How to trace family history in Irish church records

To trace family history in Ireland pre-1864, you will usually need to get to grips with Irish parish registers. For records of births, marriages and deaths after that date, your ancestral search is better directed towards the Irish civil registration system.

Two pieces of information are crucial before you can realistically expect to trace family history in Irish church records: the name of the place (town or village) where your ancestors lived and their religion.

This is because parish registers were collected locally and remain, generally speaking, accessible at a localised level.

While there has been a concerted effort in recent years to gather these local collections into a single, indexed, online source via the Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), not all churches and heritage centres have been willing or able to pass on their resources. And unlike so many online Irish genealogy resources, the cost of using the IFHF resource (link below) is considered prohibitive by some researchers.

The price of access is, then, one problem you may encounter when you start to trace family history in Irish parish registers.

A second problem may occur – and it's truly galling where it does – if the registers no longer exist for the Irish parishes where your ancestors lived. For example, in the parish of Emlafad and Kilmorgan in co. Sligo, the Church of Ireland registers for each of baptism, marriage and burial go back to 1762. Excellent news for anyone who's trying to trace family history of Protestants hailing from near Ballymote. But the news isn't so good if your ancestors from that area were Roman Catholics. Catholic baptism and marriage records for this district survive, with gaps, from 1824; the baptism records from 1824-1856 can only be accessed, for a fee, locally; and there are no burial records.

It could be worse. In the neighbouring parish of Achonry there are no surviving registers for either religion prior to the introduction of civil registration. This means that 1864 is your cut-off for birth and death records if you are hoping to trace family history in and around Tubbercurry. The same applies for Catholic marriages (but there are civil records for non-Catholic marriages throughout Ireland back to 1845). Obviously, this seriously limits the depth of your ancestral research. There is really nothing much you can do about this except accept it. And perhaps hope that by some miracle a copy of the local parish registers might, one day, be discovered intact and legible.

Where to start?

To trace family history in Irish church records you have to know where your ancestors lived. This means knowing the parish. The county, alone, will not help you much. If you haven't yet discovered the locality, you'll need to work on finding an exact place of origin.

It's also worth making sure you understand the system of Irish parishes and how this may impact on your search. More about these Irish land divisions.

Do you know the religion of your ancestors? Most researchers will be able to make an educated guess about this based on the faith of more recent relatives, but be prepared for the unexpected. In my own Irish ancestry search I was awash with Roman Catholics on every branch and twig of my family tree, but I found one lone Methodist – my 2 x grandfather, George Nichols born in 1844. I was really surprised. He married a Roman Catholic and his six children were brought up as Catholics, but he declared himself a Methodist on both the 1901 and the 1911 census. No wonder I hadn't found his Catholic baptism record where it 'should' have been!

Another common assumption – and one that is hopelessly incorrect – is that there were 'Protestant counties' and 'Catholic counties'. Typically what is assumed is that all Irish Protestants hailed from the North while the rest of the island was uniformly Roman Catholic.

It just wasn't so. And it still isn't.

In 1831, some 80.3% of the population was Catholic, 10.7% was Church of Ireland (Anglican Protestants), and 8.1% were Presbyterians. Admittedly, these numbers were not equally distributed across the island but nearly half of the Protestants, for example, lived in what is now the Republic.

By 1911, the Catholic population had grown to 83% and the Protestant to 13% while Presbyterians and Methodists made up 2%. The remainder included a growing Jewish population, principally in Dublin, and Quakers (who had been in Ireland since 1650).

Finding records

While census and civil registration records are available free and online, the Internet has yet to provide any similar collections of church records except the International Genealogical Index (IGI). This was created by the LDS Church (Mormons) and is an uncomplicated way of starting to look for church records.

IGI

In addition to a number of births and marriages (and just a few deaths) transcribed from Ireland's civil registration records, plus a number of births, marriages and deaths submitted by LDS members from unidentified records (which must not be relied upon), the IGI contains a good number of entries transcribed from Irish parish registers. It is strongest on baptisms, has a smaller proportion of marriages and hardly any burials.

For example, it has several thousand Church of Ireland baptisms from 1683 to the late-1800s for Clones in co Monaghan, the full baptism and marriage records from 1782 to 1870 from the Presbyterian parish of Boardmills, co Down, and just over 40 baptisms from the Methodist registers of Dundalk, co Louth. But it contains no entries from Roman Catholic registers for any of these places. In fact, its coverage of Catholic church records is limited to some parishes in counties Cork, Galway, Kerry, Roscommon and Sligo.

It is, therefore, a bit of a miss-mash. Spelling errors abound, especially of place names, and it is far from complete. Some registers were fully transcribed. Others were partially transcribed. Some were not transcribed at all. It is very hit and miss.

For all that, it was, until early 2009, pretty much the only free online resource with more-or-less national coverage to help people trace family history in Ireland, and it still earns its place in your ancestral search. I'm extremely grateful to the LDS for it. A link to the online IGI is below.

The source documents (ie the parish registers) of online IGI entries can be viewed on microfiche or microfilm through the LDS Family History Center network for a small fee. You simply order the film or fiche containing the images of the register you are interested in. You can get further details of how to do this on the IGI website or by contacting one of the Centers.

