of the sites and hold the original registers.

This latest tranche of records relate to burials from the following graveyards:

The updated database includes records from 128 graveyards

• St Mary's Passage West
• Ballyclough
• Burnfoot
• Banteer
• Killingley
• Carrigaline St Mary's
• St John's Coachford
• North Kilmurry near Berrings
• Kilmurry St Mary's
• Marmullane, Kilmueey
• Matehy
• Aghabulloge
• Garrycloyne, All Saints
• Dunbullogue
• Kilfauygnabeg, Old Graveyard

Having extended the geograpahical spread of this collection, the West Cork Graveyard Database has been renamed the Cork Graveyard Database.

Huge congratulations and thanks to the SkibbHeritage team for their ongoing hard work in creating this wonderful and free collection.

Four new record-sets join Ancestry's Ireland collection

Ancestry has uploaded four new Irish collections to its database:

Ireland, Guinness Employee Records, 1799-1939
Of the four, this is the collection that has the potential to unlock genealogical information about your ancestor if he or she was employed by Guinness.

The 204,605 records can include the following information for each individual: name, age and gender, marital status, date and place of birth, marriage date, employment and death dates, street address, occupation and place of work, spouse's name, age and birthdate, and the names, ages and relationships of up to four relatives.

The collection contains many different types of records: wages, authorization logs, next of kin records, and how and when a person worked for the company.

Ireland, Guinness Trade Ledgers, 1860-1960

This record set contains images of trade ledgers produced by Guinness Brewery employees in Dublin and England between 1860 and 1960. The ledgers record sales to trade customers, typically pubs and general grocers.

These entries sometimes show details of individual orders and their value, but may also record the deaths of publicans, and the names of their successors (see image).

In total, there are 1,452,426 records in this collection.

Ireland, Dublin Coopers Society and Brewers' Guild Records, 1702-1945
This small index of just 276 names can be used to confirm whether your ancestor was a member of the Coopers and Brewers Guild in Dublin at a specific point in time. It can also provide details of your ancestor's residence while a Guild member and, sometimes, a date of death or even exclusion.

Ireland, 2nd and 3rd Edition Map, 1899-1905
This collection contains images of second- and third-edition Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland produced between 1899 and 1905.

The maps use a scale in which one inch equals a mile, and they were based on previous maps that used a larger scale. They show details of cities and villages, roads, railroads, and topographical information and can be useful in family history when borders might have shifted over time or the names of places have changed. Comparing maps of a similar scale allows you to accurately place your ancestors.

UPDATE, 9 March: Ancestry has announced that the Guiness collections will be free to search and view until 22 March 2024.

New at FindMyPast: Irish Land Purchase Acts: transfers to tenants, 1891-1920

Making its debut online at FindMyPast is an important collection recording (pre-Independence) government loan advances made to tenant farmers for the purchase of their land. The source material is the monthly/annual Returns of Advances Under the Irish Land Purchase Acts, published by HM Stationery from records created by the Land Commission. It contains more than 741,000 records noting the transfer of about 13.5million acres from the landlord elite to some 400,000 tenants.

FindMyPast has named the record-set the Ireland, Land Commission Advances, 1891-1920 collection.

If you're unfamiliar with the purpose and work of the Irish Land Commission, read FindMyPast's 'Learn More' description as a starter. You'll find some useful background material in Professor Terence Dooley's History Today feature, Wikipedia, and this Irish Times article from 2022.

As I'm attending a family wedding this weekend, I've had only a brief chance overnight to peek into these records, so can't provide a detailed overview at this point. I'll explore further next week and gather some reaction from genealogists, too.

Enjoy!

My great-grandfather's purchase of his tiny allotment on which he and his wife had raised nine children.

Savings on 12-month subs to RootsIreland.ie until end of March

RootsIreland.ie is giving motivated Irish genealogists the chance to celebrate St Patrick's Day (and Irish Family History Month) with a generous discount of 25% on the standard price of a 12-month subscription. The offer will remain available until 11:59pm (Irish/British Summer Time) on Sunday 31 March 2024.

The RootsIreland database is managed by the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), a not-for-profit organisation that heads up a network of more than 30 genealogy and heritage centres across the island. It currently holds more than 23 million records and continues to grow.

While this database holds civil BMDs, census records, headstone inscriptions and census substitutes, RootsIreland is probably most appreciated for its fabulous collection of church records.

Its Roman Catholic church record collection is widely considered the most complete and most accurate set available online, and its impressive holding of Protestant records including Church of Ireland, Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, Quaker and Presbyterian records is second to none. Most of the Protestant records are not accessible online anywhere else.

You can find out more about this offer by clicking the orange 25% OFF button above, or go directly to the website to explore the online sources for each county, or to subscribe.

NOTE: You might also like to take a look at the latest Irish Genealogy Matters, the IFHF's newsletter, which was published this week. Download for free, here.

