June, 30, 2026 was the 104th anniversary of the explosion and fire that destroyed the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922 in the opening engagement of the Civil War.
To mark the date, 194,000 new historical records have been released online, bringing to over half a million the total number of records freely available on the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland.
Three years ago, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland was launched to rebuild, in digital form, the vast archive that was destroyed when the Public Record Office in Dublin was lost on June 30, 1922, during the opening days of the Irish Civil War.
One section for genealogists to start their search is the Population Portal that includes 60,000 names from the 19th-century census that was destroyed in 1922.
Hosted by Trinity College Dublin and funded by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland is now home to more than 350,000 records.
A total of 75 institutions across Ireland and around the world are contributing digital images of replacement documents, transcripts and duplicates to the Virtual Treasury. This includes core partners National Archives of Ireland, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, The National Archives UK, the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and the Library of Trinity College Dublin.
