Tracing your Ancestry

nollaig

Anyboppdy here actually been able to go back as far as the 1700's or earlier?

genie

I have direct links with various families back to 1811, 1814 and 1819. Can't get back any further because of lack of parish records and gravestones. A lot of my ancestors were C of I and many of the records were burned in 1922.

With another family, I have them traced indirectly back to 1633 in England. This ancestor, a Church of England clergyman, then pops up in Ireland in the Hearth Money Rolls of the 1660s and I have indirect links down to 1770 via Cottons Fasti Ecclesiae Hibernicae, Trinity College Alumni records, Marriage Licence Bonds, Wills Indexes, Voters Lists and the Diocese of Elphin Census of 1749 and then with direct links from 1770 down to the present day via Methodist church records, various other parish records, civil registration and census etc. The family has an uncommon name so they tend to stick out like a sore thumb, which makes it easier to find them.

redmagic

someone in my family was able to trace our ancestors back to 1748 and co. armagh.

scrattletrap

I have one Irish branch back to the 1790s and a Scottish branch back to 1590s (the Scots kept great records)

BrianCalgary

We get traced back to Scotland in the 1640's. One branch went to NI in the late 1600's (my branch) another emigrated to Sout Eastern Saskatchewan in the late 1800's.

Mick86

nollaig wrote:

Anyboppdy here actually been able to go back as far as the 1700's or earlier?

I was lucky to get back to the 1850s. My grandmother's birth certificate had the wrong mother's name and no father registered (bad bad great grandma:D ) and another great grandmother had an unusual surname (Ferns) of which I can find no other record. Still searching.:rolleyes:

arctic lemur

I can go back to the plantations as it was highly documented in Donoghmore that one of our family converted to Protestantism to keep his lands.

jaqian

Has anybody here gone to Births, Death & Marraiges and traced their family from there?

How easy is it to get a birthcert,marraige certs of your great/grand-parents?

genie

jaqian wrote:

Has anybody here gone to Births, Death & Marraiges and traced their family from there?

How easy is it to get a birthcert,marraige certs of your great/grand-parents?

If you have an approximate year in which the event took place, you can apply to the General Register Office for a certificate or photocopy of the entry in the register, which is cheaper, and if it isn't the right year they will search one year on either side of the year you specified. Other than that, you'll have to go to the General Register Office in Dublin and search the Indexes yourself. They begin 1864 (1845 for non-Catholic marriages) and there is a search fee, too.

http://www.groireland.ie/

I wish they would put them on the Internet. Still, at least the 1901/1911 Census will start appearing on the net from the end of the year, so that's something at least.

BTW, if you are just starting out on your family tree, check to see if other family/extended family members haven't started doing a family tree already. Also see if your/their family have any certificates/documents lying about the house which would provide a lot of useful info.

Also, if you know where family members are buried and if they have a gravestone, it will (hopefully) provide date of death, and sometimes age, from which you can get an approximate year of birth.

jaqian

Thanks. Going this Fri see if I can get any info on family.


On a different note does anyone know of a good Irish forum dedicated to genealogy? Also I keep coming across genealogy standard called GEDCOM, does anyone use it and whats your opinion on it?

Unpossible

How would i go about tracing my family tree? Are there people out there that would do it for me (its hard to look up parish records when Im in a different country).
All I know is that a few generations back (about 3 or 4 at most) my fathers family came to tralee from south kerry (which is the homeplace of the O'Connells*) and according to my late grandfather his family came from the Limerick clare area** a few generations before him (my mother tells me that his parents & aunts & uncles used to tell them stories of when the family used to live in castles. Im a bit skeptical about this, but he is no longer with us so I cant ask him).

edit:
*my dad (& therefore I am also) is an O'Connell
**my mom is an O'Brien

genie

You can hire a genealogist to do some research for you but they can be very expensive and results can be very mixed. Try and find out as much as you can about your family first as it will save you money in the long run. Shop around for a genealogist.

There are lists of genealogists here:

http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy/researchers.htm

Some charge a fortune but this guy seems to have reasonable rates...

http://homepage.eircom.net/~genbruce/MyGenealogy/Genealogy.html

You might also find the book "Tracing Your Kerry Ancestors" by Michael H O'Connor helpful. It's published by Flyleaf Press.

Hope this helps!

Mrs. MacGyver

I read this thread on Friday and decided to do a bit of searching myself as i knew nothing of my grandmother's family except 4 main facts and an assortment of dates. She died in 1943 and my dad was only 4 and my granda never talked about his deceased wife as his heart was broken. so anyway rambling on, i googled her name and a few things came up. One was a site called www.rootsweb.com/ and there was a post from a lady called Elaine who was searching for family connections in Cork as she beleived that she and her sister were the last of the family. (co-incedentally my dad and his brother thought that they were the last left!) So anyway after a few e-mail and clarification of info it turns out we have the same great grand parents, her granda was my grannys brother. She was able to trace the family back to 1860 and had records of them ion the 1901 census, has WW1 registration papers for my granduncles, documents etc. It was such a co-incidence. Now we are able to swap info and fill in the missing gaps in the family tree and all because i read this thread! i will have a great interes in checing parish records, obtaining pictures from other family members etc. Genealogy is a mighty interest to have.

scrattletrap

A Gedcom is the format that most family tree software uses, you don't need a special family tree software to read them but it does help. You can down load basic software (for free) which will help you organise who is who on your family tree, one you go back two or three generations this is very helpful.
A website that I found very helpful if your just starting out to answer your questions is www.rootschat.com
Get as much information from living relatives as you can before you start, you would be amazed who has great grandmother birth cert already. Plus if you have some facts to go on it is a lot cheaper (and it is very expensive in Ireland). Plus in Ireland it is manual work, using the micro-fiches as opposed to typing in a name as with a lot of the English and Scottish records.

blue banana

There are IGL projects covering a large section of Ireland, where they are indexing parish records etc So for some counties it is possible to carry out a computerised search of a database but for some areas like Kerry, West Cork etc it is neccessary to go through the awful microfilm in the NLI.