After the National Library of Ireland released online the long-awaited Catholic parish registers on July 8, there was much excitement. And then the frustration began as some discovered it was not as easy to find our ancestors in the records as we had hoped.
Since the names in the registers have not been transcribed or indexed, we must find a parish of interest and then scroll through the digitized microfilm images, register by register, much the way we would conduct our research onsite at the National Library of Ireland.
Once we do find a parish, the challenge can be trying to read the often faint and hard-to-read handwriting.
Fortunately, two bloggers have provided advice on how to search and read these registers.
In her blog, Olive Tree Genealogy, Lorine McGinnis Schulze tells us what to do when we do not know the parish where our ancestors lived. She has developed a 10-step plan for “methodically and carefully searching the records in a somewhat organized fashion,” and made the plan available in her post, 10 Steps to Searching the Irish Catholic Parish Records When You Only Know a County of Origin.
If you are struggling to read the handwriting in the parish registers, Worldwide Genealogy offers tips in Reading Irish parish registers. This blogger, who goes by the name Rebel Hand, walks us through writing styles and abbreviations priests used, and provides links to handwriting resources.
If, after reading the above two blog posts, you are still overwhelmed with the Catholic parish registers, you may want to wait. Blogger Claire Santry of Irish Genealogy News writes that word on the street has it that Ancestry and Findmypast are “co-operating in a joint project to index the registers and link to the National Library’s register images database.” This, however, is still a rumour. You can read more about this in Ms. Santry’s blog post, Indexing the RC parish registers: word on the street.
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