A priceless resource - Parish records go online

TODAY’S insatiable appetite for information about family roots will certainly be satisfied by the National Library’s initiative to put almost 300 years of Catholic parish registers online. Effectively this means that, for the first time, accurate details on births and marriages, the very stuff of genealogy, will be available free of charge to anyone who has a basic computer.

Tracing a person’s ancestral descent with the aim of creating a family tree can be a time-consuming and costly business. The problem most people find by the time their interest in this murky realm is aroused is that those who might remember the relevant names have either forgotten them or passed on. Giving a real sense of the event, the registers include personal details of key people present on the day such as the names of witnesses and godparents.

That’s what makes the availability of records dating from the 1740s to the 1880s so valuable. From now on, records covering the island of Ireland can readily be accessed on a website containing over 390,000 digital images from more than 1,000 parish registers. Consisting primarily of baptismal and marriage records, they are a priceless resource and are considered to be the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census. They can be accessed at registers.nli.ie.