Roots Ireland Strategy

Thomas from Presence

RootsIreland.com is like an elaborately boring puzzle game rather than a records resource and getting value from it requires a lot strategic thinking (like an elaborately boring puzzle game...).

Here's a tip:

The Problem
Female ancestors often slip through the net due to poorly recorded or lost marriages. It's not possible to do a search of just the mother's name field for baptisms meaning that they often disappear or remain undiscovered.

A Tactic

You might know which RC parish your relatives were practicing in or at least neighbouring ones. Potential husbands are often not too far away. Use Griffiths to collect some local surnames then search the baptisms with just the initials.

I lost a Mary Brunkard in Naul parish but found her by taking the neighbouring surnames (in this case McClean, Monks and Rooney) and searched baptisms for these hitherto unconnected families using initials to common first names in Naul Parish.

You can search by parish on RootsIreland.com by clicking into a particular heritage centre which cuts the noise considerably.

I found numerous Brunkards as sponsors and found Mary had married a McClean.

It's time consuming but it's helping to fill in some gaps.

Hermy

Thomas from Presence wrote: »

You can search by parish on RootsIreland.com by clicking into a particular heritage centre which cuts the noise considerably.

That's a particularly effective strategy!