In 1922, the Public Record Office in Dublin was burned and almost all of the Prerogative and Diocesan Wills, marriage records, census records and other classes of records of genealogical interest were destroyed or badly injured. Some valuable collections of records in the fireproof strongroom were saved. These included the Lodge Manuscripts, which consist of a series of volumes from the Patent Rolls of Henry VII, James I, Charles I and Charles II, abstracts of the Catholic Convert Rolls, being alphabetical lists of Catholics who renounced their church (usually temporarily) to avoid persecution, save their property, or to hold office, etc.
There are two lists of converts, c. 1703-1772, 1709-1773; and one list, 1662-1737, of Protestants who, upon coming to Ireland, took the Oath of Allegiance.
One of the most valuable collections acquired, which for the genealogist, repaired the loss of the Prerogative Wills, is the great collection of 241 volumes of the Betham Genealogical Abstracts.
After the fire, appeals were made throughout Ireland, England, Scotland, and America, for all who had copied the records during the past 53 years, to send their copies or transcripts, abstracts, or notes, to replace the burned records.
It was known that a large number of original records (wills, marriage records, parish registers, etc.) had never been sent to this office and these or copies were requested.
The appeals brought tremendous response. Legal (solicitors') offices, governmental, historical and genealogical repositories in Ireland and abroad sent original records, transcripts, abstracts, and notes from the burned records, as gifts or on loan for copying.
Genealogical collections representing the life work of great genealogists such as Betham, Crossle, Groves, Sadleir, etc., were given or sold to this office.
Individuals by the hundreds sent collections of family documents covering several generations.
Several hundred parish registers of baptism, marriage and burial, either original or transcripts, were in local custody at the time of the fire, and so were available.
The card index of testamentary documents is very extensive; it indexes many thousands of wills, duplicates and official plain copies of wills, grants of administrations, and original unproved wills never lodged for probate, which became too numerous after 1936 any longer to index in the Reports.
