Find my past vs Ancestry vs Roostireland versions of the RC parish registers

mickmackey1 · 11-03-2016 11:16pm

Working fine here, when signed in.

VirginiaB · 21-03-2016 3:10pm

I have had a lot of bad things, all deserved, to say about rootsireland.ie thru the years and stopped using them at all when the rates got so high. But I may have to swallow my pride as their search function for Catholic parish records, flawed as it is, is so much better than the index on Ancestry/FMP.

Yesterday for example, I searched for the marriage of Hugh Towers. I already had the rootsireland.ie transcription but wanted to see the image on Ancestry for any further information. Not there. I did find his bride--and there he was, as Fugh Fowers. But I would never have found the record if I had not already purchased the rootsireland.ie data with the wife's name. If they have any sense, they should lower their subscription price and heavily advertise their superior index.

Currently, it is $142 for an annual subscription here in the US. Make it $99 and it will attract enough additional people to make up for the loss on the lowered price--especially those among us already paying for Ancestry and/or FMP world subscriptions. My two cents.

Hermy · 21-03-2016 3:43pm

While I agree with you entirely on the deserved criticism of Roots Ireland might I suggest that if you have the transcript of a catholic parish record and need to see the original image you can visit the NLI website for free.

VirginiaB · 21-03-2016 4:25pm

You are right of course. The advantage of Ancestry is that I can quickly save it to my tree there. But I suppose I could save the NLI image to my hard drive and then to my Ancestry tree, probably a better plan.

tabbey · 21-03-2016 10:48pm

Although I have a subscription to FMP, and cannot do without it, I have to agree rootsireland is the most user friendly and successful for searching the parish records.

DamoRed · 31-03-2016 10:28pm

As a newcomer who has been using a combination of Irishgenealogy.ie, Familysearch.org and a 14 day free trial on Ancestry with mainly positive results, I've just started looking on FMP with known results for reference.

On my mother's side, a parish in Dublin, the results are very good. However, on my father's side, a neighbouring parish, but in Kildare, it's a disaster zone, with zero results coming up after quite a number of different searches. I kept going as my curiosity was piqued to see how long it would take to get a hit.

Thankfully, I've already got those results, otherwise I'd be feeling pretty cheesed off and disillusioned if I was depending only on FMP.

Ninjakettle · 28-02-2017 6:50pm

Hi - is it possible on any of these sites to search for Sponsor (godparent) names?

pinkypinky · 28-02-2017 6:54pm

Irishgenealogy brings up anyone on a record with the name you search for, so definitely works there.

FMP seems to be down atm but I don't think it works the same way as Irishgenealogy.

ETA: got it working. No, the sponsor isn't an indexed category.

montgo · 28-02-2017 8:27pm

Well the good news that Roots Ireland have finally introduced the search facility for sponsor.

hblock21 · 28-02-2017 9:32pm

pinkypinky wrote: »

Irishgenealogy brings up anyone on a record with the name you search for, so definitely works there.

Really? How?

Ninjakettle · 28-02-2017 9:49pm

So i'm out of luck on Irish Genealogy as i want Galway (boyounagh) records and they don't seem to be there.
@Montgo - i'm having a look at Roots baptism search now..and i don't see a sponsor search field. Is there a trick to this. In any case - the records i want aren't on roots either as of yet (confirmed via email) so only FMP/Ancestry are any use to me and then it's visual trawling of the images for sponsor names.

KildareFan · 28-02-2017 11:40pm

I've been comparing civil records on Irishgenealogy with the parish registers on NLI/FMP/Ancestry & I've discovered some discrepancies in the records.

There are differences in the dates of ceremonies - some people have already commented on people being baptised before they were born [usually to do with covering up for late registration]; however, I've found a few marriages where the parish register has different dates & names and the priest only bothered to record the male witnesses.

So it's always worth checking both sources.

pinkypinky · 01-03-2017 10:20am

hblock21 wrote: »

Really? How?

When you search for a name in the church section, results show the most relevant ones first, i.e. a primary individual in the record, and then below that records were the name is a secondary like a witness or godparent or parent.

Ninjakettle · 02-03-2017 10:49am

This is probably old news to the pros here, but i noticed on Roots Ireland that you can put a zero in the surname field as a kind of master wildcard. Then you can whittle your matches by Sponsor or witness or whatever you're after. I also noticed that roots mark unreadable entries as ILLEGIBLE - so it's worth putting that word in the surname field too for completeness when searching.

I have an Ancestry and a Roots sub and i find that the transcriptions on Roots are much more accurate- but they have less records (or at least don't have the ones i'm looking for). On Ancestry, Cunningham often becomes Currigan so if you're aware of the common mistakes i would advise testing a few variants in your search field (CUN* and CUR*) etc.

Find my past vs Ancestry vs Roostireland versions of the RC parish registers

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