Ancestry to release Irish Roman Catholic records indexes

Things are getting very interesting on the Irish front - here's the latest announcement from Ancestry:

ANCESTRY TO LAUNCH IRISH CATHOLIC REGISTERS ONLINE

* Ireland Catholic Parish Registers to launch in March
* 10 million records will help create the largest collection of Irish registers available online
* Collection covers the period 1740 – 1900
* Baptism, Marriage and Burial records available

More than 10 million Catholic Parish records from Ireland are to be published online by Ancestry, the world’s largest family history resource. The collection means that Ancestry will have over 55 million Irish records and will provide the largest collection of Irish Catholic parish records available online.

The collection is made up of Baptism, Marriage and Burial records from over 1,000 Catholic parishes across the whole of the island of Ireland - both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Baptism and Marriage records make up the majority of the collection and Burial records can be found primarily for parishes in the northern regions.

Ancestry has indexed records from over 3,500 parish registers. This is the first time that the collection has been indexed with the images linked online.

John Slyne, VP, International Operations at Ancestry comments: “The Ireland Catholic Parish Registers is the single most important collection needed to trace Roman Catholic ancestors in Ireland in the 1800s and we are delighted to make it available through Ancestry. Providing the very best Irish records to our members is important to us and this collection helps us do that, taking the total number of Irish records to over 55 million. It also means we continue to provide the largest online collection of Irish Catholic parish records available anywhere which is good for those in Ireland and also those across the World with Irish roots.

The collection is set to go live on Ancestry in March 2016.

Note that Ancestry has also just released Catholic parish and school record collections for Crusheen in County Clare:

Crusheen, County Clare, Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1860-2014
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=61010

Crusheen, County Clare, Ireland, Catholic School Records, 1862-1919
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=61011

(With thanks to Bryony Partridge)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.