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Chapter EIGHT
THE INTERNET
Genealogy and computers were made for each other. The Internet holds out the promise of transforming genealogical research. For many areas outside Ireland the promise is already coming good -witness the Scottish General Register Office, www.scodandspeople.gov.uk, or the 1901 census for England and Wales, www.census.pro.gov.uk. Unfortunately in the case of Irish research the change has been slow and piecemeal with, as is so often the case in Ireland, narrow sectional interests outWeighing the common good. Few of the institutions holding records have even begun the process of making them available online and what records there are can be variable in quality.
None the less the huge interest in Irish genealogy, particularly in North America, has produced a profusion of resources for anyone with Irish ancestors. The survey that follows presumes only familiarity with the basics of World Wide Web browsers and email.
Websites, especially small personal sites that may contain invaluable family record details, are very perishable. If you cannot find one that you know used to be there, the Internet Archive Project, web.archive.org, almost certainly has a stored copy. Their 'Wayback machine' stores copies of virtually all sites that have appeared (and disappeared) since 1998 and is readily searchable.
STARTING POINTS
Although the Internet may change the ways the sources can be used, the fact is that the Internet has not added any new sources. For this reason it is a good idea to be aware of what the original sources are. Few sites attempt to describe the sourrp~. thp information they record and how that information can be interpreted. There are two kinds of starting points: general guides to Irish research, and guides to Irish-interest Internet sites.
Research guides
Good basic guides can be found at the National Archives of Ireland site, www.nationalarchives.ie/ genealogy.html, and the National Library of Ireland site, www.nli.ie/pdfs/famill.pdf. A more detailed treatment can be found on a site in which I have a personal involvement, Irish Ancestors, part of the Irish Times ireland. com site, www.ireland.com/ancestor. The 'Browse' section gives detailed accounts of all the record sources used in Irish research.
Other brief guides include:
.Sean Murphy's Beginner's Guide, homepage.eircom.net/ ~seanjmurphy/dir/guide.htm, and
.The Fianna Homepage, www.rootsweb.com/ ~fianna, which presumes research is being done via the Family History centres of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Listings sites
There are numerous listings sites which provide links to Irish genealogy sites. Since many of these themselves largely consist of listings, a frustrating amount of travelling in circles is inevitable. The sites given below are the largest and most stable. For a more detailed treatment of the structure of the first two in particular, see Peter Christian's The Genealogists Internet (Public Record Office, 2001), by far the most comprehensive publication on genealogy and the Internet. Of their nature all these sites suffer from a certain amount of link-rot.
The 'mother of all' genealogy site lists is Cyndi Howell's www.cyndislist.com which categorises and cross-references online genealogical resources. The Irish section is at ww.cyndislist.com/ireland.htm. With over 175,000 links in total the sheer scale of the enterprise is impressive, but it is also the site's main weakness: it can be almost as difficult to track something down on Cyndi's List as it is on the Internet itself
A more discriminating guide can be found at Genuki, www.genuki.org.uk/indexes/ IRLcontents.html, where a good attempt is made to give a comprehensive overview of the relevant records, with links listed where there are matching online resources.
The WorldGen Web project is a volunteer-run survey of sources relating to particular localities. The county-by-county listings for the twenty- six counties now in the Republic can be found at www.irelandgenweb.com and those for the six counties of Northern Ireland at www.rootsweb.com/-nirwgw. The quality of the listings depends very much on the enthusiasm and discrimination of the individuals responsible. Leprechauns are a constant hazard.
The Irish Ancestors listings at scripts .ireland. com/ ancestor /browse/links attempt to present a county-by-county listing of what source materials are available, as well as passenger lists and family sites.
Other sites with valuable listings include:
irelandgenealogyprojects.rootsweb.com: similar to the WorldGen Web project but for Ireland only.
www.genealogylinks.net/uk/ireland: a good listing despite the identification of Ireland as a region of the UK
www.tiara.ie/links.html: another well- maintained and comprehensive site, that of the Irish Ancestral Research Association.
www.doras.ie: the Irish telecom company Eircom has a very large directory of Irish sites which includes an extensive listing of Irish surname and family sites, as well as many Irish genealogy sites. Unusually a rating system is used in an attempt to give some idea of the quality of the sites listed. Unfortunately no categorisation other than 'genealogy' is used, which can make it difficult to pin down specifics.
SOURCES ONLINE
As already outlined, there are few sites offering comprehensive searches of Irish sources. But for particular areas and records there are some very good sites, giving a tantalising glimpse of the way things should be.
