Priests’ openness has provided a rich reservoir of family history

The consent given by parish priests in the 1950s to allow the National Library of Ireland (NLI) to microfilm their records of births, marriages and deaths was courageous.

In the course of a voluntary, own-name study, I have combed through 80 rolls of diocesan/parish films at the NLI in search for entries and now have over 15,000 birth or baptism records.

Despite occasional bad handwriting — due to infirmity, poor working conditions and for a while, the use of the fading blue ink once fashionable — the records, nigh on two centuries in depth, are a great tribute to the curates, PPs, their clerks and parish laity who sometimes copied whole registers afresh.