1. Home
›
2. Irish Genealogy News

Irish Family History News, Q3 2025

Irish Genealogy News, September 2025

The Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF), the team responsible for the island's network of county-based genealogy centres, has uploaded some 41,356 census substitutes to its database, RootsIreland.

These new records relate to Counties Cork, Dublin, Fermanagh, Kerry and Wexford, as follows (numbers in parenthesis): 

• Apothecary & Apprentices: Cork, Dublin, Fermanagh, Kerry, Wexford (1,873)
• Anti-Repeal Declaration: Cork, Dublin, Fermanagh, Kerry, Wexford (3,575)
• Dublin Electors 1865: Dublini (10,697)
• Flaxgrowers Index: Cork, Fermanagh, Kerry (4,411 )
• Forfeiting Proprietors: Cork, Dublin, Kerry, Wexford (2,482 )
• Freeholder Index: Fermanagh (1,502 )
• Matriculated and non Mat. Students: Cork (675)
• Muster Rolls: Fermanagh (970)
• Outlawries for treason: Cork, Dublin, Wexford (2,542)
• Pension List: Cork, Dublin, Fermanagh, Kerry, Wexford (5,430)
• Publication Subscriber List: Cork, Dublin, Fermanagh, Kerry, Wexford (4,212)
• Rental Of Land Gable Rents 1665: Dublin (2,053)
• School Register Index: Fermanagh (246)
• Ulster 1900 Directory: Fermanagh (688)

For more details on the sources, click here.

To search these records, go to the county search page and select Census Substitutes. Select an option from the 'Source' drop-down-list if you wish to search an individual source.

The General Register Office's 'Research Room' in Werburgh Street, Dublin will close on Tuesday 30 September at 4:30pm.

It will relocate to the GRO's Research Rooms, Guild Building, Cork Street, The Liberties, Dublin 8, reopening at 9:30am on Tuesday 21 October. Details. 

Housed in a large modern office block, the new location is just over a kilometre further out of the city centre and on the no. 27 bus route. The nearest Luas tram stop is Fatima (Red Line). 

Four Courts Press has published the latest titles (numbers 172-177) in the highly-regarded Maynooth Studies in Local History Series. 

• Pre-Famine Fever Epidemics: A case study of the Cork Street Fever Hospital, Dublin, by Ciarán McCabe.
• Dublin’s women street traders, 1882-1932 , by Susan Marie Martin.
• Building Mitchelstown, 1779-1830, by David A. Fleming.
• Finding Mary: The untold story of an Inishowen murder, 1844, by Angela Byrne.
• Factory life in Industrial Yarns Ltd, Bray, 1958-98, by Kieran Devenish.
• The Lismore (O’Callaghan) estate under William Robert Hood Rochfort, 1891-1902, in Counties Cork, Limerick and Tipperary, by Margaret O'Sullivan.

Each paperback offers between 60 and 80 pages of indepth research on its topic and is currently on offer from the publisher at €11.65. Find out more here.

The Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS) has updated its Early Irish BMD Indexes, an exclusive collection holding details of more than 422,000 named individuals recorded in obscure or lesser-known sources. Most are dated before the 1820s. 

With this update, there are now 97,077 in the birth index, 48,530 in the death index, and 276,527 in the marriage index.

Find out more at the IGRS website. 

Ancestry has added two more Irish collections this month. They are:

Ireland, Midleton Distillery Barley Purchase Books, 1825-1834

This collection provides access to three volumes of ledgers created by the firm James Murphy & Co at the Midleton Distillery in Midleton, County Cork. The ledgers record purchases of barley - a primary ingredient of Irish whiskey - from local farmers in the East Cork area.  

The 6,330 index entries record the names of individual farmers, and their date and place of residence. However, it's important to note that the original documents contain additional information that has not been indexed, so a good browse of the images should be carried out.  

Ireland, Church of Ireland Land Tenure Index, 1878

This small collection of just under 700 indexed entries, has been created from a government report on the sale of land by a commission overseeing the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland. The Report of the Commissioners of Church Temporalities in 1878 provided information on sales of church land made to people who had previously been tenants of the church and sales to members of the general public. The collection doesn’t include images of the original report.

I'd recommend you read Ancestry's description of the collection before you dive in.

RootsIreland.ie is offering a 25% discount on 12-month subscriptions to its database until 23:59pm (GMT+1) on Thursday 18 September. (Now expired.

The site is best known for holding the most extensive collection of church records from across the island and offers transcriptions from the baptisms, marriages and burials registers of many denominations. You can check what's available for each county here.

Good news for researchers with connections to the the Midlands area of Ireland... The Dublin-based Irish Newspaper Archives has continued to expand its collection, recently adding the following new titles:

• Kings County Chronicle (now known as Offaly Chronicle), 1845–1963
• Tullamore Tribune, 1978–current
• Tullamore Kings County Independent (later known as Offaly Independent), 1894–1919
• Midland Tribune, 1881–current.

Nearly 730,000 new Irish school records have been added to Ancestry. They are from schools in counties Mayo and Sligo and span 1802-1928. 

The collection - Mayo and Sligo, Ireland, School Registers, 1802-1928 - covers many types of registers including those recording daily attendance, roll books, exam rolls and details of pupils taking extra subjects, such as 'cookery and laundry skills'.  

In the 1912 Cookery and Laundry Work register from Shraigh school in Mayo, for example, you can not only check out the names of individuals taking these lessons but also find detailed coverage of the syllabus they followed. 

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives had a very busy month with volunteers donating their time to bring us the following additional records, all provided absolutely free. Use the links to view each record set.

