A Guide to Irish Parish Registers

Description

This work tells you which Irish parish registers exist (all denominations), their starting dates, and where and how they can be located, and it links them to Griffith’s Valuation of Ireland, the great survey of property holders taken between 1848 and 1864.

The civil parish, rather than the church parish, was the basic unit for the administration of records in Ireland. Most important Irish records–parish records of birth, marriage, and death, for instance, and Griffith’s Valuation–are either organized along civil parish lines or, as in the case of Catholic parish records, which are organized by diocese, can be tied into civil parish records for further research.

Here are located churches of all denominations, including Roman Catholic, and given is the earliest date of their registers. In tabular form, in alphabetical order in each of the thirty-two counties, is the name of the civil parish; the name of the Church of Ireland parish (if different), and the earliest baptism entry in the registers; the Roman Catholic parish and the earliest baptism or marriage entry in the registers; the Presbyterian congregation and its earliest baptism entries; and, if registers of dissenting churches are extant (Quaker, Methodist, Congregationalist, Baptist, etc.), it gives the beginning of their registers. It also provides map references to Mr. Mitchell’s New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland and to the maps accompanying the householders’ index to Griffith’s Valuation. This makes parish records and Griffith’s Valuation compatible, for they can be identified by the same administrative division–the civil parish.