Thread: Help with Irish ancestry

Statutory records of birth, death & marriage records started in Ireland in 1864 (1845 for Protestant and Non-Conformist marriages). Prior to that you are heavily dependant on church records, where they exist. In general, there are few records prior to 1800, not so much because they were destroyed but more that they were never kept in the first place, particularly for Roman Catholic churches which were suppressed for many years. The genealogy records that have been lost were the censuses 1821-1891, and some Church of Ireland records.

Ideally, to trace an ancestor in Ireland through church records you need to know their religion, townland and parish. You at least know the townland and parish, and you probably know the religion. I assume he was RC.

Some Irish BDM records are searchable on line on the LDS pilot site, but a lot of records are still held by the church (some churches have declined to allow their records to be copied) and so this website is not a complete picture:

FamilySearch Record Search


For the Republic of Ireland copies of many of the parish registers are held by the National Library National Library of Ireland - Homepage. The records themselves are not on line there and you need to search them in person.

Gortnamona (otherwise known as Moorfield) seems to be in the parish of Fahy. Townlands in Selected Parish

It appears that there are no RC records in Fahy before 1873. East Galway Catholic records but you probably ought to check that.

With regard to records of Dan leaving Ireland and what ship he went on, no records were kept of people leaving Ireland. If there are any records they will be US or Canadian arrival records, which you can access through Ancestry and certain other sites.



Elwyn