Irish Catholic Church Records Coming Soon!

Good news for those of us searching their Irish Catholic ancestors! The National Library of Ireland has announced that it will give free online access to its archive of Catholic Church records, the earliest of which dates back to the 1700s.

They cover 1,091 parishes throughout Ireland and are mainly baptismal and marriage records.  This new project adds to the over 2.5 million images of Irish births, deaths and marriage records from the General Register Office (GRO),  released online in September 2015. The earlier set of records is available on www.irishgenealogy.ie The records cover births from 1864 to 1915, marriages from 1882 to 1940 and deaths from 1891 to 1965.

Read the full story at All of Ireland’s Catholic Church records to go online

An Interesting Find on Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923 online

Ontario, Roman Catholic Church Records, 1760-1923  are online at FamilySearch which is wonderful.

The caveat is that they are not indexed. Researchers can find it quite a task to go through image after image looking for your ancestor.

I was searching in Lennox and Addington, Centreville, St Anthony of Padua and discovered that the Priests actually kept an index to the baptisms. The image on the left shows the start of the indexes. There are 230 images and image 3 is the start of the index.

To use the image you find the name of the individual you are seeking. on the left of the name is a number which is the number of the baptism in the register. To the right of the name is another number which is the page number. 

The register is described on FamilySearch as Baptisms 1844-1889 but the first  baptisms begin 24 February 1856.

The first baptism is found on Image 32 and is dated February 24, 1856 for little Jeremiah Gaffney who was born June 25, 1855 in Hungerford.

However if you go to the back of the register book there are earlier baptisms. Image 186 starts baptisms in 1844. The heading on the page states "The following copied from the Parish of Railton Records"

The detail in this church register is amazing. For example for little Jerermiah his date of marriage, place of marriage and the name of his bride as well as her parents are noted in the Remarks column. His date of death are also noted.

If You Have Irish Catholic Ancestors Today's Your Lucky Day

If you, like me, have Irish Catholic ancestors, today is your lucky day. The National Library of Ireland is due to launch their entire collection of Catholic Parish Registers at 2 p.m. It's free for researchers and should help many of us break down a brick wall or two!

The collection covers 1,086 parishes throughout the island of Ireland and consist primarily of baptismal and marriage records from the 1740s to the 1880s.

I'm eagerly waiting for this set of records but expect their servers to crash for the first few days as genealogists rush to the site. In fact I went there just now and got this message when I chose various topics:

"Due to technical difficulties the main National Library website is currently unavailable."

Fingers crossed it will be up and running this afternoon. If anyone has success today, please let me know!

Irish Catholic Parish Registers Coming Online July 8!

If you have Irish ancestors, mark your calendars! The National Library of Ireland is bringing Irish Catholic Parish Registers online! Quoting from the NLI website:

On 8th July 2015 the NLI will make its collection of Catholic parish register microfilms freely available online on a dedicated website.

These records, which are considered the single most important source of information on Irish family history prior to the 1901 census, consist primarily of baptism and marriage records and date from the 1740s to the 1880s.

My fingers are crossed that I might be able to find my mysterious Joseph McGinnis (ca 1827 Ireland -?) and Fanny Downey (ca 1827 Ireland -1904 Ontario Canada) in those records. 

The records consist of almost 400,000 images and are completely free to search. Typically, the parish registers include information such as the dates of baptisms and marriages, and the names of the key people involved, including godparents or witnesses. The digital images of the registers will be searchable by parish location only, and will not be transcribed or indexed by the NLI.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish!

I'm dancing for genealogy joy because I have Irish Catholic ancestors. Anyone else with Irish Catholic ancestors should likewise start rejoicing because all of Ireland's Catholic Church records are being digitized and going online!

Catholic Church

The National Library of Ireland is to give free online access to its Catholic Church records collection which date back to the 1700s. This will enable millions of people around the world to trace their roots in Ireland.

Previously the only way to view these records was at the National Library in Kildare Street, in Dublin. Summer of 2015 is the hopeful date for these church records to be online.


My 2nd great grandparents Joseph McGinnis and his wife Fanny Downey will be first on my list of searches in the summer of 2015. What will your first search be?