Civil Registration Records
Page headings from birth register - image sourced via www.irishgenealogy.ie
What is the history and geography of Civil Registration in Ireland?
Civil registration began for non-Catholic marriages, somewhat propitiously on 1 April 1845 and after a gap of nearly 20 years, was extended to all marriages plus births and deaths (BMDs) from 1864. In style, it is virtually the same as that of England and Wales started nearly 3 decades earlier, with pre-printed registers gathering relevant information on each event.
Rather than invent a whole new geography of bureaucracy, the Irish government decided to use the existing Poor Law unions to create a new staff hierarchy which is usefully explained via a short history of registration in Ireland from the General Record Office of Ireland (GROI).
One crucial point to be aware of is that there was widespread under-registration, especially in the early decades. This occurred for all sorts of reasons, some benign, some bloody-minded. Jim Ryan of Ancestor Network has done some in-depth research and published his findings which make for sober reflection and no doubt explain why you can't find civil registration records you think ought to be there. If you do draw a blank, despite making liberal use of different indexes and imaginative wildcard searches, then be sure to hunt through the relevant ecclesiastical records for baptisms, marriages and burials.
Civil registration began for non-Catholic marriages, somewhat propitiously on 1 April 1845 and after a gap of nearly 20 years, was extended to all marriages plus births and deaths (BMDs) from 1864. In style, it is virtually the same as that of England and Wales started nearly 3 decades earlier, with pre-printed registers gathering relevant information on each event.
Rather than invent a whole new geography of bureaucracy, the Irish government decided to use the existing Poor Law unions to create a new staff hierarchy which is usefully explained via a short history of registration in Ireland from the General Record Office of Ireland (GROI).
- The Poor Law Union Map link that appeared on my Poor Law Unions page can be used to understand the relative locations of the Superintendent Registration Districts that share their names. This active map can also be used to find out which places (towns and townlands) are covered by each Registration District, as they were more commonly referred to.
- Although each Registration District was overseen by a Superintendent Registrar (usually the Clerk of the Poor Law Union), the actual registration of BMDs was devolved to local Registrars responsible for a sub-division of the Poor Law Union, which happened to be the existing Dispensary Districts. These became known as Registrar's Districts and the Registrar was usually the medical officer for the Dispensary District. Just to confuse things even further a Registration District could contain a Registrar's District of the same name, so check carefully which level any indexes return records for - it will usually be the former. How to find out more about the geography?
- Click on any Registration District on the Poor Law Union Map referenced above and the list of placenames covered will also give the relevant Registrar's District.
- Registration Districts of Ireland, 1871 is an online document that has been put together by Michael Thompson to allow you to access the geography from a number of different levels. The long alphabetical list of Registrar Districts at the end should help you decipher placenames in images where the handwriting may be poor.
- I'm not sure if there was any legal requirement to register births and marriages in the nearest Registrar's District to the event, although I believe deaths had to be registered locally - I need to investigate this further. Whilst it seems logical that BMDs would be registered in the closest Registrar's District, I have seen evidence to question this which I cannot readily explain e.g. one branch of my family tree hails from near Hacketstown, Co. Carlow and whilst births and deaths were registered in the Registration District of Shillelagh (Registrar's District of Coolkenno and Hacketstown) the marriages that took place in their local parish church were all registered in the Registration District of Baltinglass? Therefore, my advice when searching for BMDs is to start with the most likely Registration District for the place where the event took place and cast your net wider to its neighbours if you don't find what you are looking for.
One crucial point to be aware of is that there was widespread under-registration, especially in the early decades. This occurred for all sorts of reasons, some benign, some bloody-minded. Jim Ryan of Ancestor Network has done some in-depth research and published his findings which make for sober reflection and no doubt explain why you can't find civil registration records you think ought to be there. If you do draw a blank, despite making liberal use of different indexes and imaginative wildcard searches, then be sure to hunt through the relevant ecclesiastical records for baptisms, marriages and burials.
Where can you find civil registration records online?
The best place to look for civil registration records is relevant section on the free Irish Government website, Irish Genealogy. There are full indexes for births and deaths from 1864, non-Catholic marriages from 1845 and all other marriages from 1864. There are also freely accessible images of the register entries for a large proportion of the register entries, which is a huge step forward for Irish genealogy. However, there are some limitations to bear in mind;
If you do find an entry that has no image and you really need to see it, you can order a copy of the register entry for a fee. Various options are available and can be explored via the link indicated at the bottom of the index entry. I have also detailed my own experiences with these options below.
