National Library of Ireland RC microfilms online

[MaryA]

Hi all, I've posted this link on the News Board as today is the first day this has been available. http://registers.nli.ie/

I also posted it on Facebook and what a mixed reaction, one person has solved a mystery of ten years standing in ten minutes, but a couple are complaining that they have to trawl through Parishes and that there is no name indexes.

I had to answer that I remember when many of us first began researching there were no databases to be searched, marriages had to be found on microfiche, one spouse at a time and trying to match them to each other on the page. To find out which church, even in Liverpool, took a search of many different microfilms trying to locate the nearest to where we thought they were living.

Similarly now, post 1864 there are at least have the Irish indexes to search on Ancestry, which might give a clue to the county and so narrowing down which Parishes.

Has anybody given this new site a try and what do you think?

[Blue70]

I haven't tried it out yet but I was one of the voices of caution on another forum about how difficult it would be to use at first without the help of a search facility. Perhaps a third party will provide one at a later date. It's great to have a large batch of records made available to you but it could be like looking for a needle in haystack if you don't know the parish/townland where your people came from. It might be helpful to use Roots Ireland in conjunction with this site.


Blue

[Blue70]

Just tried it. Looked for an image for a transcript I got from Roots Ireland. I went for the wrong parish at first. I wanted Cushendall RC parish in County Antrim I couldn't see it and clicked on Cushendun instead. Checked the baptism register and realised I had the wrong parish as the entry wasn't there then realised that there were alternate names for the parishes and Cushendall was under Layde RC parish (variant names being: Ballygowan, Cushendall, Ardclinis, Layde and Ardclinis, Cushendall and Cushendun). I found the entry easily knowing the dates already and downloaded the image as a JPEG. It's great if you know where to look.


Blue

[MaryA]

Sounds like we'll need to find our way about in Ireland to make this useful, but I'm sure we will.

[42aitch]

I have had really good finds, the name of my G/G/Grandmother and their marriage and two children, siblings to my G/Grandmother, been looking for these for 40 years. Also found Baptism for my Grandfather although I did have his birth certificate and the Baptism for my G/Grandmother.

So one Happy Lady!!!

I did know the parish, Kilkeel so was lucky. Will continue to browse through these records.

Eileen