• Update to the Civil Records

    An additional year of historic Births, Marriages and Deaths (Index entry and register image) are now available to view on the website www.irishgenealogy.ie website. The records now available online include: Birth register records – 1864 to 1923; Marriage register records – 1845 to 1948 & Death register records – 1871* to 1973.

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  • Welcome to www.irishgenealogy.ie

    churchrecords irishgenealogy.ie is a website that allows users the opportunity to search a wide range of record sources in their search of their Irish Ancestry. The website is home to the on-line historic 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
    • Soldier’s Wills
    • Griffith’s Valuations
    • Ireland - Australia Transportation database
    • Military Archives
    • Ellis Island
    • National Photographic Archive from the National Library of Ireland
    • We hope that you enjoy its many features and design.

    www.irishgenealogy.ie is a website operated by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media

  • Welcome to Family Research 2016

    2016 Family History home2016 Family History is a  free Irish genealogy education website, brought to you by the National Archives and IrishGenealogy.ie. The site is aimed primarily at secondary school students, but can be used by anyone with Irish ancestors to learn how to use the multiplicity of online sources now available for family history.

  • Church records available online @ www.irishgenealogy.ie

    This website holds a large searchable volume of pre 20th Century Church records of Baptism, Marriage and Burial that in many instances pre-date the Civil Registration. These include:

    Transcripts of the baptism and marriage records of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kerry to c. 1900, All Roman Catholic baptism, marriage and burial registers for Dublin City, All surviving Church of Ireland baptism, marriage and burial registers for Dublin City,... To search these records directly, please click here.

    Read More Now

  • Minister Humphreys launches online genealogy toolkit for schools to help students discover their family history

    Minister Humphreys launches online genealogy toolkit for schools to help students discover their family historyThe Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys TD, launched an online genealogy toolkit for schools, aimed at encouraging students to trace their roots and explore their family tree.

    The 2016 Family History website has been created by the National Archives as a legacy project under the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme. Minister Humphreys met with students in Muckross College in Donnybrook, who had been trialling the website, to launch the online resource

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Sorting and viewing the search results

The search results are presented with two sort options accessible from the top banner of the search results page.
The first option is to sort results by relevance. This allows records to be presented in the following order:

  1. Accuracy of the searched field, i.e. the actual spelling of the name as entered. Variants of the name are given a lower relevance and appear further down the list of results. Please note that this does not imply that you will only find your desired records in the first results. Variations in the name spellings, among other factors may determine the success in finding what you are looking for and where in the results that record may be.
  2. Within the records with the same accuracy level, records are sorted with reference to the number of times the searched field appears. For example, if one searched for the surname Harrison, records with multiple individuals with that name would appear higher on the list than those with only one reference to that name.
  3. Finally records are sorted by reference to the date of the event.

The second option is to sort the results by date. Quite simply, the date of the event determines to order the record is presented. From the perspective of the social historian, this option facilitates a chronological view of events for a particular area.

Narrow your search

Upon inputting your search criteria and being presented with the initial results, you may wish to refine your search. This can easily be done by utilising the “Narrow your search” options in the sidebar of the results window.

In the first instance you can choose to narrow the search by event. Selecting one of the three options, baptism, marriage or burial, will reduce the results to those relevant to the chosen event.
You may also choose to filter the search by diocese or parish and this can be done by selecting the appropriate options on the side bar. In all cases the numbers next to the options in this side bar relate to the number of records within each option, e.g. Lucan R.C. (70), Palmerstown R.C. (14) indicates that there are 70 records in the results for Lucan with 14 relevant to Palmerstown.

You can also filter your search results by century and decade in a similar fashion.

Finally, should you know the name of another person involved in the event, for example, the second spouse in a marriage, you can enter this in the "With an additional name" box and your search will be refined so as to present results where this additional name is also included in the particular record.

Browse by location

In some circumstances, it may be useful to get an overview of all the records in a diocese or parish. To do so, you can choose the option to “Browse the database by location”, which is available on the initial Search church records tab.
Selecting the relevant Diocese and Parish will present all the records for that parish. These records are displayed in date order.

Searching by date

The online search facility also allows you to search for records by date. In situations where only a partial date is known, you can search accordingly (e.g. for March 1867, enter 03 in the month box and 1867 in the year box). All records containing that date in one of the date fields will be presented.
Please note that in some cases the date of birth is included in the baptism record and the date of death in the burial record. These date fields are also searched.

