COUSE 1699

Hello William,

The reality of finding documentation pertaining to births/baptisms/marriages/deaths in Ireland prior to 1800 – particularly in rural areas – is that they simply may not exist. Some registers for urban areas pre-dating 1800 may exist – though often these can be fragmented- as there was an increased need in cities or larger towns to document the population. Please also note that the Church of Ireland was the official church of the country and therefore the bulk of information that does survive for earlier periods is often from these registers.

Church of Ireland parish registers for the period up to 1870-are public records. Registers are available for about one third of the parishes, however many were destroyed in the Public Records Office in Dublin in 1922. Most are still held by the local clergy, although some are in the National Archives of Ireland and others are in the Representative Church Body Library in Dublin. A list of all surviving registers is available in the National Archives. http://ireland.anglican.org/about/42 and http://www.nationalarchives.ie/.  The Anglican Record Project is has created an index to their records: http://ireland.anglican.org/cmsfiles/pdf/AboutUs/library/AngRecord/bunclodyunionindex.pdf

The Irish Times Irish Ancestory site has a list of available resources for Dunlavin here

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/fuses/townlands/index.cfm?fuseaction=TownlandsInCivil&civilparishid=2676&civilparish=Dunlavin&citycounty=Wicklow

Best regards Michael.