On the Road with Reid 'Round Ireland: Digging for Your Irish Roots (cont'd)

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The choice is yours. You may try the DIY route first and, if you can't seem to get anywhere, try one of the paid services. If you do use a service or a professional, make sure they are officially registered to do the work. There are three main organizations:

• Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland (AGPI). (indigo.ie/~apgi or apgen.org)They do research in national archives and record repositories.
• Association of Ulster Genealogists and Record Agents (AUGRA). Same thing as APGI, only for Northern Ireland. Also useful: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) (www.proni.gov.uk/research/searcher.htm).
• Irish Family History Foundation (IFHF). (www.irish-roots.net) These folks go to the source to research in county archives or other specific areas.

The best news in the Internet age is that you can do some of the general work from home before you leave—gathering as much data as you can from relatives, and trying your hardest to pin down your ancestors' town of origin—then continue the search once you're in Ireland. Most town libraries have free Internet access terminals, so you can triple-team your search by availing yourself of on-line resources, flipping through microfilms in the back room, and nipping over to a country records office or local parish archives to pour over century-old printed records.

There are a bewildering number of ancestry Web sites out there-though I guess an embarrassment of riches is better than a paucity of choice. The best part of each, then, is probably that links page that opens up a few dozen more possible places in which to look. I'll just list a few of the most useful and best starting points here (though note that, for most physical records, you'll eventually have to make a pilgrimage to Dublin's National Library and/or National Archives in person):

• Irish Geneaology (www.irishgenealogy.ie) is one of the foremost and respectable commercial ventures, but doesn't cheat the DIY researcher either because it maintains the best-indexed and most sensibly-arranged set of links to all sort of other resources, public records offices, and local libraries. It also has the easiest direct link to a downloadable version of the Tourism Board's terribly useful booklet on "Tracing your Ancestors in Ireland". This is probably the first thing you should read-it tells you what you need to know to start, and gives you the best leads to begin piecing that info together with public records and archives—but I can't seem to find on the Tourism Board's own Web site (www.tourismireland.com).
• The National Library (www.nli.ie) is the best starting point for your search once you know the ground rules (gleaned from that free booklet mentioned above), and is totally free. It also lists contacts for the best private genealogical researchers for each county or area, in case you want to plump for a true expert to help or do the research on your behalf.
• Office of the Registrar General (www.groireland.ie) is the central repository for records in the Republic on births, deaths, and marriages. For Northern Ireland, contact the UK Public Record Office (www.pro.gov.uk).
• The National Archives (www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy.html) is a close runner-up to the library for most useful spot for delving into the minutia of Ireland's past. Its records are rife with birth/marriage/death certificates, census data, and other info to help your search, and it also provides on-site experts to help your research along-though you have to go to Dublin for all this. For Northern Ireland, the spanking new (as of April 2003) National Archives can be found on-line at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
• Irish Roots (www.irishroots.net) is another of the more reputable paid research services, and also has a goodly set of links to local county and parish records.
• TIARA (www.tiara.ie) stands for The Irish Ancestral Research Association, and is an interesting Massachusetts-based organization devoted to the art of Irish ancestor hunting. It has loads of links, but perhaps the most useful aspect of it are the results of the its surveys of folks just like you and I who have used various resources, services, and professional researchers out there and then commented on those experiences, giving a user's view of which were more or less helpful than others and how the research went overall.

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