Searching by location

The online search facility also allows you to search for records by location. The basic topographical structure for the church records are: Diocesan Area (or more commonly, Diocese); Parochial Area (Parish); Townland or Street. When searching by location all records containing that location in one of the address or location fields are presented.
When searching for a street, parade, avenue, terrace, square, gardens etc., only put in the name of the street, without suffix e.g. Glengariff for Glengariff Parade, Mountjoy for Mountjoy Square, Park for Park Avenue.
Please be aware that a search by townland may not present the anticipated number of returns. Address information was not uniformly entered in the records and addresses were often not recorded at all. Furthermore, the spelling of townland names varies considerably, even where entered (e.g. Ballynagare, Ballinagar, Ballinagare, etc.). 
Finally, over the period covered by the records, the traditional boundaries of townlands could have been prone to change or be mistaken. For instance, a family whose address is recorded variously as Ballynagare and Curraghcroneen may not necessarily have moved. Instead the clergyman completing the register may not have been sure of the boundary between these two adjoining townlands.
Two external online resources may be of assistance on topographical issues, particularly as they relate to townland names and locations. The Placenames Database of Ireland - Bunachar Logainmneacha na hÉireann is a useful reference and can be accessed online at www.logainm.ie. This is a valuable resource for historians and researchers in genealogy and provides details on the location and meaning of placenames.
Ordnance Survey Ireland is the national mapping agency of the Republic of Ireland and is accessible online at www.osi.ie. This site contains an interactive map viewing facility which allows the user to view, not just maps of the locations but also aerial photographs of the area taken in 2000 and 2005.

Searching by person

The online search facility in this website allows you to search for records using the name of the person, a location, by using a date or a combination of all three.
The person search allows you to search for a record using the name of a person referred to in the records. Where the first name and surname is known, both may be entered, (e.g., John McCarthy). Similarly, where only a surname is known, that can be entered (e.g., McCarthy). In this latter situation, the number of results may be large and you may wish to narrow your search (see the relevant help section).

It is important to remember that the names on this site have been transcribed as they were written on the original church registers. We have not corrected spellings. Some names were only partially legible. You may, therefore, have to try a number of strategies to find the person you seek.
If you are unsure of the spelling of the person's name, you can use a wildcard character. Use an asterisk (*) to represent letters of which you are not sure, e.g. M*Carthy will present results for McCarthy and MacCarthy. Names that begin with O as a prefix, like O'Brien, can be transcribed as O'Brien, O Brien or Obrien. Try all the variations. Please be aware that, on occasion, some name variations are very difficult to anticipate. For an example in the Kerry records, consider the name McKenna, which is often recorded as Gna, Gnaw, Guinaw, etc. This situation can arise due to local pronunciations and custom.

In order to assist in finding your chosen record, the search facility incorporates a surname variation search. A database of surname variations, including many of the known spelling variations, is automatically searched when a name is entered and variations of the searched name are presented. Thus a search for McKenna, will also present results for MacKenna, Mc Kenna, M’Kenna, Gna, Guinaw, etc, etc. Please note that this surname variation facility is only provided as an aid to searching and it does not purport to highlight all name and spelling variations nor does it purport to indicate direct relationships between different surnames. For example, the surname McElligott, which occurs commonly in Kerry may occasionally have been transcribed as Elliot but the latter is also an entirely separate and unrelated surname and occurs more commonly in the Dublin records.

A further complication can occur if the first names were recorded in Latin, rather than English, as was sometimes the case. Some of the more common Latin-English first name translations are as follows:

  • Carolus - Charles
  • Demetrius - Jeremiah, Diarmuid, Darby
  • Gulielmus - William
  • Honoria - Nora
  • Jacobus - James
  • Joannes or Ioannes - John
  • Petrus - Peter
  • Thaddeus - Timothy

The results presented include all records in which the name appears. The person may be a spouse, child, parent, sponsor or witness, etc. This is done to give the greatest possibility of finding the required record and to facilitate the establishing of family connections. For instance, sponsors and witnesses may be closely related (e.g. a brother, sister, cousin, etc.) to the child or the spouses.
If you hover the cursor over a result, you will be presented with a pop-up of a subset of the record details to assist you in locating the desired record. You may also click on a record to view the full record.

Welcome from the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media

I am very pleased to welcome you to irishgenealogy.ie the website dedicated to helping you search for family history records for past generations. The website is now home to the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths of the General Register Office. These records join the Indexes to the historic records of Births, Marriages and Deaths that were already available on the website.