The hometown of our Irish immigrant ancestors has often been forgotten as generations passed. For those of us whose ancestors did not orally pass down the name of their hometown or county, many have a hard time determining from where in Ireland our ancestors hail.
It is not uncommon for researchers of all skill levels to hit a brick wall when it comes to identifying a town or county of their Irish ancestors as American documents such as death certificates frequently provide “Ireland” as a place of birth, with no hometown listed. It may be difficult to even find ancestors within indexed American records due to spelling variations and poor transcription on popular sites like Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org.
This presentation will focus on maximizing the search for Irish-American families that are difficult to trace through American records. Certain resources can potentially be a windfall for your research, but may not be on your research to-do list yet. For those of us who routinely encounter the simple description of “Ireland” on death records, more complex strategies need to be implemented to build the road back to Ireland. Several Ireland-based online resources will also be discussed to expand the search to Irish records. This presentation is appropriate for all skill levels, and is intended to spark research ideas for various difficulties encountered in Irish-American genealogical research.
