Irish Vital Records
Where do you start with Irish research? IrishGenealogy.ie and the Catholic Parish Records at the National Library of Ireland are my first choice.
If you don’t want to volunteer to share a tip, you’re stuck with what I want to talk about, and this week that’s Irish vital records. Why? Because this month, I am writing about a man who was “born in County Kerry.”
From his gravestone, I had his date of birth and date of death. I was able to locate his death record, which gave me the names of his parents. With that information, I was sure I had a good chance of locating his birth record in the old country.
IrishGenealogy.ie Courtesy of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport, and Media
As I expected, I had no trouble locating the birth record for James Henry Roche. However, I had a census record where several people with the Roche surname were living in a boarding house. The names were scattered among the residents, so it wasn’t clear if they were family. When looking for them using the IrishGenealogy.ie search, I learned a couple of things about the Location field.
Catherine Roche was born in Kilmanihan, Brosna, County Kerry, Ireland, in 1883.
Using Kilmanihan in the Location field yielded no results.
Using Brosna in the Location field yielded no results.
Using County Kerry or Kerry in the Location field yielded no results.
Leaving the Location field blank gave me 15 results.
Using Tralee in the Location field gave me 2 results, one of which was my Catherine.
I only knew to use Tralee because it had been part of James Henry Roche’s birth record. For Location, the search engine is looking for the Superintendent Registrar’s District. (See Additional Reading/Viewing below.)
Also, check out the Genealogical Research (which includes “How to Start”) and FAQ tabs.
Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland
This website begins with Enter a Parish Name. I didn’t know the Parish. The map took me to Brosna, which is in the Diocese of Kerry (which has 51 parishes). Going through the list, I found the Brosna Parish and decided this might be the place to start my search. I didn’t find James, nor did I find him in the Tralee Parish records.
NOTE: There is no search engine for these records at the NLI website. Ancestry and FamilySearch appear to have searchable versions. I didn’t find my James Roche at either site.
Irish Family History Foundation
You need a paid subscription to search the records, but the Help pages are free and give insights into conducting Irish research. If any of you have used the subscription areas, please tell us about your experiences in the comments below.
Civil Registration Index for Ireland on FamilySearch, Ancestry, and FindMyPast
Thank you to
, who did a presentation at RootsTech on Irish research, for looking over this post and telling me about the Civil Registration Index. (See Additional Reading/Viewing below.) He also warned to be wary of mixing up individuals with the same names. With common names, you’ll need to consider the location, as well as the dates, to ensure you've found the right Joseph Jones, son of John Jones and Mary Smith.Introduction to Irish Research
How did I find out about these sites? Rootstech and other researchers. You don’t know what you don’t know. (See Don’t be Afraid to Ask at Mission Genealogy Tips.)
Additional Reading/Viewing:
“Irish Administrative Divisions,” Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society.
“Ireland’s Civil Registration Districts,” Irish Genealogy Toolkit.
“Catholic Parishes in Ireland,” Irish Ancestors.
County Kerry, Ireland, Genealogy, FamilySearch Research Wiki; FamilySearch.
Jenny Joyce, “Beginning Irish Research,” 2024, Rootstech; FamilySearch.
Brian Donovan, “Irish Family History is Easy! Seriously 2023,” Rootstech; FamilySearch.
Daniel Loftus, “On the Record: An Introduction to Civil Registration in Ireland,” 2025, Rootstech: FamilySearch.
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I use this site time and time again. Super helpful when trying to situate ancestors. https://www.townlands.ie/
My Irish forebears have given me no end of grief. Not helped by unreliable memoirs. My go to is the Irish deeds and a terrific index, unfortunately of only a proportion of the deeds as it is a work in progress. You can now also search with the FamilySearch full text search. I wrote about that at https://anneyoungau.wordpress.com/2025/01/23/snell-intel/ earlier this year.