Tips for Researching Irish Ancestors

March is Irish-American heritage month, which makes it a good time for genealogists to find out what they can learn about their Irish ancestors. An easy way to get started on that research is to make use of online genealogy resources that contain Irish records.

MyHeritage has a blog post with tips for tracing your Irish ancestry. It is a good starting point for people who have little experience with records from outside of the United States.

MyHeritage points out that from 1800 to 1922, UK was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This means you won’t find official records of migration to Ireland during those years because people who migrated were not technically immigrants.

MyHeritage also notes that there are similarities between the record systems of Britain and Ireland. They both use the same format for various civil registration records. The have the same census taking practices, the same kinds of probate for wills. Before the census, parish records were the only direct sources of family information for the majority of the population in both Britain and Ireland.

FamilySearch has announced that the Family History Library will hold a free webinar series called “Irish Records & Resources Online” in March of 2016. There are two upcoming webinars on March 17, two on March 18, and one on March 24. This is the first time the Family History Library will do live webinars that enable online participation.

FindMyPast has an Irish Newspaper Collection. In February of 2016, they added an additional 970,502 new articles to the archive. This includes over 3,700 fully searchable new articles from 1871 that were posted in the Dublin Shipping and Mercantile Gazette. You can also search articles from 16 other Irish newspapers that are part of the collection.

On March 1, 2016, Ancestry.com announced that they have added 10 million historic Catholic Parish records from Ireland. The records have been indexed and are now available online. It is the largest collection of Catholic Parish records to be launched online. Ancestry.com now offers access to more than 55 million Irish records.

Ancestry.com has also put together a website about their New Irish Collections The website points out some of their Irish resources. It also notes that Ancestry.DNA can show you where in Ireland your family likely came from.

IrishGenealogy.ie is a website that is dedicated to helping genealogists search for Irish family history records for past generations. Last year, they added access to genealogical information form the 1901 and the 1911 census. They recently added Church records and an Index to the Civil Registers of Births, Marriages, and Deaths. All of those resources can be searched through their main search.

Related Articles at FamilyTree.com:

* MyHeritage Adds Millions of Irish Census Records

* Research Irish Genealogy at Library of Congress

* Using Linkpendium for UK and Ireland

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