New to Irish Genealogy
Aloha,
My great-great-greatgrandfather came from Ireland. And I am new to Irish Genealogy. My question is; What is the best way to start searching for my Irish ancestors or where do I start?
Mahalo,
Marcial
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Welcome Marcial ,cead mille failte. Your question is a good one - where to start.
A lot depends on what date you can go back to without having to use records, family knowledge if you like. Also beware of the two jurisdictions, Ireland North and South, after 1921 (partition and creation of Northern Ireland). That will have a big bearing on where and what records you can use.
You would aim to find a relative that was born before 1921. All birth records are closed for 100 year from birth, so after 1921 the records are closed unless you apply (and pay) in person. But someone born before 1911 or 1901 SHOULD be able to be located on the two complete census records - 1901 and 1911. These are free to use and invaluable.
If you know who was born before 1901 or you can find them on the census records then you look for them on irishgenealogy.ie.
This site is free again and lists all marriages from 1845 on and births and deaths from 1864 on. What are called civil records. Find their birth and the record will give you them plus their parents. Then you can look on the same site for the marriage of their parents. Which will give you their parents. And all this will give you a specific geographical area where you can try and find church records. Then you look for brothers and sisters and so on. But be aware that after 1921 irishgenealogy will not record any persons born, married, or died in Northern Ireland.
Pre 1864 it gets a little harder. This is where church records and other records such as Griffiths Valuation can come in. This would probably be where you need to search. 1800-1864.
Finding people pre 1800 is hard due to the scarcity of records. But not impossible. It just takes a little more time.
Church records can be found in PRONI -public record office Northern Ireland and NLI Catholic Parish Records. Google "PRONI Church records" and the results will take you to a page which has a free PDF of all Church records in Northern Ireland. It also lists the dates and where the records can be accessed.
The church of Ireland (Episcopalian) records for Southern Ireland are not online, and have to be accessed in person in Dublin. There is a project to digitise them but that is in its infancy.
But don't worry about them in the interim if your dates are between 1864 to 1921. That's where you need to concentrate as there are enough records to create the family groups.
Look at the links on the group page and see what may be of use to you. But again try & devise a strategy that works with the dates you have and stay fairly tight to the strategy especially at the outset. It is too easy to get overwhelmed by too much information.
Hope this makes sense - it really depends on your start date as to where you look.
And when you get stuck come back and ask a question here. That's the aim of the group - to help others.
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Mahalo Hayter,
I am so very appreciative for all of this. I am so excited to get started in searching out my Irish ancestors. And I definitely will come back. I am so grateful that FamilySearch provided this opportunity for all of us to share and help each other.
Mālama pono - Take care,
Marcial
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@MarcialBasbas a moderate removed your phone number because of personal identifying information . Thank you for posting your question and we are excited to help you more as you research your Irish line.
Kind Regards,
Shannon
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