Latest Irish Genealogy News

Irish Genealogy News: May 2025

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has confirmed extended opening hours until the end of November 2025. On one Thursday each month, both the Search Room and Reading Room will remain open until 8pm, while on one Saturday each month, visitors will also be able to carry out research from 10am to 2pm. No booking is required. The dates and times are published here, under Extended Opening Hours 2025.

The BritishNewspaperArchive.co.uk has added the Achill Missionary Herald and Western Witness to its online holding. It's a unique and deliberately controversial publication with more than 185 editions spanning 1837-1868 (with some gaps) now available to read on both the BNA and FindMyPast databases.

The BNA has also added more than two million pages since the beginning of April (new total is 92.3m). This month's topped up holdings from Northern Ireland are the Missionary Herald of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Newry Telegraph. The Republic of Ireland's top-ups went to the holdings of the Limerick Reporter, The Midland Reporter and Westmeath Nationalist and Saunders’s News-Letter.

New at Ancestry, the UK, Postal Establishment Books, 1691-1979 collection may not sound too promising as a collection for finding Irish ancestors but ignore that doubt because it's jammed with Irish-born men and women. The British Post Office was state-managed until fairly recently and offered many bright Irish-born teenagers an opportunity to land a junior civil service position. These positions were usually but not exclusively based in mainland Britain, especially in London. My own grandfather and two of his brothers, all born 1880, give or take a couple of years, were among those who passed the civil service examination in Dublin and subsequently set sail for a new life and regular employment. The collection holds 1,655,863 records.

Here's a tiddler (for Irish genealogists) that could prove very useful for those with family tree running back to the 18th century: All UK, Navy Board and Predecessors Prisoner of War Registers, 1755-1831. This collection (with a total of 1.2m records) has joined Fold 3, Ancestry's specialist military database, while an index is accessible in the main Ancestry database via the link above. The index offers up some 1,500 entries for seamen born in Ireland and later captured during some conflict or other. Year of birth is provided (or guessed) for many while a place of birth is given for a minority. Most have a date and place of capture and, in many cases, a date of release or death. The AI text transcription is dire, so prepare to be creative with spellings of names and places.

Last call for free access to Ancestry UK's wartime records! Collections included in the VE Day 80 offer are: WW1 Medal Roll index cards; WW1 War Diaries; Royal Navy registers of seamen; Incoming Passenger Lists; the 1939 Register for England & Wales: WW2 Civil Defence Gallantry Awards: and National Probate Calendars for 1858-1995. 

The free access ended 13 May.

RootsIreland.ie has added more than 20,385 County Kerry records to its database. They're from the RC parish of Killorglin baptisms and span 1798-1911, albeit with some gaps between 1851-1880). See rootsireland.ie/kerry to search.

US-based reserchers can take advantage of an Ancestry DNA sale which has reduced the price of a test kit by 60%.

The offer, ostensibly for Mothers' Day, sees the kit on sale for just $39 + shipping  12 May. Offer now expired.

Irish Genealogy News: April 2025

The volunteer-led Irish Deeds Index Project has been updated. It now holds 626,781 index records from 64,426 memorials of deeds. The database is free to search, and nearly 90% of the records have a direct link to the the memorial book images on familysearch.org.

Ancestry's latest addition of Irish interest is an index to burial records at St Peter's, Little Bray, County Wicklow. It holds some 9,500 entries relating to burials dating from 1910 to 2016.

The National Archives in Kew, London, has introduced new security measures. From Monday 29 April, all visitors to the building will have their bags, containers and other belongings searched by security staff. See the list of prohibited items.

RootsIreland has added 2,410 records from County Monaghan to its database. The upload includes a mix of 606 marriage records from Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Wesleyan Methodits and Roman Catholic congregations; some 560 Catholic Baptisms; and 1,250 school records dating from 1867 to 1919.  For details, see the site's Monaghan menu of online sources.

Half price subscriptions are on offer (first time for years) from FindMyPast until Tuesday 22 April 2025. See Special Offers page. Offer has expired.

Free access to 1939 Register! To mark the upcoming 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE Day), FindMyPast is offering free access to the 1939 Register collection until 8 May.

The collection includes records of each person living in England and Wales (plus some living in the Isle of Man and Channel Islands) and was introduced to provide a snapshot of demographics and skills just prior to war being declared in September 1939. The records typically include each individual's name, full date of birth, marital status, occupation and address. Those born after 1925 are redacted, unless they are known to have died. 

Ancestry has uploaded an index to the UK, WWI Hospital Registers, 1915-1919, a collection of 818,003 British military hospital records from WW1. In addition to basic personal identification data, the Index includes dates for admissions and discharges from facilities such as field ambulances, casualty clearing stations, hospital trains and ships. The records may link to original documents on Fold 3 and Forces War that include details such as medical diagnoses, period and place of treatment centres.

Tipperary Studies, the online home of County Tipperary's Library Service, has announced that its free-to-access digital archive has achieved an impressive milestone of 3 million hits. The site offers access to an extensive collection of historical and cultural materials including rare manuscripts, vintage photographs, maps, parish records, and much more. Check it out at tippstudiesdigital.ie.

More Irish historical newspapers have joined the BritishNewspaperArchive*. New to the online database are the Irish Homestead, the Jewish Echo, Warder & Dublin Weekly Mail, Morning Mail (Dublin), and the Irish Textile Journal.

Additional editions have also been available for some of last month's new titles including the Clare Champion, Irish Field, New Ross Reporter, Wicklow Press, Drogheda Advertiser, Cork Weekly Herald, Nenagh Guardian, and Limerick Leader.

*These updates also apply to FindMyPast's Irish Newspaper Collection.