The best place to look for civil registration records is relevant section on the free Irish Government website, Irish Genealogy. There are full indexes for births and deaths from 1864, non-Catholic marriages from 1845 and all other marriages from 1864. There are also freely accessible images of the register entries for a large proportion of the register entries, which is a huge step forward for Irish genealogy. However, there are some limitations to bear in mind;
- There are data protection closure rules which limit how far forward you can search into the 20th Century with no birth images under 100 years old, no marriage images under 75 years old and no death images under 50 years old being accessible. The plan is for these thresholds to roll forward each year, releasing another year's worth of entries, although this is yet to become the norm.
- Not all index entries currently have a corresponding image - if the field Group Registration ID has N/R listed after it, there is No Register Image yet. Assuming the page is kept up to date, click this link to find out the current state of coverage. As of October 2020, the coverage was;
- Births, 1864-1919
- Marriages, 1845-1941
- Deaths, 1871-1966
- That means it is just the earliest death certificates between 1864-1870 that are still outstanding. Keep checking the site and your favourite blogs and Facebook pages to find out when they have been released.
- Do also be aware that the 6 counties that became Northern Ireland are only covered in the indexes up to 1922. For later Northern Ireland entries, you will need to consult the GRONI site (see below.)
- Generally speaking, it's best to search with just one forename and surname, even if you know other middle names, as the indexes appear to be fairly rudimentary. This might mean scrolling though long lists for names that are not uncommon, but it's all free and you can narrow your search down by Registration District. Middle names will sometimes appear in the search results but not all the time. If you want to narrow down a long list, then try searching on the same record set on FamilySearch via Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958, where you can search with middle names. You will also be able to see index entries for additional births and marriages up to 1958.
- Lastly, you will need the patience of a saint if you have settled down for a good long session of searching as there are several security features that will start to interrupt your browsing to make sure you are not a nasty web crawler about to swipe all that precious data. Still my French signpost recognition is getting quite good .... you will be invited to click on sections of pictures with signs for example!
If you do find an entry that has no image and you really need to see it, you can order a copy of the register entry for a fee. Various options are available and can be explored via the link indicated at the bottom of the index entry. I have also detailed my own experiences with these options below.
Where can I find alternative indexes of civil registration?
Before the Irish Genealogy site developments listed above, there were quite a few alternative sources to be found online for Irish civil registration indexes. So, bearing in mind that no index is infallible and if you are struggling to find a record you are pretty sure ought to be there, it can be useful to consult differently compiled indexes. For the record, here is what I think I know about the alternatives;
The one significant advantage of being able to search this data on either of the commercial sites is that for marriages it is possible to see the other names that are listed on the same page of the volume and so spot a known spouse or several candidates - you cannot do this on FamilySearch.
Before the Irish Genealogy site developments listed above, there were quite a few alternative sources to be found online for Irish civil registration indexes. So, bearing in mind that no index is infallible and if you are struggling to find a record you are pretty sure ought to be there, it can be useful to consult differently compiled indexes. For the record, here is what I think I know about the alternatives;
- FamilySearch's collection Ireland, Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958 can be searched for FREE, covering all of Ireland up to 1922 but excluding Northern Ireland after this year. There are only transcripts available and this data appears to have been shared with several commercial subscription sites as follows;
- Both Ancestry and FindMyPast have the same data on their subscription sites but have catalogued it slightly differently.
- Ancestry (Anc=£) have spilt the index into event types thus;
- Ireland, Civil Registration Births Index, 1864-1958
- Ireland, Civil Registration Marriages Index, 1845-1958
- Ireland, Civil Registration Deaths Index, 1864-1958
- FindMyPast (FMP=£) have the same data catalogued thus;
The one significant advantage of being able to search this data on either of the commercial sites is that for marriages it is possible to see the other names that are listed on the same page of the volume and so spot a known spouse or several candidates - you cannot do this on FamilySearch.
What will you see in the indexes?
If you are familiar with the style of referencing used by the English and Welsh system of civil registration that had been in place since 1837, then you won't be surprised to see that the Irish government adopted the same one. Entries are indexed in their Registration Districts initially just by year and latterly by year and quarter, giving a volume number and page number to locate the actual entry. Personally, I use this information to construct my source citations - here are some examples to show you what I mean;
Some additional information may be both searchable and/or returned from just the index to help you differentiate between candidate records e.g. mother's maiden name on births from 1903 or 1928 depending upon source, or age at death (0 = infant death under 1 year old.)
