Irish Family History: Ashes to Archives What was lost? What survived?

“Smoking or any other dangerous practice is strictly forbidden within the Record Building”

In 1919 Herbert Wood, Deputy Keeper of the Public Record Office of Ireland, published a 300 page catalogue of the record office's holdings. A guide to the records deposited in the Public record office of Ireland lists, in detail, hundreds of collections, containing thousands of records. Records belonging to the Judiciary, the Clerk of the Crown, Commissions, Jurisdictions and Land offices to name a few. Census records, so dear to the heart of family historians, are listed under Miscellaneous. There were records of railways, army wives, publicans, debtors and insolvents, all of which have been lost.

But what survived? Most of what survived the fire were detailed catalogues, indexes and calendars (indexes including synopsis of the originals). We have a range of these sources available on findmypast. These form the core resources for Irish family historians looking to bring their family story back to the early 1800s. Other records which have proven invaluable to family historians came from other libraries and depositories. More information can be found in our full list of Irish records.

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Coming Soon - Retrieved from the Ashes

At findmypast we are working hard to bring as many of the records that survived the destruction of the Four Courts to our members. This is a small taster of the records that will be available soon.