1901 Irish Census

Following on from my last post – Findmypast has announced that it has added the 1901 Irish Census to their records. This is the earliest surviving complete Irish census. You are able to search all variations of a name and narrow your results by date of birth. You can also search for two members of the same household at the same time. Don't forget that you can access Findmypast free of charge at Manly Library and most public libraries.

Irish records at FindMyPast

There has been a real surge in the availability of Irish Family History Records. I have already listed many in previous posts. Findmypast has one of the largest collections of Irish family history records available online, containing Irish censuses, parish records, Irish newspapers and more. You can search at Findmypast - this is a subscription based database, but they frequently have free trials available, or you can access the website at Manly Library and other public libraries free of charge. Irish records on Findmypast include Ireland Censuses from 1821 to 1851 that survived the fire at the Four courts in 1922; Ireland Census Search Forms for 1841 & 1851, which were used to verify the ages of people applying for an old age pension in 1909 and contain extra information on Irish families; Griffith's Valuation 1847-1864, with details of who owned or rented land in Ireland; Landed Estates Court Rentals 1850-1885 lists those with bankrupt estates amongst over 500,000 tenants on more than 8,000 estates across Ireland; the Elliott collection contains parish registers from County Fermanagh and cemetery records fro Donegal, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Wicklow; Poverty Relief Fund records cover the micro credit scheme set up in 1824 to provide small loans to the 'industrious poor'. Local committees administered the scheme and kept copious records about people who received loans. Nearly 700,000 names are recorded in these files and they give a snapshot of life including age, occupation and fiscal history. occasionally more detail is given, including degree of destitution, family circumstances, emigration and death. These records also span the period of the Famine (1945-51). There is a range of National Irish Newspapers, including The Freeman's Journal, Ireland's longest running national publication which merged into The Irish Independent in 1924. The collection now stand at a total of over 7.2 million articles and 68 different titles from the 1740s onwards. The newspapers are easy to use as they have been digitised and indexed.
Happy searching!

British Newspaper Archive

The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) has now been operating for over 3 years – have you had a look at it yet? It was launched on 29 November 2011 with 4 million historic newspaper pages and has grown to over 9 million fully searchable pages available from 300 British and Irish titles. The newspapers cover 1710 – 1954, a much broader time period than at launch. 

The British Newspaper Archive is a partnership between the British Library and Findmypast to digitise up to 40 million newspaper pages from the British Library's vast collection over the next 10 years.
You can search - 
News Articles - read about national events, as well as issues of local and regional importance. News articles are your window into daily life in historical Britain.
Family Notices - search your family's birth, marriage and death notices plus related announcements including engagements, anniversaries, birthdays and congratulations.
Letters - read letters to the editor written by the newspaper's readers, including illumination contemporary debates, aspirations and anxieties.
Obituaries - view a wealth of contemporary information on the lives of notable individuals and ancestors.
Advertisements - these include classifieds, shipping notices and appointments. There are illustrations - see photographs, engravings, graphics, maps and editorial cartoons. 

National Library of Ireland Digitisation Project

Something I missed in the previous post is that National Library of Ireland is undertaking a massive digitisation of Irish Records. The NLI is in the process of digitising more than 400,000 images of Catholic parish registers which it will make available on-line free of charge. This project is already being described as “the most significant ever digitisation project for Irish genealogy” and the NLI is expecting records to be available as early as the middle of 2015. The digital images due to be published by the NLI will be searchable by parish location only. They will not be transcribed or indexed by the NLI, and the images will be of the microfilms of the original registers, which – in some cases – were in poor condition when the microfilming took place. The images will be in black and white. The information in the registers varies from parish to parish but, typically, includes the dates of the baptisms or marriages, and the names of the key people involved, including godparents or witnesses.

Irish Resources on-line

Irish On-line resources just keep expanding. One of the latest: -

Irish Archives Resource web portal http://www.iar.ie/index.shtml

This portal will link you to archival collections throughout Ireland. Archives are the documents and records that relate to people, places, organisations, and events. You can use this portal to locate archives relating to your area of interest or research topic. The site provides links to 34 archive collections. Essentially the Irish Archives Resource is an “… online database which contains searchable archival descriptions. It does not hold any archives or records but provides a means to search archival descriptions from various contributing institutions”.

But don’t forget: -

National Archives, Ireland http://www.genealogy.nationalarchives.ie/

From the National Archives Genealogy Website you can access the Census Records for 1901 and 1911, Census survivals for 1821-51, Census Search forms for 1841-51, the Tithe Applotment Books from 1823 to 1837, the Soldiers’ Wills from 1914 to 1917, and the Calendars of Wills and Administrations from 1858 to 1922.

This site will have large numbers of other genealogical records added to it over the coming years, including Valuation Office House and Field Books, 1848 – 60

All of these records are free to access, through searchable databases and linked images of relevant pages. Eventually, the site will contain all of the important and easily accessible genealogical material in the custody of the National Archives

National Library of Ireland http://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

Contains some excellent suggestions, methodology, descriptions and explanations of sources as well as links to tracing your Irish Family History.

Irish Genealogy http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/

This website is operated by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht & provides users with the opportunity to search a wide range of record sources in their search of their Irish Ancestry. It is home to the on-line Indexes of the Civil Registers (GRO) of Births, Marriages, Civil Partnerships and Deaths and to Church Records of Baptism, Marriage and Burial from a number of counties. The website also operates as a search portal that allows users to search the following record sources as well:

• 1901/1911 Census records and pre-1901 survivals
• Census Search forms from 1841/1851
• Tithe Applotments
• Soldiers' Wills
• Griffith's Valuations
• Ireland - Australia Transportation database
• Military Archives
• Ellis Island
• National Photographic Archive from the National Library of Ireland

Family Search https://familysearch.org/search

The Family Search database provides free access to 19 collections of Irish records covering the years 1619 -2013. They are made up of 38,696,281 indexed records and 19,553,476 record images.