Family and Local History
[Bill Macafee's Website]

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]

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!