Major sources
General Register Office Records
The Republic GRO website is at www.groireland.ie and the Northern Ireland office is at www.groni.gov.uk. Neither has an online search facility. Although a government computerisation project has been in train for some years, its focus is primarily on facilitating the work of the Irish legal, health and welfare systems, with historical use well down the list of priorities.
However the fact that the LDS Church has microfilm copies of most of the records has allowed a certain amount of piecemeal transcription to take place. It should be remembered that the microfilm copies they transcribe are themselves transcriptions of local registrations, with the inevitable additional layer of human error.
www.familysearch.org. The LDS site itself includes transcripts of the first five years of birth registrations, 1864-68, as part of the International Genealogical Index.
193.193.166.161/death.html. Waterford County Library has made local death registrations available and freely searchable from 1864 to 1901.
www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/deaths_in_the_Iiscannor_area.htm. Clare County Library has a list of deaths in the Liscannor area.
www.sci.net.au/userpages/mgrogan/cork. Partial transcripts for Co. Cork are available on Margaret Grogan's site.
Quite a few sites invite users to submit records they have transcribed themselves. One of the best organised is www.cmcrp.net. The problems are self-evident: accuracy is always doubtful and in most cases it is not clear what proportion of the records is included.
Census records
There has been no systematic attempt to make either the 1901 or the 1911 census searchable online. The availability of the LDS microfilms for 1901 however has allowed transcriptions for particular areas. Only the most extensive transcripts are listed below. For county-by-county listings, see www.census-online.com/links/Ireland/ and scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/browse/links/counties.htm , as well as www.cyndislist.com/ireland.htm.
www.leitrim-roscommon.com. The best site for Irish census returns, indeed possibly the single best Irish research site on the Internet, is the Leitrim-Roscommon Genealogy website. As well as an almost complete database of the 1901 returns for Counties Leitrim and Roscommon, the site also contains large numbers of transcripts from Counties Mayo, Sligo, Westmeath and Wexford. Unlike many other sites, there is a systematic account of which records are complete and which are still to be added to. From my own experience, the quality of the transcripts is consistently good. I have certainly found records I had missed when searching the originals.
www.clarelibrary.ie. Clare County Library has transcripts of the returns for 1901 for four out of the eight Poor Law Unions of the county.
www.sci.net.au/userpages/mgrogan/cork. Margaret Grogan's site has a large number of transcripts for Cork for both 1901 and 1911 submitted by volunteers.
freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~donegal/census.htm: volunteer transcripts for 1901 and 1911 for parts of Donegal.
www.caora.net/find.php: an index to the heads of households for Co. Down in 1901.
Parish records
Despite the fact that virtually all Irish parish records have been transcribed in database format, no systematic attempt has been made to make them searchable online. Anything online is once again largely a result of the availability of LDS microfilms to volunteer transcribers. Again, county-by-county listings are at scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/browse/links/counties.htm and a general listing is at www.cyndislist.com/ireland.htm.
www.familysearch.org. The LDS website includes the records of twelve Roman Catholic parishes in Kerry and north-west Cork that were published by Albert Casey in O'Kief, Coshe Mang (16 Vols, pr.pr. 1964-72). As transcripts of transcripts, they need to be approached with caution.
www.rootsweb.com/ irllog/chwchrecs.htm, the records of five Longford Catholic parishes.
www.irishgenealogy.ie. Irish Genealogy Ltd is a company set up to promote Irish genealogy. It currently offers a signposting database using the records of nine local heritage centres, which allows users to identify whether records matching their search criteria are held by the centre. This includes their parish register database transcripts. To access fuller details a commissioned search is then necessary.
Property records
Because of the lack of nineteenth-century census material the two property surveys, Griffith's Valuation (1847-64) and the Tithe Applotment Books (1823-38) have acquired unusual importance. Griffith's is the single most widely available source online.
www.otherdays.com, a subscription site, has a fully indexed copy of the Valuation including page images from the original.
scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/surname has a count of the number of Griffith's householders of a particular surname by county (free) and parish (paying).
www.leitrim-roscommon.com has transcripts for twenty-two parishes in Roscommon, twenty-four in Limerick and ten in Galway.
www.irishorigins.com includes a pay-per-view version of Griffith's, as well as a meta-search feature covering a vast number of sites which contain Irish genealogical material, including many of the sites listed here.
