Navigating Irish Ancestry: Your Comprehensive and Unbiased Guide to Unearthing Your Family’s Heritage
Irish genealogy has long had a bad rep for being an uphill struggle that ultimately ends in disappointment and frustration.
Happily, amateur genealogists no longer require tranquilizers and analgesics as family history in Ireland has entered an exciting era.
More and more records, some free of charge, are now readily available both online and off.
Are You Longing to Discover Who Your Ancestors Were and Their Lives? Now is an opportune time to do just that! Now is an excellent opportunity to begin researching your family history and learning more about who was living before us and their daily lives.
But you do need to take great care!
With independent advice provided here – free and without favor to any organisations or service providers – you can sidestep potential pitfalls.
No matter where in the world you are now residing – be it the Canadian Rockies, Australian Outback, Liverpool UK or Boston USA, Donegal coast of Donegal County Ireland; no matter which continent or nation your roots lie within; here you will find free Irish genealogy tools and advice as well as all of the latest genealogical resources in Ireland.
Here’s just some of the topics, themes and areas of help you’ll discover here on Irish Genealogy Toolkit:
Discover the beauty of my site by exploring it by clicking on any of the images or the drop-down menus just beneath my masthead picture, or exploring my A-Z page (there’s also one dedicated specifically to these topics!).
Soon you will realize this is more than a website listing hundreds of genealogical databases (although I will show you where to find the best). Furthermore, no attempts will be made to sign you up for paid research projects or database subscription services.
Irish Genealogy Toolkit will give you all of the resources and contacts needed to explore your heritage in Ireland. No matter where your search starts or ends, Irish Genealogy Toolkit will bring greater understanding to how your ancestors lived and where your family came from.
With help from some of the many genealogy resources now available to me, I’ve managed to trace my Irish ancestry back as far as 1723 on my maternal line and 1775 on my paternal. Not bad for such an “impossible” task!
My three times great-grandfather Edward Doolittle can be seen below at the launch of Wicklow’s Robert T Garden lifeboat launch in 1866.
My genealogy trail has allowed me to gain more of an insight into Ireland’s sociopolitical evolution, refresh my schoolgirl Latin, decipher 18th and 19th century handwriting, become incensed over many historical injustices, and stand and gaze upon the very same rolling hills and dramatic seascapes that my ancestors did.
As well as my work for Penguin Random House and my award from my peers as Rockstar Irish Genealogist, in 2013 I was also made an honorary Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society – you can learn more on my About Me page!
Experienced, I have gained much from researching Ireland for myself, and through this website am eager to share this knowledge with those looking for their roots on its shores.
As appropriate, I will draw upon records related to my own ancestors to demonstrate certain Irish family history research methods or highlight individual genealogical resources for further examination.