Irish gravestone transcripts



GRAVESTONE INSCRIPTIONS


In the past six years the numbers and quality of gravestone transcripts online have increased dramatically. Three Irish groups are dedicated to transcription and free publication, www.discovereverafter.com, www.irishgraveyards.ie, and www.historicgraves.com. The first two are companies supplying graveyard management services, with online transcript collections as a by-product. Discovereverafter is based in Derry, with most of its transcripts from counties Derry, Tyrone and Armagh (143 graveyards, August 2018). Irishgraveyards is based in Castlebar, and covers mainly Mayo, Galway and Donegal (74 graveyards). Historicgraves depends on volunteer community projects and records much more than the inscriptions, going into the detail of the heritage of each graveyard, photos and maps. It currently has transcripts for 484 cemeteries, mostly in Cork, Limerick and Tipperary, though there are significant numbers elsewhere. Parish-by-parish details are in the civil parish pages.

In addition, the Cantwell collection of transcripts covering all of Wexford and Wicklow and most of the Mayo and Galway seaboard is available on FindMyPast.ie. Clare County Library has transcriptions from more than 120 graveyards in the county.

Many of the collections of transcripts held by local heritage centres are beginning to appear online at rootsireland.ie . For counties where this is the case, parish-by-parish details are in the civil parish pages. This site does not cover the transcripts published in the Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead, since the records are not treated in a geographically consistent way. Nonetheless, over the 47 years of its existence between 1888 and 1934, the Journal published a huge volume of inscriptions, many of which have since been destroyed. A composite index to surnames and places for the first twenty years of publication was published in 1910; the remaining volumes have their own indexes. The journals up to 1909 are online at www.archive.org. An index to the coats of arms in the Journal compiled by the Genealogical Office is online at goo.gl/hLntru.

The largest sites for volunteer-submitted transcripts are www.findagrave.com and www.interment.net. Many of the transcripts on these are only partial. The most durable site is www.interment.net, and where it holds significant numbers for a county, this is indicated. The IGP Archives also have significant numbers of volunteer headstone photos and transcripts.


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