FindmyPast Weekly Update

St Patrick’s Day motivates attention to Irish records. Here’s how FMP describes their additions.

Ireland, 1766 Religious Census
This week’s biggest new set consists of 20,505 transcriptions from the 1766 Religious Census. Although the original documents were lost when Ireland’s Public Records Office was destroyed in 1922, these extensive transcripts were recorded by antiquarian and genealogist Tenison Groves prior to the fire.

From these records, you may be able to learn the name of the head of the household, the year, their religion, the parish and the county. The information recorded varies widely, because different enumerators recorded different details.

Ireland, Census of Protestant Householders 1740
Secondly, added transcriptions of a census that was taken of Protestant householders in 1740. The 15,957 records within this new set are from parishes in the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone.

Also created by Tenison Groves, these transcriptions contain details like a name, year, barony, parish and county.

Ireland, 1775 Dissenters’ Petitions
This week’s third and final new set is a collection of historic petition records. It contains approximately 4,000 names, of people who protested the Church of Ireland’s sacramental tests in 1775. The petitions consist of dissenters’ names categorized by parish, congregation, town, neighbourhood, or, in one case, barony.

Occasionally, members of the Established Church also signed the petitions. The lists typically specify whether signatories were dissenters or Established Church members. In cases where no denomination is indicated, the list contained names of both dissenters and Established Church members without differentiation.W hile available for all Northern Ireland counties except Fermanagh, these records are most extensive for areas in Counties Antrim and Down.

Belfast & Ulster Directories
In addition to these new Irish record sets, there’s a significant update to an existing Irish collection — 951,127 Belfast and Ulster directory records, with both transcriptions and original images available to explore.

These new additions span 1831 to 1900, and contain over 900,000 names. With almost 70 years of history covered, they offer a detailed glimpse into what the North of Ireland was like in the 19th century.

OTHER ST PATRICK DAY SPECIALS

MyHeritage has opened all its Irish historical records for  14 to 18 March.

23andMe is giving 20% off its Ancestry Service, now $119 US until 17 March.

FamilyTreeDNA has a slew of specials until 18 March

Family Finder + Y-37 $198 $169 |
Family Finder + Y-111 $328 $299
Family Finder + Big Y-700 $528 $499
Family Finder + mtFull Sequence $238 $209
Family Finder + mtFull Sequence + Y-37 $357 $319
Family Finder + mtFull Sequence + Y-111 $487 $449
Family Finder + Big Y-700 + mtFull Sequence | $687 $649

Ancestry.ca has free access to all Canadian records until 16 March. Maybe they’ll open up the Irish records for Canada Day!
Ancestry.com has $50* on AncestryDNA® until 17 March.