Ireland's records were burned in 1922, pulped in 1918 and never made in the first place for whole decades — and an astonishing amount still survives, free, from the State's own institutions. The trick is not which records exist. It is the order you use them in, and knowing which gaps are real.
The records hub lists every source with a link. This page is how to use them.
Irish records are organised by place (the townland, the civil parish, the Poor Law Union) far more than by surname. A surname on its own, even a rare one, is a needle in a national haystack. A surname plus a county is a start. A surname plus a parish or townland is the key that opens every record below.
The records where your ancestor arrived are usually richer about where they came from than anything in Ireland. American, Canadian, Australian and British records were made by states that wanted to know exactly who these people were.
State registration of every birth, marriage and death began on 1 January 1864 across the whole island; non-Catholic marriages were registered from 1845. The images are free on irishgenealogy.ie, and a birth entry gives parents' names, the mother's maiden name, the townland and the father's occupation — three generations from one page.
These are the only complete Irish censuses that survive, and they are free, name by name, for every household in every townland. 1911 also asked married women how many years they had been married, how many children they had borne and how many were still alive — a whole family reconstructed in one line. The 1926 census, the first of the Free State, was released online on 18 April 2026 and takes the same people one generation on.
Before civil registration, the parish register is the only record of a birth or marriage. The National Library has put the Catholic registers of over a thousand parishes online free, mostly running from the 1740s–1820s up to about 1880. Baptisms give parents and sponsors; marriages give witnesses, who are usually relatives.
With no census between 1851 and 1901, land records stand in. Griffith's Primary Valuation, taken county by county between 1847 and 1864, lists every occupier of land and house in Ireland with a map reference. The Tithe Applotment Books of 1823–37 list landholders a generation earlier. Together they put a family in a specific townland on either side of the Famine.
On 30 June 1922, during the Battle of Dublin at the start of the Civil War, an explosion in the Four Courts destroyed the Public Record Office, where the anti-Treaty garrison had stored its munitions. Ernie O'Malley watched the leaves of paper 'like hovering white birds'. Seven centuries of records went, including most of the 1821–1851 census returns, the original wills, and many of the Church of Ireland parish registers that had been sent in for safekeeping.
Once you have a townland you have a place on the map and a community. The same dozen surnames recur there for centuries, the Schools' Folklore Collection recorded what its children heard in 1937, and the Landed Estates database tells you whose tenants they were.
With a place, not a name. Get the county (better, the parish or townland) from family papers or from records in the country your ancestor emigrated to, then work backwards through Irish civil records (from 1864), the 1901 and 1911 censuses, and the parish registers before that. Almost all of it is free from the Irish state institutions.
No. The fire at the Four Courts on 30 June 1922 destroyed the Public Record Office — most of the 1821–51 census returns, original wills and about half the Church of Ireland registers. Civil records, the 1901 and 1911 censuses, Catholic parish registers, Griffith's Valuation and the Tithe Books were all held elsewhere and survive.
Fragments of 1821–1851 survived the 1922 fire. The 1861 and 1871 returns were destroyed after use by government order, and 1881 and 1891 were pulped during the First World War. Griffith's Valuation (1847–64) is the standard substitute.
Yes — the National Archives released it online on 18 April 2026, the first census of the Free State. It covers the 26 counties; Northern Ireland took its own census that year, held separately.
For most families, to the parish register — often the 1820s, sometimes the 1760s or earlier in parishes whose registers survive. Beyond that only landed and learned families are documented, in the annals, the genealogies and the Down Survey. The surname pages on this site tell you which sept a name descends from; they cannot tell you that your family does.
The smallest unit of Irish land (there are over 60,000 of them, mostly a few hundred acres) and the address in almost every Irish record before the twentieth century. Find the townland and you have found the house.
Every link on this site goes to the holding institution. MyIreland.ie has no affiliation with any genealogy company and takes no payment for links.
Found them? If you traced a family back to a townland, the county page has the surnames that belong there and the folklore its children wrote down in 1937. And if a step here was wrong or a link has moved, tell us.
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