Your Irish Genealogy search A - Z

Find family history resources in Ireland. Pinpoint the Irish records you want.

This Irish genealogy search A-Z will come in handy no matter what stage your research has reached.

In some cases, the details on this page simply redirect you to the relevant section of Irish Genealogy Toolkit. Others provide a brief summary of the resources available and gives you a link(s) to more detailed information, either in this section of the website or on external sites.

View from Timoleague churchyard, Cork, Ireland.

Archives & Repositories in Ireland

The majority of the most important Irish records collections are held in archives or similar repositories in Dublin.

However, local archives can be equally important to your Irish genealogy search, particularly as you delve deeper into the lives of your ancestors. Most of the 32 counties of Ireland has a county archive. And many of the county towns also has a city archive (often, but not always, they are found in the same building). These can be found by typing 'Archive' and the name of the county into the search box of your browser.

Be aware that some archives are managed by very small teams so they may be open for only a few hours a week. Many of them will accommodate pre-arranged visits outside of the standard hours, however.

Tips to maximise your Irish genealogy search at an archive:

Be clear about what you want to achieve. Archive offices are not the right places for rooting around in the hope of finding 'something'. Be specific. And make sure the archive you're going to visit holds those records.
If this is to be the first step of your Irish genealogy search, see the Getting Started pages before making arrangements to visit.
The four most vital pieces of information you need for your family tree search in Ireland are: surname, religion, townland where they lived and approximate dates for when they lived there.
Bear in mind that most of Ireland's genealogy records are organised by townland name. Without this piece of information, it will be difficult to find your family in any archives (unless they have an unusual name).

Have a good look at the Learn About Archives website where there's some great information and advice, and a comprehensive list of Ireland's archives.

Birth & Baptism

Ireland's birth records (civil registration).
See also Church Records below.

Cemeteries

See Death below.

Census of Ireland

Unfortunately, the censuses taken in the 19th century were destroyed. This great tragedy is the reason many people find their Irish genealogy search difficult.

Only a few fragments and transcriptions of the original censuses survive. However, the 1901 and 1911 censuses survive complete. Full details in the Irish census section of Irish Genealogy Toolkit.

A number of specific surveys were carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries, often across a more localised geographical area or distinguishable group of people. Many of these also survive. These collections are known as Ireland's census substitutes.

Church Records

Church records include records of baptisms/christenings, marriages, and burials. These records were created in Parish Registers and constantly updated as births, weddings and deaths occurred.

For Irish genealogy research, church registers can be a wonderfully rich source of information but, as family historians soon discover, there are many problems to overcome. The most obvious is that a huge number of records do not survive.

An 1876 law demanded that all Church of Ireland parish registers be sent to the Public Record Office in Dublin for safekeeping. This law was amended in 1878 to allow parishes with good storage facilities to retain their records, so not all parish records were sent to Dublin, and others were copied before being sent.

This was just as well, because those enjoying 'safekeeping' in Dublin were destroyed in a fire in 1922.

Most of those that had not been sent to Dublin survive, although not all under one roof. They are rather scattered, so tracking down a particular register, or a copy of it, can, sometimes, be troublesome.

Roman Catholic registers also survive (with a small number of exceptions), but they don't generally date back much beyond the 1820s. Some don't even start until the second half of the 19th century.

See the Church Records section of this site for details of Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Protestant and Quaker records.