Customer Reviews

Tracing Your Irish Ancestors: The Complete Guide

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This handy paperback is the first place to start for Irish research.

Irish ancestors can be very elusive due to a variety of factors. Don't get frustrated - get educated. You CAN hunt your Emerald Isle ancestors successfully when armed with the knowledge in this book.

While covering all of the standard civil, church, census, and land records, Grenham's book also covers wills, deeds, newspapers, directories, and other less-used records. The final third of the book is a county-by-county reference guide describing extant censuses and substitutes, available local histories, monumental inscriptions and other sources for each county.

One of the outstanding features of the book is the Catholic parish maps for each county. These were drawn by the author's father and give the date of the earliest records available for each parish.

A researcher with Irish heritage must be as indefatigable and adaptable as their own Irish forebears were in order find them in the existing records. This book is one of the tools you need to start with.

I've just begun to research my Irish ancestors and this book presents an extremely thorough list of resources available to help with this search. Not only a detailed catalog of what's available, the book also does a great job of suggesting how best to use each type of record to reach your goals.

If you are a US resident researching your Irish ancestors, there is a decent section pointing out which US records may be of assistance. The book seems written in general, though, for those who live in Ireland or are otherwise able to get there to do research. I would have found it helpful to have a little more information about what each agency is able to do by mail (or online) for those of us who can't get to Ireland!

All in all, the book was well worth the money.

I live in Ireland and I bought this book about October, 2001. It's an updated version of the 1993 book. Having looked through many books in libraries, I found this to be the ultimate guide to Irish genealogy. I have succeeded in tracing my family back to the eighteenth century from information about parish records, census records etc, as John lists them so well. It gives details of sources county by county in chronological order. The church record listing is also excellent. This is definitely the Irish genealogy bible.

Tracing Your Irish Ancestors by professional Irish genealogist John Grenham is specifically written and designed to be used by researchers at all levels of experience, from the novice beginning to the seasoned professional. Organized into three major sections, Part 1 surveys the most basic genealogical sources for researching Irish ancestry; Part 2 provides a more advanced application of genealogical research project tools and resources; Part 3 is a reference guide to a comprehensive range of materials that include county source lists and church records. Also very highly recommended as a reference work for Irish-oriented genealogical researchers is the second edition of Brian Mitchell's A New Genealogical Atlas Of Ireland (080-6316845, $20.00).

This book is a great help for anyone trying to trace an Irish ancestor. It is very well organized, giving the reader both general information and information specific to localities. Many internet sites are listed. I would highly recommend this book to any Irish researcher.

This book has been a handy reference source in identifying what types of records are available for genealogical research in Ireland. Some guides to records by county.

THIS BOOK GIVES GREAT IDEAS AND HELPED ME TO AN INFORMATIVE SITE RIGHT FROM THE GET GO. I AM STILL RESEARCHING. WITH THIS BOOKS HELP I HOPE TO FIND MORE SITES TO CHECK OUT.

This is the absolute best book for Irish genalogy. If you can only buy one book this should be it.

I am so pleased with this book, as I just discovered my roots are with the Irish. Such a wealth of information, I am so impressed.
from a Scottish born native, now USA citizen.