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Very few Parish Registers predate the years of the
Great Famine. Parish Registers in
traditionally large centres of population may have been maintained but
at rural Parish level, local registers predating 1850/1860 are rare.
In the days of the Famine and in the following years, the need to find
food etc. was more important than maintaining records. Our own Parish
Registers have very few entries pre 1880 and may not necessarily be
correct in their content.
Parish Registers are maintained for Sacramental and
Church Purposes only. They do not claim to have exact or correct
dates of birth and are now not acceptable as proof of age or
identity for civil purposes. The reasoning behind this non-acceptance
is due to the fact that the dates and / or information in the
Registers have been occasionally found to be incorrect. They are
considered suitable for Church purposes as they are an indication
of Baptism, Confirmation, Church Marriage or Ordination.
The General Register
Research Room at Government Offices, Convent Road, Roscommon, Co Roscommon
holds all civil records of birth, marriage and deaths from 1864.
We do have many
researchers calling to the Parish Office asking to view the Parish
records. This is not possible, for some or all of the following
reasons.
1. Old Registers are now
very flimsy and frequent use leaves the pages open to tearing and
damage.
2. Parish Records may not
be factually correct and may therefore be misleading.
3. The information in a
particular record was given for Parish use and is private to the
family concerned.
4. Information within the
record may have been clarified by the Priest of the day (for his
successors) and for reasons of privacy these facts should not be made
public, which could happen by general reading of the Register.
For these reasons,
opening the Parish Registers to public view may cause problems of many
kinds. What we have done, to help people, is the following. We have
been working on transferring all Parish Records to computer, thereby
protecting the original books. We always provide certificates for
people requesting them for members of their own family, when they
provide us with some general detail of the birth or marriage. We do
not provide lists of a particular name within Parish Records.
(eg. All Smiths or Murphys) as they may not be of the same
family and the privacy of some individuals could be affected. In some
exceptional and rare situations, we have found it necessary to contact
immediate family members before a certificate is issued, to ensure the
privacy of the family concerned.
The Parish Office
always refers researchers to Donegal and Dublin centres of family
records as this information is always available to the public. For
reasons given above, it is not always possible, at Parish level, to
fulfil all requests, at all times.
However below we have given a list of Irish websites and
information Centres where you can possibly get this information
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