Ireland records

Lord Viscount Morpeth’s Testimonial Roll, 1841, is essentially the world’s largest leaving card. However, it’s also a crucial and fascinating resource for pinpointing your Irish ancestors before the Great Famine.

This 412-metre roll of parchment was presented to the popular Lord Viscount Morpeth when he left his role as Chief Secretary for Ireland. It includes the names, signatures and often addresses of around 150,000 Irish citizens.

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Thom’s Directory, 1904, was a major inspiration behind James Joyce’s celebrated novel Ulysses. Now you can see if these records of names, addresses and occupations across Ireland provide similar stimulation for your discoveries.

Beside the main lists of people living in various towns and cities, you’ll find details of soldiers, sailors, students, teachers and many more. Plus, there’s a map of Dublin and a calendar for 1904.

You’ll be amazed how many of your ancestors made the local news — whether they did something remarkable or simply announced their marriages. But even when your relatives don’t appear, newspapers provide fascinating historical context for your discoveries.

This collection includes scanned editions of 32 different Irish newspapers spanning more than 100 years. It could shed more light on your family’s role in crucial events like the Irish Rebellion and the Tithe War.

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Birth, marriage and death records are the basic building blocks of anybody’s family tree. Construct your Irish lines quickly and easily with our Birth, Marriage, and Death Indexes, 1825-1978.

These 22 million records cover the period of the destroyed Irish censuses, so they can help you fill in frustrating gaps in your discoveries. Indexes from Northern Ireland are included up to 1922.

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Although the official Church of Ireland was Anglican in the 18th and 19th centuries, most people refused to conform. This means Catholic records are your best bet for tracing early births, marriages and deaths.

Split into baptism, marriage and burial records, these comprehensive registers reveal names, dates, places and often other family members. And because they date back before the Great Famine, you’ll find many ancestors who later fled the country for new homes abroad.

Griffith’s Valuation is the most useful of the ‘census substitutes’ that fill the gap in 19th-century Irish research. It was created to work out how much tax the country’s inhabitants should be paying.

Sir Richard Griffith’s assessors worked out the value of all of Ireland’s privately owned property. The resulting records cover the vast majority of households, and while they don’t list every family member, they do let you pinpoint where your relatives were living.

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