Births,
Deaths & Marriages
Sources
that record the vital events of births, deaths and
marriages are the bread and butter of family history
research. Compulsory civil or state registration of
all births, deaths and marriages began in Ireland
on 1st January 1864. Non-Catholic marriages, including
Protestant and Jewish marriages as well as those conducted
in a government registry office, were required in
law to be registered from the 1st April 1845.
Clearly, before these dates, Church Records and Gravestone
Inscriptions are the main source of BDMs, with additional
information supplied by newspapers and wills. Since
the 1980s more and more [but, by no means all] BDMs
have been databased by various institutions and organisations
and you find links to some of these in the tables
below. Sites marked * in the tables below
charge fees - either pay per view or subscription.
CIVIL
RECORDS OF BIRTHS, DEATHS & MARRIAGES -
read
more.
ONLINE
DATABASES OF BIRTHS/BAPTISMS, DEATHS/BURIALS &
MARRIAGES -
read
more
**
You can access the Library Edition of Ancestry.com
[free] at local libraries in N. Ireland.
CHURCH
RECORDS
GRAVESTONE
INSCRIPTIONS
For
War Graves see Commonwealth
War Graves Commission website.
NEWSPAPERS
Newspapers,
in general, are sometimes the only source for some
births, deaths and marriages before compulsory registration.
The Coleraine Branch of the North of Ireland Family
History Society has produced a number of books and
CDs on births, deaths and marriages in the Coleraine
Chronicle &, the Ballymoney Northern Herald
[1844-1869] and the Londonderry Sentinel [1829-1869].
Unfortunately the books are now out of print but copies
are available in local libraries. The information
in the books is now available in two CDs - The
Londonderry Sentinel: Births, Marriages and Deaths
and The Coleraine Chronicle and The Ballymoney
Northern Herald: Births, Marriages and Deaths.
For more details on the CDs, see
http://colerainefhs.org.uk/ . More on Newspapers.
WILLS
[See
PRONI
Information Leaflet]
PRONI
have now made some wills available online
-
click here to go directly to the wills calendar.
|
Prerogative
Wills: Co. Londonderry, 1536-1858 [1,747 records] |
Excel |
PDF |
Incidentally,
if you have "hit a brick wall" in your search
for an ancestor - Google the name - you never know
what might appear on your computer screen!
|