Discover if your ancestor was born in Ireland between 1864 and 1958. The records will reveal your relative’s full name, birth year, and the quarter and district they were registered in. Details such as your relative’s mother’s maiden name will allow you to delve further back into your family history.
Each record is a transcript of the original birth record. The amount of information included varies, but the records usually include the following details about your ancestor:
• First name
• Last name
• Year
• Registered quarter
• Registration district
• Country
• Mother’s maiden name (only available after 1929)
The record set comprises almost 9,455,070 births from all 32 counties in Ireland.
These records date from 1864 to 1958
In Ireland, civil registration records of births, marriages, and deaths are indexed and cover most of the population, making them a vital resource in Irish genealogy. Civil Registration began here in 1864; however non-Catholic marriages were recorded from 1845.
Registration districts were established within the boundaries of the existing Poor Law Unions.
Following Irish independence in 1922, the repositories for the records split, with records for Northern Ireland being housed by the General Register Office (GRO) in Belfast, while records for the Republic of Ireland are kept at the GRO in Dublin. The record set as a whole has survived, however.
Using the volume and page number and other information from the index, you can order photocopies of the full register entries, for a fee, from the General Register Office.
Note that there are no images accompanying the transcripts.
Also note, births are only listed by year and not by day or month.
Arthur Guinness began brewing his ales in 1759 at his Dublin brewery in St James' Gate. He signed a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum, exporting his first ale ten years later, in 1769. Guinness porter was first sold in 1778, and only three types of beer form the mainstay of the product line. Sales went from strength to strength in the 1860s, over doubling production and in 1886 the company went public. The company was valued at £6 million and shares were 20 times oversubscribed.
The brewery became known for their stringent quality control, and generous welfare packages for employees (costing a fifth of the total wage bill in 1907). By 1914, Guinness supplied more than 10 percent of the UK beer market, more than double that of their nearest competitor.
The Guinness Archive preserves historical records of the Dublin Guinness Brewery from 1759 to the present day. Part of that collection includes personnel records of previous employees going back from the early 2000s to the 1880s. They hold over 20,000 files, an account of around 80% of all employees through this period.