baptisms for Belfast

[Rosezi]

Can someone recommend the best place to search for Belfast baptisms for the 1840s? 

[hallmark]

Religion?

[Elwyn Soutter]

The short answer is PRONI (the public record office) in Belfast.

You haven’t said what denomination you are researching. Most RC records are on-line but for other denominations many are not. However there are copies of most of the surviving church records in PRONI.  If you don’t know the denomination then you could be looking at 100 churches. If you know the denomination then that will narrow it a bit. A personal visit is required to search them (or get a researcher to do it for you). Not all the Belfast church records from that period have survived. Some were lost due to German bombing in WW2.

[Rosezi]

I am not certain of the religion, my ancestor married 2 Catholic women in Liverpool and all his children were raised as Catholics. The family surname is Dunbar so they were probably Scots Irish and Presbyterian.

[Elwyn Soutter]

Statutory birth registration didn’t start in Ireland till 1864 so you won’t get a birth certificate for him.

The RC parish records are on-line free on the National Library site:

https://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

If you think he may have been Presbyterian, then some Presbyterian baptism records are on sites such as rootsireland and the Ulster Historical Foundation but many are not on-line at all.  Altogether there are about 50 Presbyterian churches in Belfast, though as I mentioned not all have records for the 1840s. It would really just be a matter of plodding though them all at PRONI. (They are mostly on microfilm). Don't expect too much if you find it. All you normally get, especially in Belfast, are the date & the parents names. But you might find some siblings in the same set of records.

Researchers in the PRONI area: http://sgni.net

[Rosezi]

Many thanks for your help, very useful