Headstones

• CAVAN : St. Dympna's Part 2, Lower Lavey 
• KERRY : John Paul II Burial Ground, Listowel
• WEXFORD: Kildavin Graveyard, Deerpark, Murrintown

Church Records

• DONEGAL: Carnone Presbyterian Marriages (Donaghmore Par.) 1845-1921
• TYRONE : 2nd Strabane Presbyterian Marriages, 1846-1921

Land Records

• GALWAY :  Tenants of Quansbury Estate, Kilquane, 1777-78     
• KILDARE : Tenants of Monasterevin & Fontstown - 1728 and Rent Roll - Estate of William Tighe 1825/26
• LIMERICK: Farmers in Castletown 1848/49
• WEXFORD: Colclough Estate Tenants and Labourers in Kilcavan Parish:1850

Other Records

• DONEGAL : Townavilly School - 1849
• LIMERICK : Flax Growers - Shangolden 1808
• LOUTH : Constables of County Louth in 1823
• WEXFORD : Deserted Children - 1846

Irish Genealogy News: August 2025

Ancestry has uploaded the Ireland, Jury Lists Index, 1798-1898 collection.

This collection is an index of jury lists produced in Ireland between 1798 and 1898. The lists were printed in books, but images of the original documents aren not included in this collection. This index includes information from the following locations and years:

• Dublin: 1798, 1803 & 1844
• Tipperary: 1845-1846
• Westmeath: 1845
• Mayo: 1851
• All of Ireland: 1882-1883 & 1898

The BritishNewspaperArchive.co.uk has uploaded the following new Irish titles to its database, which is shared with some FindMyPast subscription packages.

• Cashel Sentinel, 1889-1896   
• Belfast Linen Trade Circular, 1857–85

In addition, two regional titles have seen their holdings expanded. They are:

• Armagh Guardian - 102 more editions have been added. New total 4,716. 
• LondonDerry Standard - available editions now span 1836-1964 with gaps.

The Ulster Historical Foundation (UHF) has been making significant improvements to some of its key genealogical databases.

These updates include adding locations to records where possible, correcting previously unnoticed small errors, enhancing details, and optimizing over 100,000 records for easier and more accurate searching.

This work has also unlocked over 60,000 records previously hidden in the UHF archives

As well as these corrections, some 10,000 brand new records have also been added. 

The list of updated and new databases can be explored here.

FindMyPast has added a new collection of 42,328 headstone transcriptions. These inscriptions were gathered by volunteers and published between 1892 and 1934 in the Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland. All 32 historical counties of Ireland are represented. Search the Ireland, Memorials of the Dead collection. 

Irish Genealogy News in July 2025

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland - PRONI - has introduced a new Catalogue Ordering System in its Search Room. Visitors who have any queries or difficulties with the new system should ask for assistance from staff at the Help Desk. 

Ireland's Military Archives has released more tha 2,110 new files from the Military Service Pensions Collection (1916-23). This latest release holds details of 865 individuals/veterans or their dependants with addresses in Cork, Dublin, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Northern Ireland, England, Jersey, the USA and Canada.

RootsIreland.ie has uploaded almost 9,000 Roman Catholic baptismal and marriage records from South Tipperary. They are as follows:

• 6,393 baptisms, 1834-1905 (Knockavilla RC parish);
• 2,404 marriages, 1834-1905 (Knockavilla RC parish).

To search these records or to see the full menu of South Tipperary sources in the database, go rootsireland.ie/tipperarysouth.

RootsIreland has added some 70,000 'census substitute' records to its Antrim and Down holding. They're a mixed bundle of 12 distinct record sets and include some lesser-known early materials that many researchers may not have come across before. Here's a summary to whet your appetite:

• Hertford Estate Rent Roll, 1728 (1,329 records)
• Electors of the Borough of Belfast, 1832 (1,685 records)
• Electors of the Borough of Belfast, 1865 (3,508 records)
• Anti-Repeal Declaration, 1848 (2,895 records)
• Index to 1796 Flaxgrowers Bounty List for Antrim and Down (4,187 records)
• Royal Irish Constabulary Registry of Households in Sub-District of Knocknacarry, County Antrim, 1881-1901 (4,522 records)
• Census Of Protestant Householders, 1740 (5,888 records)
• The Ulster Muster Roll, c.1630, Counties Antrim & Down (5,678 records)
• Old Age Pension Proof of Age Extraction Claim Forms 1841, 1851 (4,312 records)
• Census of Bangor parish, 1861 (7,026 records)
• Ulster Directory 1900 (11,716 records)
• 1803 Agricultural Census of Parishes in Antrim and Down (16,525 records).

See RootsIreland's detailed descriptions of these collections here.

During May, Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives uploaded the following materials, all donated by volunteers, to its free database:

Headstones

• CARLOW - St. Patrick's R.C. Graveyard, Newtown Part 2
• CAVAN - Lavey, St. Dympna R.C. Part 1
• KERRY - John Paul II Burial Ground, Listowel Part 4
• WEXFORD - St. Mary's Cemetery, Enniscorthy (Partial) and                     
•                   Tomhaggard Old R.C. Graveyard

Church Records

• TYRONE - St. James, Donagheady CoI Marriages 1845-1921

The Registry of Deeds Index Project has updated all three of its free-to-access databases. It brings the number of records in the Main Index to 629,064, transcribed from 64,636 memorials of deeds.

The Townland Index has also grown during May. It now holds 703,835 entries, while the Grantor Index now tots up to 52,757 entries.