I’ve finally had some time to really dig into Irish records and I am in total envy. Lucky for me, I’ve got some Irish roots I can explore to take full advantage of the following free, data rich sites.
1901 and 1911 Irish Censuses , National Archives of Ireland
HOT TIP: The results may have clickable links taking you to the census where your family appears:
-
Form A: Return of the members of this family and their visitors, boarders, servants, etc. who slept or abode in this House on the night of Sunday, the 31st of March, 1901
. That’s great, but the results might also have:
- Form B.1 – House and building return
- Form B.2.-Return of Out-Offices and Farm-Steadings
- Form N: Enumerator’s Abstract for a townland or street
Together, these four forms give you a great picture of the family – not just names and ages and religion, but also size and class of house.
Catholic Parish registers at the NLI – National Library of Ireland
Haven’t had a chance to explore this site yet but will write a blurb when I know more.
Currency converter 1270-2017 – The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom
What was the purchasing power of pounds, shillings and pence back in the day? Use this converter to find out (and then, if necessary, convert the result to your currency of choice using my favourite online converter, XE).
Why is this amazing? Because the results give context in terms of wages, cattle, and wheat. I looked at the purchasing power of ONE pound in 1270 and the results are surprising:
- roughly equivalent to 729 pounds in 2017,
- or 1 horse,
- or 2 cows,
- or 7 stones of wool;
- or 6 quarters of wheat,
- or 100 days of skilled labour. In other words, a skilled labourer earned ~3 pounds annually.
Griffiths Valuation – Ask about Ireland
Find where your families lived, and how much their properties were worth.
(The) Internet Surname Database
The database appears to hold mostly European-origin names, particularly British.
Ireland Genealogy wiki – Family Search
If you’re new to Ireland, start here.
Irish Genealogy
The official site of Irish records, sponsored by the Irish Department of Culture & Heritage. Here you’ll find civil and church records, as well as military and legal documents.
Irish Graveyards
Haven’t had a chance to explore this site yet but will write a blurb when I know more.
Irish Townlands
From the Irish OpenStreetMap community comes this interactive map of the townlands of Ireland. Start with the census, above, then come here to find exactly where your ancestors lived.
Irish Ancestors – John Grenham
An extraordinary site. If you know nothing about your Irish ancestors, try plugging a name into the Wizard and see what comes up. John’s site is a treasure trove of data from ordnance survey maps to lookup tables searchable by name, geographic location, emigration dates, or dates in Ireland.
Facebook Groups
There’s no link here, as you’ll have to be a member of Facebook, and then search for Irish genealogy groups. All of them will require a few questions to be answered but if you’re not a bot and you’ve got a few genealogy-related posts on your feed, you should be good to go. Why go to all this trouble? Because Facebook groups are a HUGE HUGE HUGE source of immediate, real-time genealogy questions and answers. It’s my goto strategy to learn all I can about a new country – just by following the posts and reading the histories.
National Archives of Ireland Genealogy
I found this site by clicking a link in Family Search for a census result, and am I ever glad I did. The family was represented in the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses, and while it took a couple of hours to understand the county / townlands system, the rich resources are so worth it.
Open Street Map
Want to know the exact place your ancestor lived? Try this incredible site.
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
Haven’t had a chance to really dig through this site but I hear it’s highly recommended. I’ll write a description when I get a chance to dig in.