To celebrate St Valentine's Day, the Society has added 2,500 new entries to its Early Irish Birth, Death & Marriage Indexes. This latest tranche brings the total number of names across the three databases to approximately 275,000.
The Indexes comprise evidence of birth, death and marriage drawn from alternative and lesser known sources, helping to plug the gaps in traditional sources such as parishes registers, many of which have either not survived or do not commence early enough.
There are several events in the indexes which can be linked to St Valentine, some happy and, of course, some sad or even rather grim.
We found three births noted in newspapers where the children were born on 14th February: a boy born to Henry Gilpin, of Dublin in 1840; a daughter born to John Collins, also of Dublin, in 1850; and a son born to Carrol Naish, of Cork, in 1863. But how sad that it was the norm at the time that these notices would fail to note the name of the mother.
For marriages we found that Valentine Jones of Co. Antrim married the Widow Ross, daughter of James Agnew of Co. Down, in October 1763; that Valentine Langan of Co. Kilkenny married Miss Hayden, daughter of William Hayden, in November 1788; and that Nicholas Lawless of Dublin married Margaret Brown, daughter of Valentine Brown, in October 1761.
Searches in the death index identified a Valentine Meagher of Irishtown, Kilkenny city, Co. Kilkenny who died in August 1780; and a Valentine Lanigan of the same county who died in April 1789. But rather grimly we also found a brief newspaper article noting the execution by hanging of Valentine Byrne, a convicted robber, in November 1766.
Why not check out this resource for yourself? Access to the marriage index is completely free to all, and the birth and death indexes allow free name searches for non-members: https://www.irishancestors.ie/early-irish-indexes/
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