The Tithe Books are less well served. www.caora.net has an index to the Tithe Books of Co. Down. Otherwise scripts,ireland.com/ancestor/browse/links/counties.htm and www.genealogylinks.net/uklireland have county- by-county listings for individual parishes.
Other sources
Migration records
The vast majority of records relate to North America and Australia.
istg.rootsweb.com is the exotically named Immigrant Ships Transcribers' Guild, the major site for ships' lists copied by volunteers, with the usual caveats.
www.ellisisland.org is the Ellis Island site which has New York arrivals' records from 1892 to 1924.
scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/browse/links/passship-a.htm has a selection of links to ships' lists.
www.nationalarchives.ie/search01.html has an extensive but incomplete database of transportation records from Ireland to Australia up to 1868.
www.pcug.org.au/ppmay/convicts.htm has details of convict arrivals in Australia (1791-1820), a period for which the National Archives transportation registers have not survived.
Gravestone inscriptions
interment. net/ireland provides webspace for 'everyday folks' to submit transcriptions and compilations. The site is well organised but very few of the transcripts are complete. The site is covered by the meta-search www.irishorigins.com.
www.fermanagh.org.uk, Fermanagh Gold, has a good collection of Fermanagh gravestone inscriptions, as well as other information from the county.
www.webone.com.au/~sgrieves/cemetries _ireland.htm has a good, reliable selection, mostly from Tipperary.
Military and police records
www.ancestry.com, the largest commercial genealogy site, has very little of genuine interest for Ireland. One exception is the Royal Irish Constabulary List, an index to the LDS microfilms of the original service registers. The index is about seventy per cent complete as of May 2003.
www.cwgc.org, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is probably the best online military database.
www.greatwar.ie, the Royal Dublin Fusiliers' Association, has excellent information on the Irish in World War I.
DISCUSSION GROUPS
Usenet
Discussion or news groups were among the first uses of the Internet and can still be extremely interesting. Most browsers now provide a newsreader, but the simplest means of access is through groups.google.com. The Irish group is soc.genealogy.ireland, which was set up in August 1997 -messages before that date will be in soc.genealogy.uk+ireland. Access is also provided by www.irishinbritain.com. A less widely used newsgroup, also available as above, is soc. genealogy. surnames. ireland.
Mailing lists
Mailing lists copy every message submitted to the group to all subscribed members. They can be useful for unusual surnames or specific research issues. Be sure to keep the initial instructions on how to unsubscribe or you may find yourself swamped. By far the largest and most venerable collection of lists is at lists.rootsweb.com. A full Irish list can be found at www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail_country-unk-irl.html.
groups.yahoo.com has forty-six Irish genealogy lists.
GEOGRAPHY
The Holy Grail of Irish research is a specific townland address of origin. The 1851 Townlands Index, or more accurately The General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, Parishes and Baronies of Ireland (repr. Genealogical Publishing Co., 1981), first published in 1861 and based on the 1851 census, is the standard source. It is freely searchable on two sites:
www.seanruad.com has a straightforward interface and includes information on acreage and barony.
scripts. ireland. Com/ ancestor/placenames allow wildcard searches and complete listings for individual parishes.
SURNAME SITES
Many who have done a good deal of research will publish it on a website, partly through altruism, partly through enlightened self-interest –the more people publish, the greater the chance that someone from a related branch of the family will see the information and be able to add to it. As always the information provided ranges from superb to abysmal. There are now millions of personal family history sites and tracking down any relevant ones can be difficult.
www.cyndislist.com has an enormous list indexed alphabetically.
freepages.rootsweb.com is the largest provider of free genealogy pages.
www.genealogy.com also gives users free web pages and allows searches.
www.googie.com. A straightforward search on a site such as Google or Yahoo -'Murphy Family History' -can often be surprisingly rewarding.
ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES
The major repositories are:
www.nationalarchives.ie, the National Archives of Ireland
www.nli.ie, the National Library of Ireland
www.proni.gov.uk, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
ireland.anglican.org/library, the Representative Church Body Library.
Full contact details for local libraries can be found at scripts.ireland.com/ancestor/browse/ addresses.
COMMISSIONING RESEARCH
.Both the National Library and the National Archives sites include lists of researchers willing to carry out commissioned research purely as a convenience
.indigo.ie/~apgi is the home site of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland
.www.irishroots.net is the home of the Irish Family History Foundation, the umbrella body of the local heritage centre network in Ireland.