Examples of Exhaustive Irish Family History Research

[famtree03]

Tracing to hight kings is phenomenal, it's taken me years to get to the late 1790's cos with mire than one ancestors called john Duffy n Micheal lowery n Patricia mcdonagh it's a midfield truly. How did you get to high kings?

[jc26red]

My own research goes back to the mid 1600's on my husband's line. I have been extremely lucky with this line as they were Protestant landowners, at every turn, the line marries into a well researched lines that seems to go back to year dot! But I have done my own extensive research for our direct line and researched to verify the ones that we married into and had already been done... even Burkes peerage has errors.
I am still finding new things every single day on our direct line. At the moment, I am tracing down the siblings of my husband's 4xgreat grandmother. Newspapers, irishgenealogyie for bmds, military records.  Going back further deeds, TCD records and Bethams will abstracts have been used confirm my research.

But on my husband's maternal RC line, I can't get any further back than his great grandmother, absolutely nothing so say where she was born. Married in Drogheda in 1871, had many children and died in 1905 Drogheda... and that's it!  No civil record of her marriage, only a RC parish record and witnesses are not relatives. Lots of family myths which have sent me round in circles but all been proved incorrect in the end???

I have also found the petty sessions on FindMyPast enlightening, lots of fun things to find on there

Researching Irish roots has become so much easier in the last few years, I find it more fun than researching my own paternal line back in England... the only line I haven't found an Irish link, well not yet   

[Blue70]

I've got Bradys from County Cavan who were born in the early 1800s who were probably from Larah no records found. Reids and McCaughans from County Antrim 1800s some records found. Leacy/Lacys from Wexford c1830s no records found. A Silvester Kelly who was in England by 1807 but no idea where in Ireland he was from. Hollands who came to England c1879 with a child on the way without marrying so their origins are therefore unknown. An Irishman in the Manx Fencibles on the Isle of Man in the 1770s/80s called Gallivan or Galvin origins unknown.


Blue

[Andrew Tarr]

In recent years quite a lot of useful Irish records have appeared online, many of them free to see.  But as we all know there are many large gaps, for various reasons.  Although my surname is from Devon, that line migrated to Ireland in 1854, but most emigrated or returned to Devon after about 25 years.  Two of the men married Irish women, but I had little hope of tracing further until I googled for the name of my g-g-grandmother.  That found her gravestone which included references to two of her grandchildren who I knew about, so there was no doubt.  An alternative source to Irish BMD.

[JAKnighton]

Much of what you are looking for is already online. Before coming to do research someplace like PRONI, Belfast you really do need to know what you are looking for otherwise you'll waste lots of time searching for information which might not exist and missing records that might be helpful.

That is why I am asking to see what others have done, in order to know what records are available and where.

Looking at a few of your 'Irish' threads, I think you need to check what's already there and get a better grasp of locations (and how different records record a place).

For example, on your more recent McElroy thread- under Tyrone rather than Derry for some reason:
www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=775913

It's in Tyrone because my 4x great grandparents and 3x great grandfather were married and born in Tyrone, respectively, with my 3x great grandfather being married in Derry and having children there later. I mentioned the children in Derry just in case any living relatives might come across the thread, and to provide more context for my family.

You've listed baptisms for some of the children but don't mention if you've looked at the online parish registers. They only seem to go back to 1827 and without looking through them I'm not sure if there are any gaps or illegible sections- https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0181

Now, your earlier McElroy topic (under Derry) from 2014 gives some incorrect details which mean you may be overlooking further records. www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=690352
For example, here is Bernard's birth registration (1868) which shows he was born in Ballyrogly (not Magherafelt as you stated). In this case, Magherafelt is the registration district, Moneymore the sub-district and Ballyrogly the townland. If you are searching the vital records on Irish Genealogy they are indexed by registration district (GRONI's database allows selection of district and sub-district to narrow down results).
https://civilrecords.irishgenealogy.ie/churchrecords/images/birth_returns/births_1868/03433/2260316.pdf

These websites I weren't aware of, and I didn't realise that images of original birth records were available online, so this is helpful of you to bring them to my attention.

Ballyrogully townland is in Co. Derry (Artrea civil parish) and between Moneymore village and Lough Neagh- https://www.townlands.ie/londonderry/loughinsholin/artrea/ballyrogully/
It may be that the Artrea & Desertlin R.C. registers will contain details of the family but they only go back to 1832- https://registers.nli.ie/parishes/0182 (again earliest ones seem to be online)

Griffith's Valuation Books should allow you to find approx. how long the family were in Ballyrogully after you've checked vital records. These are also on PRONI's site (free).

This information is also helpful.

Unless you've lots more information not in your threads then there's much you can look for online (and perhaps not too much other records to find here other than locating the places the family lived, etc.).

I do have some more but as I've said, it's mostly scrapings of what I have already found online.

Thank you for your reply.