In Gaelic culture genealogy was of crucial importance, but the collapse of that culture in the 17th century, and its subsequent impoverishment and oppression in the 18th century, left a gulf that is almost unbridgeable. It would be unusual for records of such a family to go back much earlier than the 1780s, and for most people the early 1800s is the more likely limit. What you’ll uncover depends on the quality of the surviving records for the area of origin, on the point where you start and the most important ingredient of Irish research, luck.įor the descendants of Catholic tenant-farmers, the limit is generally the starting date of the local Catholic parish records. Don’t begin with Attila the Hun and try to work forward to yourself. The only cast-iron rule of family history is that you start from what you know and use it to find out more. To begin with, quantity is less important than quality - there’ll be plenty of time for precision later. Most families have at least one individual who keeps track of the extended network of relatives, and if you can buttonhole her (it usually is a her), you’re off to a good start. So first talk to parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents - find out what they know before they’re gone for good. It makes no sense to spend days trawling through databases to find out your great-grandmother’s surname if someone in the family already knows it. Getting startedīefore you go near any records, talk to your family.
It also covers new ways to trace your ancestry using increasingly popular home DNA kits.
#Find the best genealogy free#
This guide contains links to those many free resources, as well as paid genealogy services which could help speed up the process or guide you towards records you may not have known existed.
The result is that most people of Irish origin can now take their family back to the second quarter of the 19th century quickly and easily and, for the most part, without payment. Publicly-funded websites such as IrishGenealogy.ie,, askaboutireland.ie, and /proni have gone about supplying the tools to make that possible. Politicians and public servants now accept that it should be as easy as possible for members of the Irish diaspora to unearth the historical detail of the connection, their family history. Their increased awareness of the huge numbers who descend from emigrants, and who cherish that historic connection, has had a dramatic effect. But most of the change has been driven by the Irish and Northern Irish public sectors. Some credit must go to competition in the marketplace to meet researchers' demands. From being a laggard in providing online record transcripts, Ireland has become one of the world leaders. A revolution in access to Irish genealogical records has taken place over the past decade. There has never been a better time to research Irish family history.