Newspapers began to be published in Ireland from the late 17th century. However, it is not until the middle of the 18th century that they start to become useful for researching family history.
From the 1750s, the publication of birth, marriage and death notices, generally pertaining to the landed gentry and professional classes, can sometimes bridge the gap left by the destruction of church, testamentary and court records in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin during the Civil War.
Birth announcements during this early period are the least informative, stating that the unnamed wife of a gentleman gave birth to a son or daughter. The location and father’s name are published, but little else.
Marriage notices can sometimes be more detailed, with references to the name and address of the bride’s father or parents, the occupation of the groom, and the names of the minister and church where it took place.
Death notices can be the most informative and should at least include name, age and place of death. Some notices will refer to the occupation of the deceased and even information on their spouse, children, siblings or parents. Locating an announcement of marriage or death overseas will explain the absence of a record in Ireland. A request in later death notices asking for American, Australian or English newspapers to please copy, suggests family members who had emigrated to those places.
In addition to death notices, you may find an obituary or a funeral notice elsewhere in the newspaper. Obituaries offer a more detailed account of the deceased’s life and family. Funeral notices, largely found in 20th-century Irish newspapers, can be very informative, identifying the mourners, often naming married daughters, grandchildren and cousins, as well as the place of burial.
Early Irish newspapers
Early newspapers also served to circulate information to the population. Most early newspapers carried advertisements, but these are not adverts as we think of them today. Early advertisements were more like noticeboard items for the local readership, informing the public that a business had changed hands or been taken over by the wife or son of a deceased proprietor. Advertisements notified a change of business address, or a request for the assembly of creditors. Teachers advertised for pupils, and authorities advertised details of absconded soldiers or escaped prisoners.
Personal notices also appear, such as the elopement of a couple, or a husband notifying local businesses that he will no longer pay the bills of his errant wife. Over two issues of Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, published in June 1763, Isaac Read firstly notifies readers that his wife Mary “hath not only behaved in a most unbecoming way to her said husband but hath joined with some wicked malicious and ill minded people in order to hurt him and his children”, adding that he has separated from her so she is not to be given any credit on his accounts.
In the following edition Mary Read published her response, correcting her husband’s claims, “to be turned out of doors by force, without being permitted to take with her even a change of linen, or any one necessary, be considered by him as a separation which should discharge him from the support of a wife, by whom he has for upwards of 13 years enjoyed… a very considerable annual income”. Such notifications began to disappear from about the 1830s, as advertising became more commercial.
Newspapers do not offer a comprehensive record of the entire population. In the 18th and 19th centuries they generally published announcements relating to the gentry, military, professional classes, clergy, merchant families, wealthy farmers and some traders. Prior to the 20th century, the majority of the Irish population, small tenant farmers and the urban poor, are absent from this source, with the exception of those caught up in a crime.
Most court records for 18th- and 19th-century Ireland were destroyed. Newspaper reporting on the commission and prosecution of crimes and subsequent punishment are often the only surviving record. This is a particularly significant resource for anyone whose relation was transported to Australia for petty crimes.
How to find Irish newspapers
Fortunately, Ireland has a wealth of historic newspapers. From 1826, the British Library was obliged to hold a copy of all Irish publications and its collection of Irish newspapers is largely complete, along with an extensive collection of pre-1826 publications.
The National Library of Ireland holds the largest collection of Irish newspapers on the island. Newsplan, published in 1992 and 1998, is a record of what Irish newspapers survive, and where hard and microfilm copies can be located. The publication, with an informative introduction, lists newspapers by title and by town of publication, helping you to identify newspapers relevant to a specific area. A digital copy of the 1998 second edition can be viewed in the NLI’s catalogue, or borrowed for free from the Internet Archive.
Some, but certainly not all, Irish newspapers have been digitised and published online. There are two major online collections of Irish newspapers, the British Newspaper Archive and the Irish Newspaper Archives. Although some publications appear in both, the collections are generally different. The titles on the British Newspaper Archive are held by the British Library, and are also available to Findmypast subscribers.
How to search Irish newspapers
There are several ways to approach newspaper research. A manual search, if you have time, can often be the most rewarding. Manual research can be carried out online by browsing a digital copy of a newspaper, or using microfilm or hard copies in a library. However, a manual search will really only be practical if you have a relatively narrow date range and location. If you have a date of death then a death notice, obituary or funeral notice should be found in local papers over the following two weeks, if the death was local, bearing in mind that many newspapers only published one or two editions each week. This approach will often turn up notices that are missed by search engines.
If you don’t have a specific date range then a manual search will not be practical and you will have to rely on search engines, which might uncover fewer references to a family than expected. Driven by optical character recognition, search engines can fail when a crease or tear in the page, smudged ink or words obliterated by tight binding obscure the text you are searching for.
When using a search engine, it is also important to consider how someone might have been reported. Patrick Murphy might appear as “Pat Murphy” or “Mr. P. Murphy”. When searching for someone with a common name, it is usually sensible to search by their address, often a townland. However, addresses can be reported using the official spelling found in the Index of Townlands, or the local spelling, which is often what appears on birth, marriage and death certificates. You can access the index via the website of the Irish Genealogical Research Society.
Bear in mind that searches of newspaper databases don’t always turn up what you are looking for on the first attempt. It is definitely worth trying different search terms and spellings, filtering and narrowing your search, before resorting to a manual trawl through the pages.
Newspapers can be a joy to explore. On your research journey, you can pick up 19th-century gardening tips, jam recipes and dress patterns, or you might start following the story of a local murder. Finding your ancestors alongside reporting of significant national and international events can put their life into context, placing their birth, marriage or death against the Great Famine (1845–1849), the Crimean War (1853–1856), the Indian Mutiny of 1857 or the 1916 Easter Rising.
