Leading Family History website Findmypast, today announced that they will be granting four days of free access to their entire collection of more than 114 million Irish records, the largest available anywhere online. From Thursday 15th September to Sunday 18th September, all Irish birth, marriage, death, census, social history, immigration and military records available on Findmypast will be completely free to explore.
This is to celebrate the landmark publication of more than 3 million historic Irish records released in association with the National Archives of Ireland and Family Search International which I mentioned yesterday. The release consists of a wide range of documents including original wills, lists of Catholics who swore loyalty to the crown or converted to Protestantism, land valuation records and merchant navy crew lists. The records date back to pre-famine Ireland and will be completely free to search forever.
Spanning over 220 years of Irish history from 1701 to 1922, the release is comprised of four highly valuable National Archives of Ireland collections including:
Original Will Registers 1858-1920
Qualification and Convert Rolls 1701 – 1845
Valuation Office books 1824-1856
Merchant Navy Crew lists 1857-1922
This is the first time these important National Archives of Ireland collections have been fully indexed with digitized images of the original papers linked online. All four collections are fully searchable.