Irish Family History

I’ve recently been going back to my own family histories to try to fill in a few gaps.  I was looking for a marriage in the civil records the other day and was reminded of a tip I learned when I first started studying genealogy, which may be helpful if you are just starting out.

When looking for a marriage among the Irish General Register Office records either in the GRO Dublin or online at FamilySearch, if I know the names of both husband and wife, I start my search by focusing on the more unusual of the two names.  If I find an entry for that particular name for a given year, then I make a note of the volume and page number, and then search on the second spouse’s name.  If I find that name, and the volume and page number correspond then I know I have the right record and am ready to order a copy.

Thanks to Liam McFaul of the County Antrim mailing list whose newsletter drew my attention to the fact that the Irish Civil Registration Indexes 1845-1958 are now online on the FamilySearch.org Pilot site.

FamilySearch point out that this is a pilot - i.e. it is still under development and there may be changes, records added and the record search may not be available at all times.  However,  I have found it to be very good after having played around with it for an hour or two and have already found a few items of interest for my research. 

There are a few glitches with the interface; for instance after clicking on an entry within the search results, I clicked the back button expecting to go back to the search results but arrived at the main page again so had to re-enter my search.  Another minor problem occurred when I was looking for the death of a particular individual and selected death/burial, but for some reason it kept deferring to the default and returning the results for all records.   However the site is clearly labelled a pilot and  I’m sure that the few glitches that do exist will no doubt be ironed out with the usual efficiency of FamilySearch.

The site itself is very easy to search and I found it an added bonus when I located the death record I was searching for, to discover that that the estimated birth year was also included in the search results.  This was approximately the right birth date for the individual I was looking for, so now I am going to order the record from the GRO.

This is a fantastic resource for everyone - it now means that anyone with an internet connection can review the civil registers as easily as if they were in the GRO (more easily, in fact, since it means no waiting around for someone to finish looking at that volume you’re desparate to get your hands on!)  This speeds up the research process somewhat; those who can get to Dublin can arrive at the GRO with a list of references to order straight away, while everyone else can send off the details to Roscommon and get their certificates posted to them.  Of course, a further bonus is that it is free to access.

I can’t wait to see what appears next!