Eye on Ireland

It is St Patrick’s Day and all around the world Irish people are celebrating . Programmes like Who do You Think You Are have triggered an upsurge of interest in tracing your roots but the search can be daunting if you have not done this type of research before.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be. We are all born, many of us marry, we all die. Most of us will be recorded in a Census several times during our lifetime. Perhaps we travel and records of those travels may remain.

There are lots of repositories of all this information – some paid for services, some free.

If you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, try choosing a person in your family whose ancestors you are interested in tracing and begin by focusing on this person. It might be yourself, your parent, your grandparent, or some other person in your family that you are particularly interested in.

Next, you  need to identify this person’s father. Father’s name is usually on the person’s birth certificate. Next, identify this person’s mother including information on that person’s maiden surname. Mother’s name, and sometimes maiden surname, is usually on the birth certificate.

A good source of information for free searches is www.familysearch.org

Once you have the parents’ names you are ready to begin the search for grandparents and siblings.

It goes without saying that the more information that you have when you  begin your search, the better. But even with very little information, once you begin to piece the story together, you will be amazed at how each piece of information leads to the next. It is a good idea to take careful notes and to record everything on each record that you turn up. The witness at a wedding can sometimes be as significant as the bride or groom by helping to place a particular individual in a townland or district.

When you find relevant Irish records on familysearch.org it is very important to take note of the year, volume number and page reference for Irish Civil records. Having this information will save you a lot of time if you need to request historical documents such as birth, marriage or death certificates (BMD) at a later date. You can research and obtain copies of records at the General Register Office in Dublin.

As well as looking at BMD information it can be useful to look at old newspapers. The Irish Times has a good archive that you can use on a pay as you go basis. Apart from the news, death notices published in the newspaper can be a useful source for geneaolgists.

Church records are also very useful but they can be trickier to track down. A good, and free source, that has recently become avaialable is www.irishgenealogy.ie

There are lots of paid for services that you can subscribe to that may help with your rearch. Ancestry.com is useful and has a nice app that allows you to keep track of your family tree. Archives.com is another source. Origins.net has Irish as does rootsireland.ie

So, if St Patrick’s Day has set you thinking about your Irish roots, don’t be afraid to start researching today. Just write down that first name on your list and see where it takes you!