Tips on how to trace family history in the IGI: Regard each IGI discovery as an important clue worth following up. Don't rely on any record you find. Verify everything.

IrishGenealogy.ie

Launched in late 2009 with funding from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, this site currently offers online access to a full transcript of church records for Dublin City and Kerry. FREE! Records for County Carlow, South-West County Cork and Cork City will follow. It's a marvellous site that's sure to help you to trace family history if your ancestors came from the area it covers. It's easy to use, too. Link below.

IFHF

I tend to give this online collection a bit of a hard time. Possibly I shouldn't. After all, it contains nearly 12 million records of births, marriages and deaths. Not all of them are from parish registers, however, and records from ten counties plus South Cork and the City of Dublin are not included. But this is not the reason why I only grudgingly recommend this database.

When it launched, it charged €10 to view each record (complaints resulted in a reduction to €5) and I've never quite got over my first impression that it has been designed as a money machine. What it needs is some serious competition, but there hasn't been any -- until IrishGenealogy.ie launched. Perhaps now it will evolve into the site it should be. For all my criticism, however, for those researchers who don't live in Ireland and/or can't conduct their Irish ancestry search through other free resources, the IFHF may provide an answer. Link below.

From the county map on the home page, you can see which records the IFHF database holds for 'your' county by clicking on for a 'detailed list of the searchable records'. Check this carefully to ensure your ancestor's parish is included. If it is not, there are currently no records in the database for that parish. If it is, go forward to search the birth (baptism), marriage or death (burial) records.

Tips on how to trace family history through this database: Be as precise as possible with your searches and set yourself a budget before you begin. The search fields are limited but use them if you have additional information. For example, if you are searching for John Doyle's baptism and you know his father was Patrick, include that name in the field. It will narrow down the results significantly.

Local churches

Many, but not all, churches and congregations hold a copy or transcript of their original parish registers. How far back they go may differ significantly. So, too, will the access offered by the local priest, minister or vicar.

When I started to trace my family history I was spoiled by my experience at St Andrews, the Catholic church in Bagenalstown, co Carlow. Without any appointment or charge, I was allowed to study their neatly filed and typed printouts of transcribed baptism, marriage and burial records. Had I contacted the church by letter or phone, the vestry staff would have offered to do the research for me for a modest fee. I was mightily impressed. I thought this was how it was always going to be, and innocently expected I'd get all my ancestors lined up in a family tree chart in no time at all.

In Cork (I won't mention the name of the parish), the reception was very different. When I rang to make an appointment, I was told there were no printouts, and registers were not available for the public to view. However, if I wanted to make a donation to the church, the priest would see if he could find the records I was seeking. I sent a 'donation'. I didn't hear another thing. Only later did I discover that these parish registers were available on microfilm at the National Library in Dublin. No donations expected.

So, if you are at a distance, you might try approaching the parish church itself to see what arrangements, if any, they could make to help you trace family history in their parish.

You should be able to find details of individual churches on Google. You'll also find vital additional information on my Main Religious Groups pages.... links at bottom of page.

Archives and Heritage Centres in Ireland

The National Archives of Ireland, the National Library of Ireland and PRONI have extensive collections (mostly on microfilm) to help you trace family history in Irish parish registers. Public access is free of charge.

Ireland's network of Heritage Centres – typically one per county – has been involved in the transcription and computerisation of Irish church records for some years. Most of these centres are part of the IFHF and release their records online through that organisation's umbrella website. All of these centres, and also those who do not release their records through the IFHF, are available to trace family history on clients' behalf through their research service. In other words, you either make your own search and pay online for individual records or you commission and pay for an Irish ancestry search to be carried out for you.

Unfortunately, some Heritage Centres have closed in recent years ie South and West Cork, Carlow and Derry. In these areas, an alternative is to hire a professional genealogist.

Of course, there are professional genealogists all over the island who trace family history and specialise in Irish ancestry. Search Google (or, even better, get some recommendations) for contacts.

The other main repositories that will help you to trace family history in Irish church records are the 'Head Offices' of each of the main religious groups. You'll find more information on my Main Religious Groups pages.... links below.

Miscellaneous church resources to help you trace family history in Ireland

There are a growing number of city, county and regional websites containing transcripts of various baptism, marriage and burial registers, as well as gravestones. Some of these are pay-per-view (ie www.ancestryireland.co.uk for Antrim and Down and www.funeralbooking.ie for Dublin) while others are free (ie www.cmcrp.net). A good many books have also been published over the years containing gravestone transcriptions from old churchyards.

The best way to come across these is to search on Google.

Main religious groups

For detailed guidance on the parish registors of specific religious groups, please choose one of these pages:

• How to trace ancestors in (Anglican) Church of Ireland records.
• How to trace family history in Roman Catholic baptism, marriage and burial registers
• How to find ancestral records for Irish Presbyterians
• How to find Methodist baptism, marriage and burial records
• How to trace family history for Irish Quakers

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Find out what the Irish civil registration system offers your ancestral research.

Go to Irish Genealogy Toolkit Home Page.