The RootsIreland database has been updated with the addition of 16,762 baptismal records for the Roman Catholic parish of Ballyferriter in County Kerry. They date from 1807 to 1899, with a gap in the first year. These join the existing marriage records for the parish, which date from 1808 to 1895. With this latest update, there are now more than 457,000 baptism and marriage records from 35 RC ..read more

As previously reported, construction work has closed the Reading Room of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast since early March. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Next week, on Monday 22 April and Tuesday 23 April, the Reading Room will be unavailable until 1pm in order to facilitate the last stages of the building works.There will be no document production ..read more

A ground-breaking research project, launched yesterday by Trinity College Dublin's School of Histories and Humanities, aims to discover how our female ancestors – so often overlooked in history – experienced and responded to social upheaval and extreme violence in early modern Ireland. New digital technologies, including AI and ChatGPT, will help release previously forgotten or 'lost' stories ..read more

Please find below a two-week summary of newly-released and updated family history collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major genealogy databases. (For the previous list, see 27 March blogpost.) These regular listings are designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales. By default, they will also be useful to ..read more

Until 11:59pm (GMT+1) on Sunday 14 April, Ancestry UK is offering 25% savings on the company's DNA test kits. The discounts are via Ancestry UK only. Ancestry DNA is the world's best selling consumer DNA test. With more than 25million people in its DNA database, it is – by some distance – the most useful dna test genealogists if they wish to expand their research. That's my opinion, based on my ..read more

Dublin-based Four Courts Press, one of Ireland's top academic publishers, has special offers on fifteen of its titles. As you'd expect from this independent and history-focussed publisher, some of the discounts have been applied to books likely to be of interest to genealogists. You can view them here. I don't know how long the reduced prices will hold. On special offer for just €9.95 – a ..read more

The National Library of Ireland will be running an eight-week Beginners Genealogy Research course starting this Wednesday, 10 April. The course is aimed at researchers who are new to Irish family history and to those who have a little experience but feel they need an in-depth foundation to progress their research. Professional genealogist and historian Sean Murphy MA will once again be the ..read more

Ancestry has a First Edition map of Ireland dating from 1856-1862. It's digitised at a seriously high definition so it's wonderfully clear to view, and as a result, I've lost most of today moving my mouse around the south west Cork area (my father's childhood home) and gawping at some of the land features I've not spotted in previous online and hard copy maps. Ah, my best kind of Friday! Even if ..read more

The National Library of Ireland's Main, Microfilm and Manuscripts Reading Rooms, plus the Readers' Ticket Office will be open on the following Saturdays during the month ahead: – 13 April – 27 April These areas of the library are all housed in Dublin's Kildare Street. Saturday opening is from 9:30am to 1pm. Please note that the Family History Room is not open to the public on ..read more

Below is a summary of the newly added material to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives (IGPArchive). As always, the files join a significant and free database of genealogy records and photos, all donated by researchers in the hope they might help other family historians. If you have any transcriptions of records or have taken headstone photos while exploring a graveyard, please consider sharing ..read more