Ancestry adds Northern Ireland Street Directories, 1819-1900

Ancestry has created a new index + images database to a collection held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. It's been named Northern Ireland Street Directories, 1819–1900 and you can either search it by name or location, or browse imaged directory pages.

Sample from The Belfast and Province

Ulster Director, 1877

It's a big collection by Northern Ireland standards, holding 1,508,227 records of individuals living and working cities and towns. Some of the publications even include villages in the wider Ulster province.

The publications indexed in the collection are as follows:

• Belfast Directory
• The Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory
• The Belfast Directory (Belfast NewsLetter)
• Henderson's Belfast Directory and Northern Repository
• Henderson's New Belfast and Northern Repository
• Martin's Belfast Directory
• Matier's Belfast Directory
• New Directory of the City of LondonDerry
• The Belfast Province and Ulster Directory

Some of the directories are organised alphabetically by the individual's surname, others by street or occupation.

For more details about the collection, see PRONI's article here.

Last month's updates to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives

Files uploaded to Ireland Genealogy Projects - Archives during February are noted below. They have all been donated and uploaded by researchers for the benefit of other Irish family historians, and they are all free to access.

Stone in Knockanure Graveyard, Co Kerry, to the
Leary family. Click image to see larger photo showing
this and adjacent family stones.
Photo courtesy Larry Kehoe and IGP Archives.

If you have any records or photos that might help others, please consider donating them to IGP Archives. You'll find the details on the website, here.

CLARE Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Ennistymon Old Graveyard - Updated

CORK Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Clogagh Cemetery (Timoleague)

FERMANAGH Genealogy Archives - Church Records
Garrison CoI Marriages, 1847-1921

KERRY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Knockanure Graveyard, Parts 1 & 2
Lisselton Burial Ground

KILKENNY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Killinaspic Graveyard, Mooncoin

TYRONE Genealogy Archives - Church Records
Glenelly Presbyterian (Upper Bononey) marriages
Gortin Scots Presbyterian (Bodoney Lower) 1845-1921*
Magheramason Presbyterian, marriages 1881-1921

WEXFORD Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Calvary Cemetery, Bunclody Part 1

* marriages

National Archives of Ireland's Reading Room closed Wednesday

The Reading Room of the National Archives of Ireland at Bishop Street, Dublin, will be closed to the public for staff training on Wednesday 6 March.

Normal hours return on Wednesday.

National Archives of Ireland's genealogy site is playing up

The National Archives of Ireland's free Genealogy database is not working today. I don't know when this started, but as of this morning, while you can reach the https://genealogy.nationalarchives.ie home page, MOST of the links to the various online collections are not functioning.

Tweet from NAI (@NARIreland) this morning

However, if you want to view the Irish censuses for specific counties AND you known both the DED and townland for the area you're researching, the database is still accessible. There are two distinct routes:

1. Go to the link above and select either of the two 'Search Census' links on the landing page (not the 'Census Search Forms' options).
2. Alternatively, go direct to http://census.nationalarchives.ie.

On the landing page, select the 'Browse Census' option in the blue menu strip. Then click the census year of interest.

By selecting the County, DED and townland of interest, you'll be able to choose from the surnames appearing in this geographically precise area.

I'll update here when I know the site has been fixed.

UPDATE, 4 March: Each of the genealogy databases appears to be functioning correctly this morning. A bit slow when I tried them, but otherwise fine.

Ancestry updates and adds death records to its Ireland collection

The latest index to join Ancestry's Ireland collection is a small and neat one with just 5,618 individuals to search. It's been given the title 'Northern Ireland, Headstone Indexes, 1658-2018'. It additionally holds headstone details for 127 individuals buried in the USA.

The index links to sinton-family-trees.com, a family project site holding a range of ancestral information about the family – BMDs (civil and church registers), photos, school records, headstone transcriptions and miscellaneous details of their Quaker connections.

In the course of the researchers' visits to 33 burial grounds in Northern Ireland and 14 in the USA, many non-Sinton surnames were also recorded (fewer than 30% of the individuals in the source site's database are Sintons) so this collection may be worth searching by family historians researching other surnames.

UK and Ireland, Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current: The latest update of 710,497 obituaries tops up the entry count of this index to more than 30 million. Of this total, the number from Ireland remains fairly small; using Ireland as a search keyword, some 52,598 obituaries are returned with a small proportion related to the people with the surname Ireland.

Global, Find a Grave® Index for Burials at Sea and other Select Burial Locations, 1300s-Current: This Index has grown by 174,193 entries and now holds records of 15,823,357 individuals. A search with the keyword 'Ireland' returns more than 47,000 entries. While a small number have the surname Ireland, most of these entries appear to relate to people who were born and/or died in Ireland, but I'm not entirely convinced there is always a documented Irish connection.