If you are familiar with the style of referencing used by the English and Welsh system of civil registration that had been in place since 1837, then you won't be surprised to see that the Irish government adopted the same one. Entries are indexed in their Registration Districts initially just by year and latterly by year and quarter, giving a volume number and page number to locate the actual entry. Personally, I use this information to construct my source citations - here are some examples to show you what I mean;
- B: JONES William Empson 1888 Qtr:AMJ RD:Shillelagh, WIC, IRE Vol:2, Pg.:915
- D: HOPKINS Nicholas David 1905 Qtr:AMJ RD:Dublin North, DUB, IRE Vol:2, Pg.:369
- M: JACKSON Joseph Browne = JONES Dorothea Elizabeth 1894 Qtr:OND RD:Dublin South, DUB, IRE Vol:2, Pg.:619
Some additional information may be both searchable and/or returned from just the index to help you differentiate between candidate records e.g. mother's maiden name on births from 1903 or 1928 depending upon source, or age at death (0 = infant death under 1 year old.)
How can you get access to the register entries that are not currently online?
If you cannot get to Ireland in person, the General Record Office of Ireland (GROI) can be contacted via their Certificate Applications page, which gives you some options that you need to pay attention to very carefully. To be fair, the process has obviously been designed to service the needs of the population of Ireland today with regards to obtaining official copies of certificates, rather than family historians. Therefore, perhaps that's why there is nowhere on the 2 versions of the downloadable form for you to fill in for the register Volume and Page references if you have already found them in any indexes? And, unless you need a legally binding certificate e.g. as evidence for an Irish passport application based on a parent's or grandparent's birth, be sure to choose the "Copy of an entry" option as this is significantly cheaper.
GROI Postal PDF Form - You can then either:
GROI Email PDF Form
There is also an on-line certificate application option that takes you off to a website run by the Health Service Executive (HSE) but which takes you through the same process as far as I can see. The only difference is that I believe you can pay straight away securely online rather than wait for an email. But be warned, this website says that you can only order full price standard certificates via this route which are much more expensive than the copy of an entry option via the GROI site ... are you keeping up?
If you can get to Dublin, there still appears to be the facility to visit GROI Werburgh St., search the registers and order up copies of entries ... all for a fee of course. Note, the same web page also states that indexes to some very specific BMD sources are only available at GROI Roscommon, but I have no idea how you are supposed to access them - I presume that there must be a search room there too, but it's not at all clear from their website. There is a contact email address so I suppose the best plan would be to get in touch if you are as confused as I am ...
If you cannot get to Ireland in person, the General Record Office of Ireland (GROI) can be contacted via their Certificate Applications page, which gives you some options that you need to pay attention to very carefully. To be fair, the process has obviously been designed to service the needs of the population of Ireland today with regards to obtaining official copies of certificates, rather than family historians. Therefore, perhaps that's why there is nowhere on the 2 versions of the downloadable form for you to fill in for the register Volume and Page references if you have already found them in any indexes? And, unless you need a legally binding certificate e.g. as evidence for an Irish passport application based on a parent's or grandparent's birth, be sure to choose the "Copy of an entry" option as this is significantly cheaper.
GROI Postal PDF Form - You can then either:
- Present the form and pay in person at the GROI Roscommon or a local Irish register office. Not sure if you can wait for them to produce the record for you (unlikely) or they post it to you?
- Post or fax it to GROI Roscommon, complete with all your credit card details for you to trust to whomever is wandering past the fax machine or opening the post at the time! I've not quite resorted to tying groats to the leg of a carrier pigeon, but I've risked sending sufficient euros in the post rather than risk later card fraud and have been lucky thus far that this method has resulted in a certificate by (slow) return rather than me just enriching the civil servants Christmas party fund.
GROI Email PDF Form
- Send the completed form to the email address given on the form.
- They say they will contact you with a secure link through which you can pay for either a posted copy or an emailed version.
There is also an on-line certificate application option that takes you off to a website run by the Health Service Executive (HSE) but which takes you through the same process as far as I can see. The only difference is that I believe you can pay straight away securely online rather than wait for an email. But be warned, this website says that you can only order full price standard certificates via this route which are much more expensive than the copy of an entry option via the GROI site ... are you keeping up?
If you can get to Dublin, there still appears to be the facility to visit GROI Werburgh St., search the registers and order up copies of entries ... all for a fee of course. Note, the same web page also states that indexes to some very specific BMD sources are only available at GROI Roscommon, but I have no idea how you are supposed to access them - I presume that there must be a search room there too, but it's not at all clear from their website. There is a contact email address so I suppose the best plan would be to get in touch if you are as confused as I am ...
