Irish Ancestors

Miss Poohs · Post by **Miss Poohs** » Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:59 pm

Please excuse my ignorance on such matters but I have come across a site specifically aimed at locating Irish family - it's a subscription site, and I'm undecided as to wheather to join or not.

Does any one here have any experience with a site such as this?

Hope I'm not toe treading asking this.

Andy · Post by **Andy** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 9:59 am

There are a number of pay sites for Ireland, some (about 3 offhand) excellent, most are a waste of money. None have anywhere near the quantity or quality of Scotland's People.

Ulster Historical Foundation is excellent but expensive. I joined when they posted the searchable database of all recorded Births and Marriages for five counties of Northern Ireland with the promise that the Deaths were "Coming Soon". That was well over a year ago, my subscription lapsed and no sign of the deaths.

However just to view a transcript at this site costs £6 for members and £8 for non-members. Subscription is about £30 per year. Once you've paid copy the details quickly because you only have access for 24 hours (no "Previous Search").

There are five databases open to the paying public containing well over a million records, members have access to others, some, passenger lists of 16 people to Wills etc. containing upwards of 170,000 records.

Otherdays is another excellent pay site, it has the 1803 North Antrim Agricultural Census and Griffiths Primary Valuation online. Once you've paid your membership you have full, unlimitted access to all the MANY databases for a year.

Irish Times is an online newspaper with some useful genealogical searches available. They also offer paid searches and reports but I can't comment on the quality of these.

These are the ONLY three that I would consider subscribing to.

As with all Irish research it really is important to have a good idea of where your folk came from and their Religion.

There are also a great many area specific FREE sites, too many to list here. Some, Ben Palmer's for Moville and my own for Rathlin Island have near 100% coverage for every available resource for that particular area.

My advice would be identify and exhaust the free options before forking out on an unknown. For example if your lot came from Sligo membership to UHF would be a complete waste of money.

General sites of note include:

http://www.cmcrp.net/
http://www.censusfinder.com/ireland.htm (many are just links to pay site)

There was another free site, now paying, that had searchable index of nearly all Irish Births, Marriages and Deaths, it's now charging. There are no actual records available just instructions of where to find the records (sometimes three or four locations).

If you post the name of the site you're looking at we may be able to advise you further.

Miss Poohs · Post by **Miss Poohs** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 10:51 pm

Thanks for the advice

This is the one I was wondering about http://www.ireland.com/ancestor/

I'm just not sure if it'll be worth the money.

I am almost sure my maternal grandfather was born in Ireland - if I could just get a wee foot hold before I part with the brass.

I'll go and have a shiffty through those sites you've mentioned.

Janice.

ninatoo · Post by **ninatoo** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 3:25 am

Perhaps if you obtain a birth certificate for one of your maternal grandfather's children, it will tell you where he and his wife married, it they were born in Scotland. That is how I found a number of Irish locations in my tree...and some were totally unexpected.

Good luck!

Nina

IanS · Post by **IanS** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 7:41 am

Janice, I'd do as Nina suggested first.

Re: OTHERDAYS suggested by Andy. It used to be an excellent site but went down for months at the beginning of this year,(abt Jan/Feb) a lot of people, myself included, lost many months of their subscription. I didn't know it was back online, so tried it again this morning. nae luck , there appear to be some pages, but when I tried to take a short term subscription, I couldn't even get to the secure page to enter credit card details. (I would have taken a 72 hour sub. to see if they had any more maps.) If anyone else can get further, would they let me know.

Since Jan/Feb last year I've been using for G.V.

http://www.irishorigins.com/

IanS · Post by **IanS** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 8:10 am

Me again, I'd recommend this site for some counties free marriage searches. You only pay if you see one that you want.

http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/frame_1024.cfm

It cost me abt. 14 pounds then, which is dearer than other sites which do civil marriage records, BUT, in my case the researcher not only gave me the details of the marriage cert, but also looked up the Parish record which had a little more info. (fathers addresses) which gave me the confirmation I needed. (As this was this chaps 3rd marriage, he was no longer staying with daddy

) (A warning though, most early parish records do not contain this type of info. My record was 1900. Another parish record only gave witnesses names.

Obviously I cannot guarantee this will happen in all cases, and some people will only have need of the cert. itself from a cheaper source.

Andy · Post by **Andy** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 9:20 am

Hi Ian, Otherdays is still up-and-running:

http://www.otherdays.com

HOWEVER I too tried to take out a 72 hour subscription and got a message back saying that the merchant account has been suspended. So it seem that another good site has bitten the dust. Shame it was an excellent site.

There was another free site, now paying, that had searchable index of nearly all Irish Births, Marriages and Deaths, it's now charging. There are no actual records available just instructions of where to find the records (sometimes three or four locations).

This was http://www.irishgenealogy.ie I just couldn't find the link, thanks for posting it. Didn't know they did a look-up service.

IanS · Post by **IanS** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 9:27 am

Andy, Otherdays'' bit the dust'' last Jan/Feb, except for some basic free searches. They bit the dust owing a lot of people money, wouldn't answer e-mails or telephone calls. (I tried persistently for a few months)

In it's prime it was excellent, but its been nearly a year now, no apologies, nothing.