Irish Records

This group of pages is of much less value than it was 25 years ago when I put it together. Back when I assembled this Ireland hadn't even switched to the Euro, and the only way to get any of these records was to mail a request and pay for a photocopy with a small slip of paper that showed that person's row on the page. Now you can go to irishgenealogy.ie and see it all for free. I'm leaving this here since I put it all together, but there's much better options available now.

This is a transcription of a collection of copies of registered Birth, Marriage, and Death records for the Irish registry districts of Donegal, Ballyshannon, Glenties, and Irvinestown/Lowtherstown (different names for the same area) for all persons named Strong. I obtained the list of records from Dave Strong's Birth, Marriage, and Death Index that is available on the web. There were about a dozen records missing from the batch that they sent, I will be trying to figure out what happened with them in the next few weeks. Eventually I will add a fourth page that attempts to link the records together, but for now all that it there are the transcriptions themselves. Each record is assigned a record number - these are completely arbitrary and are only there to allow a convenient way of identifying individual records.
The copies that I transcribed varied greatly in quality and clarity. In some cases they were very clear and easy to read, in others they were faded, smeared, out-of focus, or grainy, sometimes all at once. When I was unable to make out part of a form I tried to read what I could, the rest I marked as illegible. The marriage records were particularly bad in this way. If there is a particular record that you are interested in and I was unable to read part ot it then ask me - I might be able to read a bit more if I try that record again.
For those interested in making a similar request, the address to send to is:

Office of the Registrar General
Joyce House
8-11 Lombard Street East
Dublin 2
Ireland

There are offical forms for the requests, but I have been successful by making the requests in the form of letters. The cost of official records is about 6.00 Irish Pounds (or about US$10.00 - they accepted checks made out in US funds for an appropriate amount to cover the exchange rate). If an unoffical photocopy of the register page is enough, it costs 1.50 Pounds per copy plus a search fee of 1.50 Pounds if you can't supply the volume and page number for each requested record.
If you have a complicated request it may be best to phone first. The phone number for the Public Records Office in Dublin is 011 353 1 671 1968 as you would dial it from the US. When I inquired about this request they told me to provide volume and page numbers for all of the records, plus names, years, registry districts and ages for the death records. This was more than was absolutely necessary for a request such as this one, but it did seem to allow them to find a few records where the volume and page numbers appeared to have been provided incorrectly. For large requests like this one they also asked to separate the batches by type of record and also into groups of 1902 and before and 1903 and later since they are kept in different locations.

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This web site is maintained by Tom Strong <tomstrong@gmail.com>. Please send him any suggestions, comments, updates, or corrections you may have for it.
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