Query about Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958

MargeS

Hi all, I've just started researching my family history.
I'm currently in the process of talking to relatives and trying to gather as much info as possible. But getting dates for anything is a struggle as I'm sure you know

Anyhow, I've signed up to Familysearch.org and using their access to the Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958 to find people.

This is my query.
If I search for a person called "John Doe" nothing shows up, but if I search for "John P Doe" then I can find the/a person.
There is no way that my family would know the middle initial of other family members.

So, is this where perseverance/research/cross checking, etc, helps me in this process or am I doing something wrong? If I request a birth/death/marriage cert for every person I find that vaguely matches, I'll be broke in a month

kitchenkid

Do not purchase anything until you have no other options. For example do you know where the family lived and the civil registration district that is therefore most likely to contain the records? What dates are you searching for? Can you follow a line back or forward by naming parents/children |? (this option is not available for all records); can you search for the surname only to see all the christian names? Have you checked the census records?

Jellybaby1

Have you checked irishgenealogy.ie for church records? The images of records are online for free for a (very) few counties.

http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/church-records/about/what-church-records-are-available-online

kitchenkid

Also, I should have said to take a look at irishgenealogynews.ie which is a great resource and points you to sources of info.

MargeS

Thanks all, I'm getting stuck in and using all your suggestions. I think I really need to do more talking with family members to see if I can narrow down my searches. For example, 'born in Kildare' is just too broad.
I realise now that my starting info is just insufficient.

CassieManson

MargeS wrote: »

Hi all, I've just started researching my family history.
I'm currently in the process of talking to relatives and trying to gather as much info as possible. But getting dates for anything is a struggle as I'm sure you know

Anyhow, I've signed up to Familysearch.org and using their access to the Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958 to find people.

This is my query.
If I search for a person called "John Doe" nothing shows up, but if I search for "John P Doe" then I can find the/a person.
There is no way that my family would know the middle initial of other family members.

So, is this where perseverance/research/cross checking, etc, helps me in this process or am I doing something wrong? If I request a birth/death/marriage cert for every person I find that vaguely matches, I'll be broke in a month

It took me a while to figure out familysearch, but eventually I found that by playing around with the "match exactly" tick box I was able to find a lot of very useful records. Most of the certs I sent for have been correct, so far.

I found that there can be many versions of spelling of even very common names eg Kelley, Kiely, Keily. If you stick to the exact match you may not find what you are looking for. If you don't tick this box the closest matches will appear at the top, followed by other variants. I actually find that putting in middle initials is not very helpful as if for example you look for John A Kiely, it finds all people with the initial A Kiely....

The Church records on irishgenealogy are great also (some also appear in family search) but are not available for most counties.

Best of luck with your research and be prepared to get "pulled in" to what can be a very time consuming but very interesting passtime.