Ireland Civil Registration: Difference between revisions

Before civil registration, churches alone kept the records of baptisms (births), marriages, and burials (deaths) in Ireland. On 1 April 1845 the government began registering non-Catholic marriages. On 1 January 1864 the government began registering all Irish births, marriages, and deaths.

Quarterly, the superintendent registrar of each district forwards copies of the district's registrations to the appropriate General Register office. The original records remain with the district registrar.

=== Information Recorded in Civil Registers ===

Birth registrations typically include the child's name, sex, birth date, and birthplace; the parents' names (including the mother's maiden name) and the father's occupation; and the informant's signature, residence, and qualification (often the relationship to the child being registered).

Marriage registrations include the marriage date, place, and denomination (for church marriages); the names of the bride and groom, their ages [too frequently given as "full age"], occupations, marital statuses, and residences at the time of marriage; the names and occupations of their fathers and often whether their fathers were deceased; and the signatures of the bride, groom, and witnesses. Marriages were usually performed in the bride's parish and were registered by the performing minister, priest or registrar. In the Irish Republic, since 1956 both parties' dates of birth and parents' full names have been recorded in addition to the future intended town or country in which the couple intend to reside.

In Northern Ireland judicial divorce became available in 1939.

Given the restriction upon divorce in Ireland some people chose to divorce in the jurisdiction of England & Wales. Searches can be made for records there at:

Records of UK parliamentary divorce acts (up to 1921) can be found at:

To learn more about divorce records, visit the following Web sites.

[http://www.genealogy.about.com/cs/vitaluk/index.htm www.genealogy.about.com/cs/vitaluk/index.htm]

Civil registrations of deaths are of limited genealogical value because they:

** Do not normally contain parentage or birth information.

** May be inaccurate (the informant may not have known the information requested).

Nonetheless, a death certificate is usually the only civil record for persons born or married before government registration began in 1864.

=== Locating Civil Registration Records ===

Civil registration records are kept at the superintendent registrars' offices in the districts. Duplicates are kept at the General Register offices. The General Register Office for the Republic of Ireland has birth, marriage, and death indexes and corresponding records, including registrations of Irish subjects at sea, abroad, or in the military through 1921 for all of Ireland. The office's post-1921 records cover Republic of Ireland counties only. The address is:

The General Register Office of Northern Ireland has birth, marriage, and death records, including registrations of Irish at sea, abroad, or in the military from 1922 on for Northern Ireland only. The address is:

When requesting a registration certificate by mail from these offices, include:

## A check or money order for the search fee.

## The full name and sex of the person sought.

If you find an index entry, you can use that entry to request a copy of the original record from:

** The General Register Office in Dublin if the event was recorded before 1922 or took place in the Republic of Ireland, or

** The General Register Office in Belfast if the event took place in or after 1922 in Northern Ireland.

If you cannot find an index reference, consider the following reasons:

** Late registrations of births and deaths are indexed separately at the end of each index volume.

** Surnames are often spelled differently than expected.

** Events are filed by the date they were registered, not the date they occurred and may therefore be indexed in a later volume. (For example, a birth on 20 December 1879 which was registered on 6 January 1880 will be listed in the January-March volume of 1880.)

** Indexes were hand-prepared and may contain errors, such as copying mistakes (for example, the interchange of T and F) and missed entries.

** In error, some marriages have been indexed by the name of only one party.

** Vital information provided by the family ('''particularly age at death''') is often incorrect.

** Children born before their parents were married may be listed under the mother's maiden name.

** Some children are simply listed as male or female if they were not named by the time of registration.

The Family History Library has microfilm copies of the civil registration indexes of births, marriages, and deaths for Ireland and Northern Ireland through 1958 (through 1959 for Northern Ireland). The Library also has microfilm copies of:

** Pre-1871 marriage and death registers for both Ireland and Northern Ireland.

** Birth registers from 1864 through to March 1881 and from 1900 through to 1913 for both Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The film numbers for the collection of civil registration indexes and certificates that are in the Family History Library can be found in the Family History Library Catalog.

## Click the '''Library''' tab

## Click '''Family History Library Catalog'''.

http://www.ireland.com/ancestor/