I'm looking for where my 5th grandfather was born? I know it was Ulster and I think Antrim but I don't know what parish. I have been looking for his parents but no luck there. He married a Margaret Barnsley and came to America in the 1700's and settled in SW Virginia. He brought along John Kelly and I believe some other children?
Only a tiny handful of churches in Co. Antrim still have records for the 1700s. You also need to know the couples exact denomination. So if you don?t know which parish or townland they lived in that, plus the absence of records, makes finding them pretty well impossible. Very few people are able to trace back to Ireland for ancestors who left in the 1700s. The prospects are not good, I am sorry to say.