How to Trace Your Irish Ancestors

The purpose of this book is to highlight the most important documentary evidence available to the family historian wishing to research their Irish ancestry. It is aimed primarily at researchers whose time in Irish repositories is limited, and who want to know what is available locally and online. Unlike the British Isles, which has very extensive civil and census records, Irish ancestral research is influenced by the destruction of so many of the major record collections. To make good this loss, duplicates, copies and abstracts of the lost records have been assembled over the years by archivists across Ireland so that today, in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) alone, researchers have access to more than 53 shelf kilometres of records!Nevertheless, researchers are compelled to become better acquainted with lesser-known collections that serve as substitutes - such as tithe assessments, school registers and land and valuation records - than their counterparts in England, Scotland or Wales. This book covers more than eighteen individual sources of information, making it simpler to organise your search and easier to carry it out both locally and on the ground.