Looking for some new websites for doing Irish research online? Here are 5 excellent ones you may not have known about, but that you should be using!
1. Failte Romhat – A personal genealogy site created to trace the owner’s ancestors, Failte Romhat has a surprising number of highly useful online databases for anyone researching their Irish ancestry.
This includes a substantial number of censuses and directories, cemetery transcriptions, maps, scanned books and documents pertaining to Irish history and genealogy, and photographs of genealogically significant places in Ireland. All of these databases are free and easy to access directly from the site. This one is highly recommended for Irish researchers!
2. IrishFamilyResearch.co.uk – This UK-based site has hundreds of rare (and sometimes exclusive) databases of Irish genealogy materials. Most of these databases are searchable, and some are free to access. Others require a small membership fee to the site. Available databases include resources covering every Irish county, including directories, cemetery transcriptions, census records, surveys, maps, and more. This is an excellent resource for Irish genealogists of all kinds, and the small registration fee is worth it for access to the types of records that are on this site (many of which are unavailable outside of their original repositories in Ireland).
3. The IreAtlas Townland Database – This interesting website allows you to type in the name of any Irish townland, county, or parrish and see what type of maps, if any, are available for the area. This is an excellent resource for locating maps for hard-to-find towns where your ancestors might have lived.
4. GenUki – This is the definitive website for those conducting Irish research from outside of Ireland. The site includes extensive links to published Irish genealogy guides, Irish genealogy societies, Library of Congress holdings, and other information sources for finding your Irish ancestors. It also includes tips and advice for researching Irish records from outside of Ireland.
5. The Irish Genealogical Research Society – This group was formed in 1936 to promote the study of Irish genealogy and the preservation of valuable genealogical books and materials. The society’s website has a member’s only section where information about the society’s library holdings and extracts from the holdins is posted, which can be of great benefit to researchers doing work outside of Ireland.
Paid membership allows you acces to this section of the website, and also gets you a subscription to The Irish Genealogist (an annual journal) and a bi-annual newsletter, as well as admission to the society’s library in Britain. This is one of the oldest and most respected sources of Irish research materials in the world, and is an excellent addition to the bag of tools of any genealogist with Irish roots.
