Link: IFHF Online Genealogy Database

[smileygirl]

Hi looks like a potentilly brilliant website though maybe they should have got some more experienced people to load on the information!

I seem to have been very unlucky indeed!  All my family come from waterford , Kilkenny , Laois and Offaly. I live in England and as you know three of those counties are not loaded on yet.

The one that is , Kilkenny couldn't help me as the person I was looking for was born in 1833 and their babtism records don't start until 1835!   

I am so frustrated

Any idea when these counties will be online??? 

[shanew147]

According to an email from the IFHF I received in Dec 2009, they are currently working on records for Laois, Offaly and Wexford and hope to have these online this year.

no mention of Waterford at the moment unfortunately


Shane

[smileygirl]

great thanks thats brilliant news

[john2o2o]

I'm afraid that this site fills me with a great deal of bitterness and disappointment. Records of my ancestors are there but the site is too expensive to use! They charge E5 for every record you want to look at and make it as difficult as they can for users to obtain any useful information from it without paying.

It's not rocket science to make it possible to search by both parent's names for example. My numerous Irish ancestors crossed over to mainland Britain over 100 years ago and settled in Scotland. As anyone who has researched in Scotland knows a lot of information can be obtained for their civil records. I know the names of Irish couples who are my ancestors but the folks at rootsireland (despite making great play of the fact that they are apparently a not-for-profit organisation), seem to be too afraid of losing revenue to make it easy for me to find them!

I'm not a millionaire, and frankly, to do genealogy properly on the rootsireland website you have to be very comfortably well off indeed!

I have e-mailed them to protest about their extortion and have asked them to provide a subscription service. It hasn't hurt Ancestry's revenues so it surely won't hurt theirs!

I call on all persons with an interest in Irish genealogy to do the same!

John

[aghadowey]

In all fairness, many baptismal registers only list the father's name (if the mother is listed it may only be her Christian name that's in the record).

[john2o2o]

Well I would beg to differ on that score!

 If you have checked out the free 'Irish Genealogy' website which covers mostly parts of Dublin, Kerry and parts of southern Cork, a quick examination of the baptismal records reveals that they often contain a wealth of information including both parents forenames, the mother's maiden surname and the names of both Godparents! All potentially useful information.

The option to search using even a mother's first name would in any event be far better than the present situation with IFHF which does not allow any more than a search for father's name for a family and then only for a countywide search. If you try to search by parish they move the goalposts again requiring a first name for a particular individual.

The central problem with the pay-per-view system is that it necessitates restricting the sorts of ways in which the information contained in a database can be accessed.

Computers and the internet have shown on many occasions that there exists a enormous potential to search in a variety of ingenious ways, and in ways that would not be possible without them, and this in turn makes discovering ancestors possible when it would not have been possible before.

Please support my call to press the IFHF to change their current backwards looking policy and offer a subscription service which could open up Irish genealogy!

[shanew147]

....
 If you have checked out the free 'Irish Genealogy' website which covers mostly parts of Dublin, Kerry and parts of southern Cork, a quick examination of the baptismal records reveals that they often contain a wealth of information including both parents forenames, the mother's maiden surname and the names of both Godparents! All potentially useful information.
....

In general Catholic baptism records include mother's maiden name, whereas Church of Ireland baptism records do not. Church of Ireland baptism records often include father's occupation, and Catholic baptisms dont. Church of Ireland baptisms often dont include godparents/sponsors.

Earlier records tend to include less detail.



Shane

[aghadowey]

Early Presbyterian baptisms, in general, may only include father's name and possible a townland. At a later period many registers changed from father's name/townland to father's name and mother's name (Christian and last or just Christian name). Baptisms in the Presbyterian church are performed without any godparents.

[john2o2o]

Thank you Aghadowey, that may well be so, but the majority of people in Ireland are, and were Roman Catholic, and the baptismal records that the Roman Catholic church kept are as detailed as I have described, and do include both parents names, the mother's maiden surname and the names of Godparents.

I have researched in a number of Roman Catholic parishes, including ones in the northern counties and this has always been my experience.

The provision of a subscription service by the IFHF would be, in my view of benefit to all those interested in the research of Irish people and of all denominations, and for the reasons I have outlined in my previous message.