I was inspired to write this blog post because of the amount of time I had spent struggling to understand what makes Irish family history research a different world from English research. I hope that it will help you spend less time stumbling around!
This post is not intended to be a substitute for studying books and websites in order to learn more about the place and its records. Consider it to be a starting point instead.
History
Irish history can be a polarising subject simply because of its nature. For this reason I will not go into it in any great detail here. If you wish to know more, a good introduction is Gibney's book in the bibliography.
Here's a short summary of some parts of this history that are relevant to family history research.
The British invaded and occupied Ireland, just as the Normans and Romans invaded and occupied England. This took place, with varying degrees of violence according to the historical records, over periods of centuries. Certain British (well, English) record keeping practices were introduced which you need to know about in order to locate the records.
One website that is worth looking at to understand something of the historical context is Trinity College Dublin’s Down Survey site at downsurvey.tchpc.tcd.ie.
“Ireland in the 1650s lay in ruins. Twelve years of calamitous warfare had destroyed the country's infrastructure and resulted in the death of over 20% of the Irish population.“
The Down Survey was undertaken to determine which lands, previously owned by Irish Roman Catholics, were to be transferred to English Protestants. The beautiful maps on this website (sadly incomplete) show parishes and townlands, with occasional annotations reading “Protestant Lands” indicating earlier plantations (see below) or landowners. The website also shows the landowners in 1641 (before the transfer) and 1670 (afterwards).
Plantations
There were a number of attempts to forcefully convert whole geographic areas to English culture, which were termed Plantations. These were usually resented and rejected. The lands in these plantations were made available to people or organisations very cheaply, and this attracted English people eager to make their fortune. These English plantationers tended to marry other English plantationers, with the result that people who today can trace their ancestry back into Ireland can often have very little ethnically Irish DNA (in my case just 7%). Indeed, in some areas they were actually forbidden from mixing with the native Irish.
It’s worth noting that people who are often called the old English (landowners from earlier English generations) in Ireland were Roman Catholic, so just because somebody was English do not assume they were Protestant.
Independence
In the 1916-1922 period things came to a head with the creation of the Irish Free State (consisting of the three provinces of Leinster (east), Munster (south), and Connaught (west), together with three of the counties of the province of Ulster (in the north)). The remaining six counties of Ulster make up what is now called Northern Ireland (note that this means that Ulster and Northern Ireland are not the same thing).
At this uprising, many genealogical (and other) records kept at the Public Record Office in Dublin were destroyed in the fighting. For this reason you will often find that parish records for a place and date simply do not exist, and substitute records need to be discovered.
Place Names
Be prepared for three possible variations of any placename: a Gaelic name, an anglicised spelling of the Gaelic name, and an English name. It’s not always obvious that they mean the same place, so use www.genuki.org.uk, townlands.ie, and www.logainm.ie to be sure (see below).
Administrative Units
There are similarities between the administrative units of Ireland and those of England, but more importantly there are significant differences. You will need to be aware of these if you are to successfully identify where somebody lived, or to find the records for a place.
The Civil structure was as follows.
At the largest scale there were the four Provinces, listed above.
Each Province contained a number of Counties.
Each County contained a number of Baronies. The closest English equivalent of this is a Hundred.
Each Barony contained a number of Civil Parishes.
Each Civil Parish contained a number of Townlands. This is true in parts of England too, especially in the north.
Do not assume this was a clean structure because there were exceptions to every rule, so keep your wits about you! For example, in County Laois (also known as Leix, and Queen’s County) the parish of Rosconnell lies partly in the Barony of Clarmallagh and partly in the Barony of Cullenagh.
The Ecclesiastical structure was complicated by having distinct Church of Ireland (protestant) and Roman Catholic structures.
The Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Provinces were Tuam, Dublin, Cashel, and Armagh. Each was divided into a number of RC Dioceses. Counties and Baronies did not always lie entirely within an RC Diocese. The RC Parishes within each RC Diocese were different from CoI Parishes.
There are two Church of Ireland (CoI) Ecclesiastical Provinces, Dublin and Armagh. Each is divided into CoI Dioceses. Again Counties and Baronies do not always lie entirely inside a CoI Diocese. Each CoI diocese contained CoI parishes. Note that the Civil Parishes and CoI Parishes generally had the same boundaries, but not always.
As you have probably guessed by now, you need to carefully identify which unit you are working with and always double check. There are a number of places to go to find out:
Genuki, at www.genuki.org.uk. Remember, the ‘I’ in Genuki stands for ‘Ireland’.
Irish Townlands, at www.townlands.ie. This is essentially a topographic dictionary that maps the boundaries of all of the Civil units.
Placenames Database of Ireland, at www.logainm.ie. Similar to townlands.ie but with more descriptive text for each placename.
Other structures were also used from 19th century onwards. The ones which you will most likely meet are:
Poor Law Unions (PLU), whose boundaries did not necessarily follow barony or parish boundaries. For example, in County Laois the southern boundary of the Mountmellick PLU cuts the Civil Parish of Kilkolmanbane in half and also bisects the Barony of Stradbally. PLUs later formed the basis of Civil Registration Superintendent Registrar’s Districts (much as in England and Wales).
