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Tracing Your Irish Ancestors 
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Are you searching for your Irish ancestors? 

 

Perhaps you would like to find out which county and townland in Ireland they came from,  their family members, their work, when and why they left Ireland. Maybe you would like to locate the ancestral home.

 

Navigating Irish family history records can be time-consuming, complicated and frustrating at the best of times. This is in part due to numerous Irish name spelling variants and family naming practices meaning that there may be cousins sharing the same christian and surname and born in the same or adjoining parish in the same year - all adding to the confusion

 

There are likely to be date discrepancies and errors in transcription to navigate too. In Ireland the registration of non-Roman Catholic marriages began in 1845, but the full civil registration system only came into operation in 1864 requiring every birth, marriage and death to be recorded with the registrar within a given time-frame, usually twenty one days or a fine was imposed. 

 

In rural areas particularly, it was not always easy to reach the nearest district civil registration office.  This led to some births being recorded later than the actual date of birth in order to avoid the fine. So, it is not unusual to come across births that, seemingly, occurred days or weeks after the church baptism date recorded in the parish registers. It is estimated that up to ten percent of births were never recorded.

 

It should be noted that due to a fire at the Public Records Office on 30 June 1922 during the Irish Civil War, many irreplaceable genealogical records were destroyed. Thankfully for us, nearly all civil records were nowhere near the flames and Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist baptism, marriage and burial records were not housed at the Public Records Office, leaving us with plenty of available research resources.

 

We are experienced at navigating the maze and wealth of Irish resources in order to create or reconstruct your family tree taking the information you have provided to enable us to piece together your Irish family lines (as far as records will allow) and to help solve family mysteries whilst unlocking the secrets of your Irish past. 

 

For further information and for a quotation, please contact wendy@probateresearch.ie 

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Disclaimer:

The information on The Forensic Genealogists’ website does not constitute legal advice. It is provided purely for general information purposes. No warranty either direct or implied is given in relation to all information on this website. We will not be liable for any editorial, technical, typographical or other errors or omissions within such information, nor will we be responsible for the content of  images or information linked to this website.

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Good research is not only dependent upon the experience and analytical skills of the researcher, it also depends on the quality of resources available. Your forebears may have left relatively little impression on historical record collections for all sorts of reasons, which can sometimes make it challenging to track them down. Many archival records, particularly those in rural Ireland, are often illegible, and sadly depleted with many having faded over time. There are usually multiple variations of surname spellings which may have been transcribed phonetically or completely incorrectly making the genealogist’s research less of an exact science.

For these reasons every research project undertaken is vulnerable to the occasional inaccuracy or discrepancy.   The Forensic Genealogists makes every reasonable effort to verify and cross-reference findings ensuring  the quality of our research is always to a high standard whilst complying with the Genealogical Proof Standard,. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of our findings where supporting evidence is incomplete, ambiguous or unreliable.  If you have any reason to believe that there may be an inaccuracy in the research, please email us with full details. We will then validate your query and will review your research project without extra charges.

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