Hi, I've been under the assumption that records were lost in all categories for some regions. But someone recently said something that made me think that maybe civil records were maintained, and church records were destroyed. If that's true, then I need to widen my search for an ancestor who I thought died during a specific timeframe in Ireland.
Loralee:
Civil registration started in 1845 for only non-Roman Catholic marriages. In 1864, full civil registration began for births, marriages and deaths. Images for most records can be found at the free Irish government site www.irishgenealogy.ie ; Births are available from 1864-1919, marriages 1845-1944 (no RC marriages 1845-1863) and deaths 1864-1969. Note: deaths for 1864-1877 are currently only index records.
Availability of church records depends on the parish and denomination.
Can you let us know who you are looking for and the timeframe plus denomination.
Roger McDonnell
Civil records of birth, marriage and death are intact, but there are some issues - not all events were correctly registered, there can sometimes be indexing issues etc.
The Church records that you often hear about being lost were for the Church of Ireland - registers for other denominations were not sent to the Public Records Office.
Thanks so much for your super speedy response. I do have another long, long thread about my great great grandmother who everyone called Annie Ferguson. She had 14 children in Ireland between 1867-1891 (we can find all of those records) and sometimes called herself Annie Ferguson, Ann Ferguson, Anne Ferguson, and occasionally included Harbron (the fathers last name). The father was from Kingston-upon-hull, York, and was married prior to meeting Annie. His wife left him, taking his son, and I suspect they weren't able to get a divorce... So I'm not sure if they would have been able to legally marry.
She died shortly after her daughter Robina Faith Harbron was born. The father had moved to Australia to set up a new business & send for the family, but because he was gone Annie died the young children were sent to orphanages, older ones to live with family in England.
I'm assuming she was born between 1842-1849 based on the children's birth years and died between 1891-1893
I'm also not entirely sure if Ferguson was her maiden name because I can't track down an Ann/Anne/Annie Ferguson who also doesn't also show up much later than her known death timeframe.
I'm starting to wonder if maybe she didn't actually die & went into a workhouse or lunacy hospital and the story was just told differently for some reason :)
Shane, do you have any tips on finding records that aren't correctly indexed?
regarding the problem records - there's no simple answer it all depends on what clues you have and the type of issue with the record in question - all assuming the event was actually registered. A search of this type usually starts with another person born/married/died in the same district and year (or year/quarter) and browsing through the registers from there. The BMD Indexes that many people use were created by FamilySearch, and copies are now available on FindMyPast & Ancestry - these contain the vital references from the original index books needed to locate records, e.g. registration district, volume & page number, the same system in use in the GRO research rooms and by the GRO staff, unfortunately the IrishGenealogy website doesn't include the volume & page number references, but luckily the page number is visible in the actual registers.. Probably the main issue that causes problems is variations in spelling, Mc and O' surname, alternate first names..
I've a blog post on solving one particular type of issue - where likely entries of a birth are available on the FamilySearch/FMP/Anc. index, but there's no sign of the full record on IrishGenealogy website, see Using the GRO Image Browse Tool – Example