OVER ten million historic Irish Catholic records dating back to the 1600s will be available for free during the month of March.
The baptismal, marriage and death records will help people interested in tracing their family trees, by providing information such as names, dates, family relationships, and maiden names for mothers and wives.
Indexed from images that were digitised by the National Library of Ireland for the first time, the Catholic Parish Registers 1655-1915 holds over 373,000 images of documents and 40 million names from more than 1,000 parishes and 3,500 registers across the island of Ireland.
Handwritten information from the original records has been transcribed so that names can be easily searched and accessed by name, year and place, and will be freely accessible on ancestry.ie throughout March.
Previously, the collection was only available in an un-indexed form, which meant researchers had a lengthy task to find what they were searching for.
Irish writer James Joyce (1882 - 1941) in Zurich. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)In addition, many documents written in Latin, for example, the baptismal certificate of famous Irish author James Joyce, are translated on ancestry.ie.
Joyce’s name is recorded in Latin as Jacobus Augustinus Joyce, baptised on February 5, 1882.
In total, the website offers access to more than 55 million Irish records and 17 billion global records, making Ancestry.ie the world’s largest online family history resource.
Also included in the newly released records is James Hoban, who designed the White House in Washington.
Until now, the year of his birth had been unclear, but the discovery of the original baptismal record states that he was baptised at Callan, Co. Kilkenny, on April 18, 1755.
Free access to the new collection is limited to the month of March only, with subscription only access from €18 a month commencing from April 1.
See More: Ancestry.ie, Featured, Irish Records, Newslettertop, Records
