Tracing your Irish roots

By Emerald Witch | Emerald_Witch's_Random_Shite | 21 Jun 2020

Family History

I recently did my family history as well as my husbands, enough to do a family tree, I even got as far back as 7 generations on a few lines. My family's from County Clare and has been as far back as I could go and my husbands family is mostly Dublin. I did my family's history first because I already had information to work with, I found so much information for free easily on the internet for my family I was shocked but unfortunately that wasn’t nationwide and when it came to doing my husbands family history it wasn’t so easy and I ended up subscribing to findmypast.ie, it was like £15 or something a month and gave me access to newspapers which I needed, it was worth the money as I got lots of information from that site alone and it corrected a few mistakes I had made, money is tight in our house so I had to proper get stuck in and try get it finished as quick as I could. So I know there are many people out there with Irish ancestry and I am going to list all the sites I got my information from.

There are two website I got most of my information, these I used the most and they are free.

This website also has church records but these are limited for now and mostly only cover Dublin and one or two other counties.

https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/civil-search.jsp

The census is a treasure trove of information and was very fun to use and a great way to confirm records.

(You want to get as much information to confirm its correct before moving onto the next branch of your tree).

https://genealogy.nationalarchives.ie/

Other website that may be useful

https://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/free-Irish-genealogy.html

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/index.xml

https://www.nationalarchives.ie/search-the-online-catalogue/advanced-search/#!/

https://www.failteromhat.com/lo1876.htm

http://www.nli.ie/

https://www.irishancestors.ie/resources/unique-resources/

https://www.irishancestors.ie/search/ig_index_all/

http://www.irelandgenweb.com/

Grave Search

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial

http://www.interment.net/ireland/

http://www.from-ireland.net/free-gravestone-transcriptions/

Army Search

http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/search.aspx?session=false

http://census.militaryarchives.ie/

This website will help with finding or confirming old district names as the parishes and districts can get confusing, when searching in the civil records it makes it easier when you know the name of the parish or district.

https://www.swilson.info/regdistmap.php

If your Irish ancestry is based in Clare well then you are in luck as there is lots of free information for Clare most coming from donated material in the local library.

http://www.irelandgenweb.com/irlcla/

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/library/local-studies/locstudi1.htm

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/1918_subscribers_mjr_redmond_fund.htm

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/krmen_ww1/krmen_ww1.htm

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/history/war_of_independence_compesation_claims_1921_1923.htm

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/genealog.htm

Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths

https://www.ennisparish.com/genealogy/

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/don_tran/bmd/index_bmd.htm

School Records

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/ennistymon_cbs/index.htm

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/kilfenora_ns/kilfenora_ns_register.htm