Irish Parish Records Online

The hottest topic on the genealogical circuit today is about Irish parish records going online for free. Yes, the National Library of Ireland has digitized almost 400K images from its Catholic parish records holdings. The dates of their Catholic parish registers are from 1740-1880s and cover almost 1100 parishes. This is a very significant event. The registers have been available for viewing since the 1970s; but you had to visit the library in Dublin. Now they are available for free and searchable anytime. To get to the registers directly, they are online at http://registers.nli.ie/

Before using the site be prepared by knowing your ancestors parish. Without that information you will trudge through thousands of images and still possibly not find your ancestor. I have used the site with limited success. As of today, my search for a particular gg grandmother has turned up empty but I did find one of her brother's marriage records and another brother's baptism record.

Some of the images are very grainy and some very very faded making for an extremely difficult translation of the records. All images in this collection are not created equal, some are pristine while others are un-readable. Check them out and good luck hunting!

Below are images of a marriage record for my gg granduncle, Thomas Cummins and a baptism record for his brother, Martin Cummins. The records were found in the pages for the parish of Aughrim in County Roscommon.

Thomas Cummins & Anna Cox marriage record

Martin Cummins baptism record