District Electoral Divisions were used in censuses.
Post-1858 Probate Districts.
Finding aids and Transcriptions
As noted above many parish records were lost in 1922. For example, although I can trace my family back to Coolbanagher parish in Portnahinch barony in Queen's County, no parish registers survive from before 1802. Fortunately, the Representative Church Body (RCB) of the CofI maintains a PDF document which shows, for every CofI parish, which registers survive and where they can be found. Unfortunately, few of these registers are freely available online. The PDF document is at www.ireland.anglican.org/about/rcb-library/list-of-parish-registers.
Two websites have online indexes of (some) parish registers and non-conformist registers:
Irish Ancestors, at www.johngrenham.com (£)
Rootsireland, at www.rootsireland.ie (£)
Never underestimate how useful the research wiki at FamilySearch can be, but be prepared for some out of date pages with broken links.
Online records
The main online locations for specifically Irish family history records (in addition to the more limited information found on Ancestry/FindMyPast/FamilySearch) are:
Irish Genealogy, at www.irishgenealogy.ie, is a gem. It is free to search, and it contains:
Civil registration (all BMD from 1864, and non-RC marriages from 1845)
some Church of Ireland baptisms, marriages, and burials for a limited number of places (conveniently covering Carlow and Dublin, where a number of my ancestors lived).
Note that in most cases images of the original registers can be also be freely viewed and downloaded (that’s right, for free).
Almost all pre-1880 RC parish registers are available online through the National Library of Ireland, at www.registers.nli.ie. These can be searched and viewed online. Yes, for free.
Only two national censuses survive in anything like a complete form, those from 1901 and 1911. Searchable results can be found at census.nationalarchives.ie. Images of the original returns for both of them are freely available (yes, it’s free, again). No census took place in 1921 due to fighting, but one was held in 1926.
Land records
Land in Ireland was administered in a roughly similar way as it was in England, but the absence of so many of the records that we take for granted in England (19th century censuses, old parish registers) mean that land records will play a larger role in your Irish research.
There were some genealogically useful land surveys conducted in Ireland for which there is no equivalent in England. Probably the best known were the following two:
Griffith’s Valuation of 1850s. This was a complete survey of all land, rural or not, in the whole of Ireland. Each parcel in each township is identified with both landowner and proprietor named. There are annotated maps to locate exactly where each was. Although this information is available on Ancestry, the most useful website is www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation, which has digitised maps, and it's free.
Encumbered Estates following the Great Hunger of the 1840s. At this time there was a shortage of tenants and workers for landed estates. Many went to the wall and were sold; the sales particulars give names and often record some details of tenancy agreements. These can be found at Ancestry, in the Ireland, Encumbered Estates, 1850-1885 dataset.
Equivalent to Tithe Apportionments in England, in Ireland there were Tithe Applotments in the 1820-30s, which are available online at www.genealogy.nationalarchives.ie. They are free, again.
For more information on any of these see Tracing your Irish Ancestors in the bibliography.
Conclusion
Genealogical research in Ireland is every bit as satisfying as researching in England, as long as you understand some of the differences between the two. Sadly some records do not go as far back as in England, where parish registers can be found from the 1540s. But this is more than made up for by the amount of detail that is available online for free.
If you are thinking of researching your Irish ancestors then I hope this post has whetted your appetite. A great start is this article by John Grenham - www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/how-to-trace-your-irish-family-history-a-step-by-step-guide-1.3423973.
Go n-éirí leat!
Julian Luttrell
The Tree Sleuths, 2025. The Tree Sleuths website.
Bibliography
Books
Donal F Begley, Irish Genealogy A Record Finder, Heraldic Artists Ltd, Dublin, 1981. At first sight this may appear dated but, provided you want to know what original records exist at which archive, this is a very thorough effort.
John Gibney, A Short History of Ireland 1500-2000, Yale University, New Haven and London, 2017.
John Grenham, Tracing your Irish Ancestors, 5th Edition, Gill Books, Dublin, 2019. A quite breathtakingly detailed resource for understanding what records were created and why, and locating those that may exist for your research. If you only buy one book make it this one.
Brian Mitchell, A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland, 2nd Edition, Genealogical Publishing Co, Baltimore, 2002. An explanation of the administrative units of Ireland, the differences between Church of Ireland and Roman Catholic units, and maps of each county.
Chris Paton, Irish Family History Resources Online, 2nd Edition, Unlock the Past, Australia, 2015. I have included this book to be used in conjunction with Begley.
Chris Paton, Tracing your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Pen and Sword, Barnsley, 2021. A good introduction to researching land records in Ireland.
Alice Prochaska, Irish History from 1700: A Guide to Sources in the Public Record Office, Archives and the User No. 6, British Records Association, 1986. Somewhat dry details of what can be found in the National Archives in Kew.
Websites
www.ireland.anglican.org/about/rcb-library/list-of-parish-registers.
genealogy.nationalarchives.ie - this is the top level page for accessing the range of useful records available, for example those at:
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