Church of Ireland Parish Records: A Colour–coded Resource of What Survives; Where it is; and with Additional Information about Copies, Transcripts and Online Indexes.

This was a collaborative project between the IGRS and the Church of Ireland’s Representative Church Body (RCB) Library to mark the Society’s 80th anniversary.

The original list was painstakingly reworked to create a one-stop search tool that links easily to online information. It was compiled by Claire Santry, a Fellow of the IGRS, widely known for her online genealogy blog, Irish Genealogy News.

Search the List

The list accounts for all Church of Ireland parochial registers of baptism, marriage and burial – noting what survives, the dates covered, and where they are located. Where registers were destroyed in the burning of the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) during the Irish Civil War in 1922, the list records details about abstracts, transcripts and where they are held.

The original list was the work of Margaret Griffith, Deputy Keeper at PROI, who in the 1950s used extant parochial returns (dating from the 1870s) to compile a hand list of Church of Ireland parish registers known to exist in 1922.  In the ensuing decades the list was heavily annotated by PROI staff with notes about abstracts, transcripts and locations of microfilms. Latterly, from 1984 onwards, when the RCB Library was designated as the official place of deposit for Church of Ireland registers in the Republic of Ireland, the updating of the list was carried out by Library staff in conjunction with the National Archives and the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.

The new online version of the list interpolates all previous work into an accessible, colour-coded resource. Additionally, it now includes live links to other websites holding indexes, transcripts and scanned images of parish registers. Ultimately the list will further link to the RCB Library’s detailed in-house hand lists of the collections of parochial records – including the registers but also the wide variety of other records such as vestry minute books, preachers’ books, accounts and magazines.

Additional information about this importance resource can be found on the Church of Ireland website.

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