Northern Ireland
The General Record Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) have a simple and relatively inexpensive pay-per-view GRONI BMD search. There is also a link to their Townlands Map application on this same page.
You will need to register a login account and purchase at least 1 credit in order to search the indexes and buy further credits in order to view a scan of the register entry (which curiously you may not officially download once you have paid to view it as you can on ScotlandsPeople?) The system is not without its flaws, and as reported on my Kindred Ancestry blog, you are advised to work it in conjunction with the free FamilySearch Irish Civil Registration Indexes in order to gain maximum coverage and overcome some of the limitations of the GRONI results.
The key point to be aware of is that, in order to comply with modern data protection legislation and mitigate the risk of fuelling identity fraud, GRONI have embargoed the viewing of register entries where the birth was less than 100 years ago, the marriage took place less than 75 years ago and the death occurred less than 50 years ago. You may still find later index entries on other sources though and then you would have to order the certificate via GRONI's secure on-line ordering system - see these GRONI Help Pages for more information including charges.
The General Record Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) have a simple and relatively inexpensive pay-per-view GRONI BMD search. There is also a link to their Townlands Map application on this same page.
You will need to register a login account and purchase at least 1 credit in order to search the indexes and buy further credits in order to view a scan of the register entry (which curiously you may not officially download once you have paid to view it as you can on ScotlandsPeople?) The system is not without its flaws, and as reported on my Kindred Ancestry blog, you are advised to work it in conjunction with the free FamilySearch Irish Civil Registration Indexes in order to gain maximum coverage and overcome some of the limitations of the GRONI results.
The key point to be aware of is that, in order to comply with modern data protection legislation and mitigate the risk of fuelling identity fraud, GRONI have embargoed the viewing of register entries where the birth was less than 100 years ago, the marriage took place less than 75 years ago and the death occurred less than 50 years ago. You may still find later index entries on other sources though and then you would have to order the certificate via GRONI's secure on-line ordering system - see these GRONI Help Pages for more information including charges.
What to look out for!
Like most edicts dictated from on high, people were suspicious of the new registration process and did not always follow it as they should, especially as there were fees involved! Births were supposed to be registered within 6 weeks of their occurrence so in order to avoid any fines for late registration, parents simply altered the birth date at registration. However, some may have confessed and paid up, and according to John Grenham's book, "Tracing your Irish Ancestors", these acknowledged late entries were added to the end pages of the correct indexes.
Remember that the year and any quarter given in any indexes relates to the registration of the BMD not necessarily the date of actual birth or death. Generally deaths were registered within a few days of the event but births could be registered up to 6 weeks later. Pay particular attention to this for births registered in the first quarter of the year, January to March, as the actual birth could have taken place as early as the middle of November in the preceding year. Similarly, deaths that occurred in late December of any year may have been registered in January of the following year.
So, if you are trying to estimate actual event dates from registration index entries, I generally use the following conventions;
Apparently and not surprisingly, under-registration was particularly prevalent in the early years of the system and varied geographically. Therefore you may not find a civil record for the BMDs you seek, but you should still search for a baptism, marriage or burial record in any surviving parish registers for the different denominations.
Somewhat frustratingly for us all in search of names, it was apparently quite legal and not uncommon for parents to register the birth of their child with no given forename - you will find Female and Male instead in both the indexes and the register entries. Apparently, babies born in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin were often registered en masse like this by a member of the hospital staff, which is particularly infuriating years later. You may need to search just by surname and be prepared to peruse long lists. Therefore you would need to search for a baptism record in any surviving parish registers in order to put a name to the child.
Age seems to have been a very fluid concept too, whether stated on marriage or death entries. If you are hoping to discover ages from marriage records, I'm afraid you are likely to be disappointed, as in my experience, the vast majority simple recorded that the couple were each of "Full Age". This simply meant that they were over 21 and therefore did not require parental consent ... allegedly! I'm sure plenty of eloping couples lied about their ages. You may also find brides being somewhat economical with the truth about their ages, especially if they were actually older than their groom. In actual fact, many people did not really know exactly when they were born, especially if they had lived away from their birth parish for a while and death informants may not have known the age of the deceased accurately either and may have had to estimate. If you find an age at marriage and/or an age at death for the same person that don't match up exactly, don't immediately discard the information. Build up a range of years for estimated birth for example and keep this as a fact in your research so that you remember to search other records accordingly.
