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Online Irish Resources
You've heard it before but it's worth repeating. The first place you start looking is within your own family. Ask your relatives where they come from, for family records, old documents, letters from back home, family legends. Maybe one of your cousins has been doing family history research and you could work together. Check your own birth certificate, your parents marriage and burth certificate. Follow the trail of brothers and sister, aunts and uncles who may know parts of your family history that were lost or forgotten in your branch. Sometimes you will come up against people who don't want to go digging in the past. Be kind. Keep your notes organised. I've learned this from experience. Note the source of each piece of information. Once you have some shape to your family and how far you can go back, start looking at the records available online or in a local genealogical centre.
Information Online
If your family roots come from Ireland, you send me an email with your family details I'll send you a free assessment of where to look next. See homepage for more details.All England
I have found the following useful in my research.
Mailing lists.
- Family Search IGI The International genealogical Index is part of the family history project of the Church of the Latter Day Saints. It includes lots of baptisms and marriage data both transcribed from the records and other, less reliable entries, entered by individuals.
- IGI batch numbers shows the batch numbers for register transcriptions so you can search for one surname in the whole of one parish.
- 1881 Census for England, Scotland and Wales is also available and searchable on the Family Search website. This is invaluable. You can also look at the previous and next pages which can be useful in finding family in neighbouring houses.
- FreeBMD is a project to transcribe all entries in the birth, marriages and deaths index. It is well underway. The images of the index pages can also be viewed. once you have the year, quarter, volume and page number, you can order the certificate from the GRO to find out the actual date and other information if you want.
- Ancestry.co.uk is a subscription service for most sources but did you know you can look up the birth, marriages and deaths indexes from freebmd for free here too as well as some census data. The search engine is a little easier than freebmd in my opinion. I find it worth paying the subscription for all the census material they have indexed.
- Search 1851 census 2% A nifty search engine for the 2% transcribed census of 1851. The project transcribed every 50 pages.
- Old Maps shows maps from the 19th century of towns and villages in the UK.
- Census Finder has a list of links by county which is quite useful.
- Surname Interests has lists of surnames, places and dates by county.
- Registration Districts within English and Welsh counties used for births, marriages and death registration.
- Access to Archives searches can show up all sorts of archived documents from wills and legal wrangles to bastardy records and licenses.
- Brother's Keeper free shareware genealogy soft that I use.
- Try Googling the name and county, town or parish. This can throw up a lot of interesting websites and mailing lists, local history, Government papers, etc and is highly recommended.
Mailing lists are available on many different webservers with varying volumes of mails. They can be very useful to search through for mailings mentioning your particular names or places over the years. There are county lists and surname lists but I find the surname lists are often too US based to be useful for English family research.Paying sites
- Rootsweb now on ancestry.com, has the most useful county lists but they can be quite busy. They have surname lists too.
Ireland Message Board
- Rootschat Although not officially a mailing list, it works the same way. Highly recommended.
- General register Office (GRO) site to order your birth, marriage and death certificates online. £7 if full GRO reference supplied (from freebmd etc) or £11.50 if they have to do a search for you.
- Ancestry.co.uk has the 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901 censuses online and searchable which is invaluable. You can view the original documents too in case of mistranscribing. It costs about £60 annual subscription and you can get a two week free trial. I think it's worth it. Search Census Records Now - Click here
- The 1901 census is available on the national archives government website as pay per view. YOu can get a certain amount without paying but it can get quite expensive but shows the original documents.
- The 1911 census is now available as pay per view. YOu can get a certain amount without paying but it can get quite expensive but shows the original documents.
- Census Extractor. Download this program to extract 1901 census data for a particular surname for free.
- Archive CDs in my opinion create the most readable Census CDs. They are available by county and recently they have changed so you don't have to buy the whole county for one CD.
- Genesreunited is a genealogical offshoots of Friends Reunited. You can search for names for free but must pay £7.50 for an annual fee to contact anyone with a family member that may link to yours. I have made a number of useful contacts this way. If you upload your own tree here or anywhere, please do not upload any living family members.
- Origins has lots of databases that are hard to access online elsewhere.
Dorset
- Dorset Online Parish Clerks has all sorts of information transcribed for various Dorset towns and villages, including some 1861 census, baptism, marriage and burial records.
Essex
- Kevin's Essex and Suffolk databases include many 1841 census transcriptions and other gems.
- 1851 2% extracts for Essex for parts of Birchanger, Brentwood, Colchester, Downham, Foulness, Halstead, Havering Atte Bower, Lt Oakley, Rivenhall, Walthamstow and Witham.
- Essex Lookup Exchange has volunteers who will look up your specific queries for you.
Kent
- Kent Archaelogical Society has a good collection of Churchyard Monumental Inscriptions.
- Kent Lookup Exchange has volunteers who will look up your specific queries for you.
- has lists of surnames, places and dates.
- Janet and Richard's website has various useful Kent information lists.
- 1837online has recently released an index to the 1861 Kent and London census (paid).
Staffordshire
- Staffordshire's BMD is a work in progress database of the county's births, marriages and deaths.
Suffolk
- Kevin's Essex and Suffolk databases include many 1841 census transcriptions and other gems.
- Suffolk Surnames List has surnames, dates and places.
- Suffolk Parish Lookups has volunteers from many parishes.
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K Dempsey
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