Tracing Irish Ancestors: From America Back to the Townland

Most 19th-century Irish census records were destroyed, but Irish research is far from hopeless. How to find the place of origin, and the records that survive, many of them free.

4 min read

Tens of millions of Americans have Irish ancestry, and many hit the same wall: "He came from Ireland." Irish research has a reputation for being impossible because so many records were lost. That reputation is out of date. Many key Irish records survive, a large share of them are free online, and the real challenge is usually on the American side: finding exactly where in Ireland your ancestor came from.

What was lost, and what wasn't

Ireland's national censuses for 1821 through 1851 were almost entirely destroyed in 1922, when the Public Record Office in Dublin's Four Courts was burned during the Civil War. The government itself had already destroyed the censuses of 1861 through 1891. Many Church of Ireland parish registers and wills deposited at the Public Record Office were lost in the same fire.

But a great deal survives:

• The 1901 and 1911 censuses, complete and free online from the National Archives of Ireland
• Civil registration of births, marriages and deaths
• Catholic parish registers, which were kept by the parishes and never sent to Dublin
• Land and tax records, including Griffith's Valuation and the Tithe Applotment Books, which serve as census substitutes
• Many Church of Ireland and Presbyterian registers that stayed in local custody

Step 1: Find the place of origin in American records

Irish records are organized by place, so you need more than "Ireland." Ideally you want a county, and better still a parish or townland. Look in every American record your ancestor or their family created:

• Gravestones. Irish immigrants often carved their county or parish of birth on headstones: "Native of Co. Mayo, Parish of Aghamore."
• Catholic church records, especially marriage records, which sometimes give the parish of birth.
• Naturalization records, especially after 1906, when the forms ask for the town of birth. See Naturalization Records.
• Death certificates and obituaries, especially in Irish-American newspapers.
• Civil War pension files and other military records.
• "Missing friends" advertisements. Irish immigrants placed thousands of ads looking for lost relatives, often naming their home parish. The Boston Pilot's ads (1831–1921) are searchable free online through Boston College's "Information Wanted" database.
• Records of siblings and cousins. If your ancestor's records don't say, a brother's or a fellow immigrant's might. Research the whole cluster who came together. See The FAN Club.

Step 2: Understand Irish places

Irish addresses use several overlapping divisions, and records are organized by different ones:

• County: the 32 counties, grouped into four provinces
• Barony: an old division used in land records
• Civil parish: the unit used for land and tax records and the census
• Catholic parish: which often has different boundaries and a different name from the civil parish
• Townland: the smallest unit, a rural area of a few hundred acres; there are more than 60,000 of them
• Poor Law Union and registration district: the units used for civil registration

Free online townland databases and the Ordnance Survey maps will tell you which civil parish, Catholic parish and registration district a townland belongs to.

Step 3: Use the key Irish records

Civil registration

Ireland began registering non-Catholic marriages in 1845 and all births, marriages and deaths in 1864. Indexes and images of many civil records are free on IrishGenealogy.ie, the Irish government's genealogy site. For Northern Ireland, records are available through GRONI (the General Register Office of Northern Ireland).

Church records

Catholic parish registers are the main source for births and marriages before 1864. Most begin between the 1820s and 1840s, earlier in cities and the east, later in the rural west. The National Library of Ireland has put images of its microfilms of Catholic parish registers free online (generally up to about 1880). Indexes are on Ancestry, Findmypast and some local sites. Church of Ireland registers survive for many parishes, and some are on IrishGenealogy.ie. See Church Records.

The 1901 and 1911 censuses

Even if your ancestor left Ireland long before 1901, the censuses are worth searching. Brothers, sisters or parents may still have been living in the home townland, and finding the family name in the right place confirms you're on the right track. The 1911 census also asks married women how many years they'd been married and how many children they'd had.

Land records: Griffith's Valuation and the Tithe Applotment Books

• Griffith's Valuation (1847–1864) lists every occupier of land and buildings in Ireland, by townland. It's the closest thing to a mid-19th-century census and is free online.
• The Tithe Applotment Books (1823–1837) list landholders who paid tithes to the Church of Ireland, by civil parish. They're free online from the National Archives of Ireland.

Both list only landholders, not whole families, but they show where a surname was concentrated, which can point you to the right parish to search.

Common challenges

• Common names. There may be dozens of Patrick Murphys in a single county. Use every detail you have, including parents' names, siblings and godparents, to sort them.
• Naming patterns. Many Irish families named the first son after the father's father, the first daughter after the mother's mother, and so on. It's a helpful clue, but not a rule.
• Latin and abbreviations. Catholic registers were often kept in Latin, with names in Latin forms (Jacobus for James, Carolus for Charles). See Reading Old Handwriting.
• Scots-Irish ancestors. Presbyterian families from Ulster who came to America in the 1700s are a different research problem; their records often lie in Northern Ireland, at PRONI.