Find Irish civil birth records from 1864-1958 online. Discover your family history in Ireland with a free trial
Find Irish civil birth records from 1864-1958 online. Discover your family history in Ireland with a free trial
Each record is a transcript of the original birth index entry. The amount of information included varies over time, but the records usually include the following details about your ancestor:
The record set comprises 9.45 million births from across all 32 counties in Ireland, dating from 1864 to 1958.
In Ireland, full civil registration of vital events began in 1864 (which is why there are no records earlier than that year), although non-Catholic marriages had been recorded from 1845. The civil registration records of births, marriages and deaths have been indexed and cover most of the population, making them a fundamental resource in modern Irish genealogy.
The registration districts, used for recording events, were established within the boundaries of the existing Poor Law Unions.
Following Irish independence in 1922, the repositories for the records split, with records for Northern Ireland being housed by the General Register Office (GRONI) in Belfast, while records for the Republic of Ireland being kept at the GRO in Dublin. The record set as a whole has survived, however.
Using the volume and page number and other information from the index, you can order photocopies of the full register entries, for a fee, from the General Register Office.
Note that there are no images accompanying the transcripts.
Arthur Guinness began brewing his ales in 1759 at his Dublin brewery in St James's Gate. He signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum, exporting his first ale 10 years later, in 1769. Guinness porter was first sold in 1778, and only three types of beer form the mainstay of the product line. Sales went from strength to strength in the 1860s, over doubling production and in 1886 the company went public. The company was valued at £6 million and shares were 20 times oversubscribed.
The brewery became known for its stringent quality control and for generous welfare packages for employees (costing a fifth of the total wage bill in 1907). By 1914, Guinness supplied more than 10% of the UK beer market, more than double that of its nearest competitor.
The Guinness Archive preserves historical records of the Dublin Guinness Brewery from 1759 to the present day. Part of that collection includes personnel records of previous employees going back from the early 2000s to the 1880s. They hold over 20,000 files, thought to represent around 80% of all employees through this period.