by Paul Gorry

 

This is a very good time to be a beginner at Irish family history. The past decade has seen an increase in technological finding aids that have opened up previously difficult-to-search sources. The on-line searchable database of the 1911 Census for Dublin www.census.nationalarchives.ie is the most recent and most significant addition. This became available on 3 December 2007. Up to then it was necessary to have an exact address in order to locate a family, and you had to physically go to a record repository to do the search. Now you can search an individual by name and do it at home on your pc, for free.

 

Since the release of the Dublin 1911 database, visitors to the Genealogy Service at the National Archives in Dublin’s Bishop Street have included a significant number whose interest was sparked by dabbling with this on-line database. So, if you’re a beginner, where should you start? Beginners are naturally enthusiastic and want to jump right in. This is a hobby for most people, after all. However, you can waste a lot of time going in the wrong direction if you just dive in. To get the most out of family history you need to impose a little discipline on yourself.

 

If your ancestors left Ireland you won’t have to worry about Irish genealogical sources till you have worked your way back through the available records of their adoptive country, identifying the emigrant ancestor and establishing background information on him or her. If your ancestors never left Ireland your research will start with the records held centrally in Dublin. Whether your family were emigrants or remained in Ireland, before you venture to the records there are some basic steps you should take. 

 

Everyone should start by talking to family members and gathering whatever documents may be available at home. This may seem too obvious to mention, but so many people bypass these steps and head for the Internet. So, start by asking relatives for names, dates, locations and occupations. It doesn’t matter whether the information is fully accurate, as you will be attempting to verify it with records at a later stage. For now, just take down as much information as you can get. Nearly everyone will have some family documents. Memorial cards, birth or death certificates, cemetery receipts and old photographs are examples of the type of material that may help you to start your research.

 

Don’t head for the Internet just yet! This bold statement needs some qualification. There is a general belief that “everything’s on the Internet”. While the Web has made life easier for experienced researchers, it doesn’t have “everything”. In relation to Irish genealogical sources there is relatively little on-line so far, compared with other English-speaking countries. The most significant break-through is the Dublin 1911 Census, and over the next two years we can expect to see the rest of 1911 appearing as well as the 1901 returns for the whole country.

 

There are other Irish sources online, and free. For example, there are transcripts of the 1901 Census for Cos. Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo, with partial coverage of some other counties [www.leitrim-roscommon.com]. A similar database for the Co. Clare 1901 Census is on Clare County Library’s site www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/genealog.htm, along with other research tools. When it comes to pay-per-view or subscription sites, Griffith’s Valuation is the most significant source available on the Internet www.irishorigins.com, but this is a mid-nineteenth century property survey. It is several steps away from what the beginner needs to be doing.

 

The problem with the Internet and beginners in genealogy is that the inexperienced researcher usually will not differentiate between actual records and mere research tools; and between properly sourced information and misinformation uploaded by people with no real knowledge of sources. So, other than dabbling with the 1911 Census or similar databases to whet your appetite, keep away from your broadband connection till you understand the records a bit more.

Nowadays we are particular about how our surname is spelt and we are all the time asked for our age or date of birth when filling out forms. You must remember that the records you will be looking at were usually written by a third party, so don’t expect the surname to be spelt consistently as you would spell it, or the age to be accurate. Even if your ancestor supplied the information, spellings and ages should never to assumed to be correct. Always search indexes for variant spellings and always treat ages as approximations till you find a record confirming them.

 

Genealogy is a hobby you can spend years pursuing, so don’t try to trace all your ancestors at once. To get to know the records you should choose one line of ancestry to follow at the beginning. Your early steps are going to be the most time consuming. Just getting to know your way around the various record repositories is an adventure in itself. Don’t expect to make great strides in your first research expeditions. Think of them as baby steps.

 

It’s very tempting to start with an interesting or mysterious ancestor several generations back. People do that all the time, but having spent many fruitless hours of research they return to the point at which they should have begun. You should always work back in time, generation by generation. Take a fairly definite piece of information – for example, the rough date of your grandparents’ marriage – find the marriage record and use it as a foundation on which to build. There is no point in searching the Index of Births in the General Register Office research room for your great-grandfather if you don’t know his parents’ names. Even if you found the right individual there would be nothing on the record to tell you it was correct. So, don’t ignore the intermediate steps to jump into the unknown.

 

Before you venture to research in the Dublin record repositories you should pay a visit to the Genealogy Service at the National Archives. This is a free service where you will be given advice on how best to approach your particular search and how to use records in any record office in Ireland. It is staffed by members of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland (APGI), who are engaged by the National Archives. The National Library in Kildare Street has an advisory service operated by its own staff.