doyles of rathdangan

Hello

A good place for you to start would be to obtain a copy of the civil record of your grandmother’s birth. This would give you both her parents’ names. The next step you could take is to obtain a record of their marriage. This will give their respective fathers names and  the place name where they resided at the time of the marriage. Civil registration records are available from the General Register Office (GRO). These start from 1864. You can access the website here: http://www.groireland.ie/research.htm

Also if you were to obtain church records of these events, they could provide more information to work with. Sponsors at baptisms and witnesses at weddings would quite often be family members or close neighbours. Most Catholic records are held locally - One site which might be of use is - http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/ - where you can ‘browse’ an overview of available records per county. If you have any difficulty, you could try writing to the parish priest for possible assistance.

Best regards Michael.