Irish General Register Office records



Deaths

GRO death record



As in the case of births, it is essential to uncover as much information as possible from other sources before starting a search of the death Indexes. Therefore if a date of birth is known from parish or other records, the 'age at death' given in the index, together with the registration district, provides at least a rough guide as to whether or not the death recorded is the relevant one. If the location of a family farm is known, the approximate date of death can often be worked out from the changes in occupier recorded in the Revision Books of the Land Valuation Office. Similarly, if the family had property, the Will Calendars of the National Archives after 1858 can be the easiest way to pinpoint the precise date of death. For deaths after the 1930s, a newspaper death notice can provide the date. With such information, it is then usually a simple matter to pick out the relevant entry from the Indexes. Information from a marriage entry may also sometimes be useful; along with the names of the fathers of the parties marrying, the register entry sometimes also specifies that one or both of the fathers is deceased. There is no rule about this, however. The fact that a father is recorded as, say, 'John Murphy, labourer', does not necessarily mean that he was alive at the time of the marriage. If an individual is recorded as 'deceased', this does at least provide an end point for any search for his death entry. As already pointed out, however, death records give no information on preceding generations, and only occasionally name a surviving family member. For the death record images at irishgenealogy.ie, sometimes a brute force approach is the only option. Simply go through all of the potential matches one by one.


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