Irish Genealogy: Using the NLI Free Catholic Parish Records

The National Library of Ireland has released the Catholic Parish records for the Republic of Ireland. I thought that they might be swamped with people searching the records so I waited until over the weekend to check them out.

The link to the records is prominently displayed. Here is the link to the NLI website.



Once you click the link you get  choose what county your records are in. Then the available parish records will be listed with the dates and what is included in each book. The records are not indexed so you need to know what parish to look in or you need to look through every parish for the dates of your ancestors event. It may take a while but it is free so that is all good.

I had no problem looking through the records but I have to warn you, handwriting is an issue and some of the pages are quite dark along the bottom.

In spite of the small issues, this is the biggest thing to happen to genealogist of Irish origin ever!! If you haven't taken a look, what are you waiting for?