"... first it killed the Romans and now it's killing me!" The old schoolboy lament found scrawled on many a desk apparently. However you are going to have to brush up on your inflected endings and Latin forms of forenames if you are to make the most of some fantastic new Irish Catholic resources recently released by Ancestry. Selected registers of baptisms, confirmations, marriages and burials dating from the end of the 18th century through to the beginning of the 20th are now available to query, and best of all are accompanied by images for the most part too. Although only for selected parishes (see their Learn More... screens for each source to see which RC parishes are covered) this is a huge step forward for anyone with Roman Catholic Irish ancestors, especially this genealogist who has become increasingly frustrated at the expensive poor quality monopoly enjoyed to date by the Irish Family History Foundation on such resources (see later post.)
I recommend that you query by family surname and place only to begin with as quite a lot of the registers, and the resulting indexes, are in Latin. Many forenames are recognisable (Thoman, Patricium, Margueritam) but others will have you dredging up your 1st year Latin e.g. Jacobi/Jacobo/Jacobum = James. I found an excellent page online from the Lancashire Online Parish Clerks that gives hints and translations for the more common names. And be sure to scrutinise any images yourself quite carefully rather than just rely on any transcription - "Joannem filium ex" is "John son of" versus "Joannam filiam ex" is "Joanna daughter of".
As you might expect, some of the transcription has proved quite challenging and you might have to hunt hard for some ancestors. For example, if the person you are looking for has a 2 part forename, the second part may end up as their surname in the index e.g. Saram Annan is Sarah Ann. If you are looking for siblings, then I recommend using shortened forms of the parents names and wildcards to cope with any parish clerks errant latin inflections and/or transcription errors. For example, Jac* should find all the different forms of James listed above. Using these techniques I have joyfully found not only 4 older brothers for my great grandmother but have also been able to use this information to track down a strong candidate for her parents' marriage much earlier than I had previously looked.
I recommend that you query by family surname and place only to begin with as quite a lot of the registers, and the resulting indexes, are in Latin. Many forenames are recognisable (Thoman, Patricium, Margueritam) but others will have you dredging up your 1st year Latin e.g. Jacobi/Jacobo/Jacobum = James. I found an excellent page online from the Lancashire Online Parish Clerks that gives hints and translations for the more common names. And be sure to scrutinise any images yourself quite carefully rather than just rely on any transcription - "Joannem filium ex" is "John son of" versus "Joannam filiam ex" is "Joanna daughter of".
As you might expect, some of the transcription has proved quite challenging and you might have to hunt hard for some ancestors. For example, if the person you are looking for has a 2 part forename, the second part may end up as their surname in the index e.g. Saram Annan is Sarah Ann. If you are looking for siblings, then I recommend using shortened forms of the parents names and wildcards to cope with any parish clerks errant latin inflections and/or transcription errors. For example, Jac* should find all the different forms of James listed above. Using these techniques I have joyfully found not only 4 older brothers for my great grandmother but have also been able to use this information to track down a strong candidate for her parents' marriage much earlier than I had previously looked.