Website lets people delve 300 years into their past - Irish Examiner
Website lets people delve 300 years into their past
By Conall Ftharta
Thursday, September 22, 2011
THREE centuries of Irish records will be published online today, detailing more than 40 million records of births, marriages and deaths between 1742 and 1958.
Family history website, ancestry.co.uk, will launch the Irish Catholic Parish Records from 1742-1884 and has extended the Irish Birth, Marriage and Death indexes on the site by 40 million records.
The huge collection of parish records will allow people of Irish heritage from around the world to dig deeper into their roots.
Included in the records are a number of famous people from Ireland, including CS Lewis, the Belfast-based author of the Narnia series, who was born in 1898; the poet and playwright WB Yeats, born in 1865; and Samuel Beckett, who was born in 1906 and went on to pen some of English literatures finest and most abstract plays.
The collections com-prise 433,560 Catholic parish records dating from the mid-18th century and over 40 million birth, marriage and death records, consisting of the civil registration of birth, marriage and deaths from 1845-1958 the government system introduced in 1864 to record the "vital" events in citizens lives.
Previously, tracing an Irish ancestor living before civil registration has been an incredibly difficult task as few records of this period have survived.
The publication of the Catholic parish registers will enable millions of people to go online and trace ancestors living as early as the 18th century, with some records dating back as far as 1742.
The parish records include both those of the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland the official state church from 1536 to 1870 and therefore cover the majority of the population at the time.
The records contain key information such as:
* Catholic parish baptisms, 1742-1881 featuring 275,298 records, containing the names of the person baptised, their parents and godparents, as well as the date. Family residence also features on some records.
* Catholic parish marriages and banns, 1742-1884 comprising 128,618 records from Roman Catholic parishes in Ireland, detailing the date and the names of the bride, groom and witnesses.
* Catholic parish deaths, 1756-1881 containing 29,644 rare burial records typically detailing the name of the deceased and the burial date. However some records also contain the age and place of internment.
Dan Jones, global content director at ancestry.co.uk, said the records are of "huge relevance" to anyone wishing to trace their heritage.
"These new collections will not only be of huge relevance to anyone living in Ireland, but also the millions of people worldwide with Gaelic heritage who, from today, will be able to delve as far back as the 1740s.
"The addition of these 40 million records to our Irish collection makes it the foremost set of online Irish family history databases available, and easier than ever for people to research their Irish ancestors."
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, September 22, 2011
Comments
Post a Comment