The National Library and General Register Office in Dublin are also good starting points, and if your investigations indicate Northern Irish connections the Linen Hall Library, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast and the General Register Office NI are all good either online or in person.
Many enjoy looking into their family history online, then following up with a visit to the island of Ireland. Some like investigating in person on successive trips to Ireland, while others like to have the research done for them by professionals so they can go straight to the place of their ancestors.
Whatever the approach, the best part of uncovering your Irish roots is the trip ‘home’. Discovering the county, townland, village, or even the very house where your ancestor was born and walking in what was once their world is an experience never to be forgotten. The Irish love to claim their own, so the welcome is always huge.
For those wanting to know more about how and why their family emigrated, a visit to EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, is a must. Located on the banks of the River Liffey in Dublin’s Docklands, the original departure point for many Irish emigrants, EPIC is a hi-tech, interactive experience that tells the authentic stories of how Irish emigrants helped shape the world. It also contains an Irish Family History Centre operated by the genealogy specialists who helped in documenting Joe Biden’s family tree.
You can also follow in the footsteps of brave emigrants who set sail for the New World in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at the Ulster American Folk Park in Northern Ireland, or unpack an appreciation of the Irish Famine, which resulted in the death of over a million Irish citizens and the emigration of a million more, at the National Famine Museum in Strokestown Park in County Roscommon.
There are many more genealogy resources around the country, so if you are one of the millions who claim an Irish connection it’s time to start searching to see what comes up.
www.ireland.com