Press release - 3rd October 2013

findmypast.com.au adds Irish Newspapers Collection

Extra, extra, read all about it: findmypast.com.au adds Irish Newspapers Collection
Could one of your Irish ancestors have made the headlines?

Sydney, 3 October 2013: As ever keen family history seeker knows, newspapers are an excellent resource for uncovering some of the most interesting ancestor information. Australians with Irish ancestry will soon discover this with the launch of the Irish Newspapers Collection on leading family history site findmypast.com.au, comprising almost 2 million historical Irish newspaper articles.

Digitised from the collections of the British Library, the Irish newspapers collection on findmypast.com.au is a rich resource for Australians researching their Irish roots. With valuable entries like advertisements, obituaries and letters to the editor researchers can piece together more of their family history and gain an understanding of what local and national life would have been like in Ireland hundreds of years ago.

The collection features six Irish newspaper titles (both national and local) covering areas in Leinster, Munster, Connaught and Ulster namely; The Belfast Morning News, The Belfast Newsletter, The Cork Examiner, The Dublin Evening Mail, The Freeman’s Journal and The Sligo Champion.

Different dates are covered by each title ranging from pre-Famine era right up until post-Irish independence in 1926.

Vicki Dawson, General Manager of findmypast.com.au, said “Australia has strong ancestral ties to Ireland and as such the Irish records available on findmypast.com.au are among the most popular on the site. We are delighted to further grow this collection with the addition of Irish titles to our collection of British and World newspapers. The articles contained within will really help bring to life the happenings in Ireland all the way back to the Great Irish Famine and beyond. Whether you are searching for an ancestor in a local paper or simply interested in how the big news stories of the day were reported, you will no doubt uncover some fascinating facts.”

Overall date coverage for each of the newspapers is as follows:
The Belfast Morning News - 1857-1882
The Belfast Newsletter - 1828-1900
The Cork Examiner - 1841-1926
The Dublin Evening Mail - 1849-1871
The Freeman’s Journal - 1820-1900
The Sligo Champion - 1836-1926

This collection is also accessible on all findmypast.com.au through a World subscription. To find out if your ancestors were making headlines visit www.findmypast.com.au