Digitisation of Church of Ireland parish records

[UKgirl]

https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/genealogy/church-ireland-parish-registers-online

QUOTE:
"On September 10, 2018, Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD announced that over $110,000 (€100,000) had been granted toward the digitization of Church of Ireland parish registers, held in the Representative Church Body Library, as part of the Department’s digitization scheme.

The RCB Library is most grateful for this significant commitment to the project to digitize Church of Ireland parish registers,” added Dr. Susan Hood, RCB Librarian, and Archivist."

At the bottom of this article, it explained that:
Once digitized, the records will be available at www.irishgenealogy.ie

****
Alas, frequent glances at that website have shown that the church records have not yet been updated. The website continues to contain only the following 4 parishes:

Carlow (COI)
Cork & Ross (RC)
Dublin (COI) Dublin (PRESBY.) Dublin (RC)
Kerry (COI) Kerry (RC)

Does anyone know anything at all about this project?

No doubt Covid has played a part in the delay, but 3 years and 8 months is a long time without any news as to how this project is progressing.

******

Today there was some good news about a different project.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/22/irish-public-record-office-civil-war-bombardment-archives-reborn

QUOTE:
"Digital wizardry and academic sleuthing have helped recreate a cultural treasure severely damaged in the conflict in 1922.

The project mixed old-fashioned academic sleuthing, artificial intelligence and collaboration with dozens of archives in the UK, continental Europe, the US and Australia. The results – an immersive 3D reconstruction of the destroyed building and a vast digital archive – will be formally launched on 27 June. It will be an open-access free resource with a searchable website. The 3D reconstruction gives viewers a detailed, and eerie, tour of the Public Record Office as it looked before the fire."

Not sure whether that means that parish records can be searched on 27 June? That would be just too much to hope for.

Does anyone really know whether that will be possible? It seems a bit unlikely.

UKgirl

[athacliath62]

Anglican records project is here run by the RCB Library covering Church of Ireland registers. They have been working on gathering alternate sources for missing registers for a long time - e.g. transcripts, extracts copy registers etc, their latest parish list is at this link

Beyond2022 is a separate project for the Public Records Office on restoring damaged records and sourcing replacement copies from alternate locations

The proposed launch in June is a virtual recreation of the Public Records Office, along with any recovered/restored records

[UKgirl]

Hello athacliath62,

Thank you for your clear explanation and very helpful link.

I was already aware of the Anglican Record Project website. In their own words:
Quote:
“A small number of parish registers have been digitised and are available to view here and on the Anglican Record Project. This digital record is a work in progress.”

I had not realised that the fanfare of 2018 referred to this particular typed project, that started out as one man’s research into his own family tree. And although it is “a small number” of parish registers, it is clear that a huge amount of work has already been undertaken.
 
May I express my thanks to all those involved.

Your link reveals that currently, the details from about 23 parishes are available, all beautifully typed (transcribed and indexed).

The transcriptions of the first parish were produced in 1991/1992.

More recently:
2017 – 3 parishes were added
2018 – 4 parishes were added
2019 – 1 parish was added
2020 – 4 parishes were added

This is clearly a painstaking mammoth project that will take very many years, even with the recent funding.

****
For those with Catholic ancestors, the National Library of Ireland website has scanned images from parish registers that can be seen free of charge.

https://www.nli.ie/en/parish-register.aspx

Alas, after the announcement in 2018, I had mistakenly been imagining something similar for the Church of Ireland registers.

Talk about wishful thinking.....

UKgirl

[Kiltaglassan]

For those with Catholic ancestors, the National Library of Ireland website has scanned images from parish registers that can be seen free of charge.

https://www.nli.ie/en/parish-register.aspx

Also can search here using the box or the map-
https://registers.nli.ie/

[UKgirl]

Yes, the map search is particularly easy to use and useful.

And of course, it was these scanned images that allowed Ancestry to produce their record collection:

"Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915"

which they first published in 2016 and then updated in 2018.

[athacliath62]

The same NLI Catholic registers are indexed and searchable on FindMyPast with a free account.