One other interesting alternative route to corroboration may be via claims made for an old age pension. These were introduced in Ireland in 1909 for claimants aged over 70 who would have had to prove their age. Civil servants at the time trawled surviving census records and parish registers for evidence of age on behalf of claimants. Although a relatively small source of records, the 1841 / 1851 Census search Forms (NAI) can be search for free on the National Archives of Ireland website. FindMyPast also has Church of Ireland Parish Search Forms (FMP=£) which were another avenue checked by the civil servants to try to establish proof of age. However, a brief inspection of the indexing and transcripts of the latter on the FMP site seems to show some appalling editorial decisions when compared to what is actually on the accompanying images so you might have to do some trawling yourself through many candidates! Therefore, be prepared to make allowances when comparing calculated birth dates from these sources with others you find elsewhere, especially censuses.
Like most edicts dictated from on high, people were suspicious of the new registration process and did not always follow it as they should, especially as there were fees involved! Births were supposed to be registered within 6 weeks of their occurrence so in order to avoid any fines for late registration, parents simply altered the birth date at registration. However, some may have confessed and paid up, and according to John Grenham's book, "Tracing your Irish Ancestors", these acknowledged late entries were added to the end pages of the correct indexes.
Remember that the year and any quarter given in any indexes relates to the registration of the BMD not necessarily the date of actual birth or death. Generally deaths were registered within a few days of the event but births could be registered up to 6 weeks later. Pay particular attention to this for births registered in the first quarter of the year, January to March, as the actual birth could have taken place as early as the middle of November in the preceding year. Similarly, deaths that occurred in late December of any year may have been registered in January of the following year.
So, if you are trying to estimate actual event dates from registration index entries, I generally use the following conventions;
- For births, subtract 6 weeks from the beginning of the year given (if that is all that is given) or from first month of any quarter i.e. January, April, July or October. So for a birth registered say in the first quarter of 1894 (JFM), the actual birth could have taken place between mid-November 1893 and the end of March 1894.
- For deaths, subtract 1 month from the beginning of the year given (if that is all that is given) or from first month of any quarter i.e. January, April, July or October, as the event could have taken place in the last weeks of the previous month.
Apparently and not surprisingly, under-registration was particularly prevalent in the early years of the system and varied geographically. Therefore you may not find a civil record for the BMDs you seek, but you should still search for a baptism, marriage or burial record in any surviving parish registers for the different denominations.
Somewhat frustratingly for us all in search of names, it was apparently quite legal and not uncommon for parents to register the birth of their child with no given forename - you will find Female and Male instead in both the indexes and the register entries. Apparently, babies born in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin were often registered en masse like this by a member of the hospital staff, which is particularly infuriating years later. You may need to search just by surname and be prepared to peruse long lists. Therefore you would need to search for a baptism record in any surviving parish registers in order to put a name to the child.
Age seems to have been a very fluid concept too, whether stated on marriage or death entries. If you are hoping to discover ages from marriage records, I'm afraid you are likely to be disappointed, as in my experience, the vast majority simple recorded that the couple were each of "Full Age". This simply meant that they were over 21 and therefore did not require parental consent ... allegedly! I'm sure plenty of eloping couples lied about their ages. You may also find brides being somewhat economical with the truth about their ages, especially if they were actually older than their groom. In actual fact, many people did not really know exactly when they were born, especially if they had lived away from their birth parish for a while and death informants may not have known the age of the deceased accurately either and may have had to estimate. If you find an age at marriage and/or an age at death for the same person that don't match up exactly, don't immediately discard the information. Build up a range of years for estimated birth for example and keep this as a fact in your research so that you remember to search other records accordingly.
One other interesting alternative route to corroboration may be via claims made for an old age pension. These were introduced in Ireland in 1909 for claimants aged over 70 who would have had to prove their age. Civil servants at the time trawled surviving census records and parish registers for evidence of age on behalf of claimants. Although a relatively small source of records, the 1841 / 1851 Census search Forms (NAI) can be search for free on the National Archives of Ireland website. FindMyPast also has Church of Ireland Parish Search Forms (FMP=£) which were another avenue checked by the civil servants to try to establish proof of age. However, a brief inspection of the indexing and transcripts of the latter on the FMP site seems to show some appalling editorial decisions when compared to what is actually on the accompanying images so you might have to do some trawling yourself through many candidates! Therefore, be prepared to make allowances when comparing calculated birth dates from these sources with others you find elsewhere, especially censuses.
(c) Irish Geneaography - 9 OCT 2020
