Engaging Ireland - Episode 7 - Searching for Your Irish Roots

One caveat: When doing research and finding information from any source, don’t believe that the information you find is accurate until you can verify it by finding a second source that backs up that information. The government records aren’t always accurate and neither are family records or the records of churches for that matter. ALWAYS CROSS-VERIFY YOUR INFORMATION!

The National Archives of Ireland http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy/centres.html

Irish Family History Foundation website

http://www.irish-roots.ie/

The Irish Family History Foundation is the coordinating body for a network of county based genealogical research centers on the island of Ireland.

Centres specifically mentioned in podcast Episode 7:

Meath Heritage CentreCastle Street (next to Trim Castle)Trim, Co. Meath

www.meathroots.com

 County Cavan Genealogy Centre1st Floor, Johnston Central LibraryFarnham StreetCavan Town, Co. Cavan www.irish-roots.ie/cavan.asp

Irish Genealogy Limited website

http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/

This is the official web site of Irish Genealogy Limited (IGL). Irish Genealogy Limited was set up in 1993 to manage and market the Irish Genealogical Project.

Ireland Gen Web Project website

http://www.irelandgenweb.com/

This site is part of the WorldGenWeb Project and is the local resource index page for Ireland research. It has a clickable map of all the Irish counties.

Irish Family Research

(Based in the U.K.)

http://www.irishfamilyresearch.co.uk

Founded by Mary Quinn, a lawyer from the U.K. Links and information and a message board where you can try to find information that others may already have located. (Many genealogical research sites have these message boards, and they can prove helpful in your search.)

Ireland Roots website

http://www.irelandroots.com/

There is no information on this website (that we have been able to ascertain at any rate – doesn’t mean it isn’t there; we just haven’t seen it) about who is sponsoring this website. But there is a very active message board associated with the site and some interesting information about starting your search for your roots (not specifically Irish roots, just genealogical research in general).

Irish Ancestors research page from RootsWeb and Ancestry.com

http://www.irishancestors.net/

Not all resources from Ancestry.com are free, but this page contains the links to a bunch of resources specifically related to Irish genealogical research that are free.

Footnote.com

http://www.footnote.com/

On-line document look-ups. Many services are free, but if you want to print, save, or annotate all of their documents, you will need a membership. There are millions and millions of document images from all over the world on this site. I found that many of the ones I wanted to look at require a membership to access, but there are tons of documents you can access for free.

This might be a great place to go when you’re just starting your research. You could probably obtain a lot of good free information to get you started. Then you could get a membership later when you’re further along in your research…

U.K. Genealogy website

http://www.ukgenealogy.co.uk/ireland.htm

This portion of the website is specifically related to Irish root research. You can search for information on your U.K. roots as well, which is rather nice.

Irish Times

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/

Even the Irish Times newspaper sponsors a website related to finding your roots!

About.com website

http://genealogy.about.com/od/ireland/tp/irish_databases.htm

This page is a list of what About.com considers the top 12 online resources for researching your Irish ancestors. Interesting stuff – not all of the areas of all of the sites are free though.

(Side note: About.com has a pretty large genealogy section, and they have some good articles about getting started with research, top mistakes to avoid, organizing your research, finding software that’s right for you, and lots of other things. Go to http://genealogy.about.com/od/make_family_tree/u/learn.htm to find out more.)

Ancestry Ireland

http://www.ancestryireland.com

Sponsored by the Ulster Historical Foundation. You can do just about anything on this site. You can enter an ancestor’s name to find records, you can hire a researcher to help you do your research, you can find books to help you with your research, and more.

Parts of this site are free, but some areas require a fee payment.

Cyndi’s List

http://www.cyndislist.com/ireland.htm

This website has a ton of links to sites that might be able to help you with your research! Of course, we didn’t have time to check them all out and make sure that all of the links were working or that the sites were useful, but we recognized many of the sites as places we had already been.

Family Search

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

This site is sponsored by the Church of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormon church).

Irish Genealogy Centre (Professional Ancestral Research) Website

http://www.irishgenealogycentre.com

There is some good general information about how to go about doing family research, but a lot of the other pages don’t have any information on them.

NOT FREE RESOURCES

Ancestry.com/RootsWeb.com

OneGreatFamily.com