Friday 15 April 2011

Monaghan RC records added to Roots Ireland

RootsIreland.ie, the online research service of the Irish Family History Foundation, has added 32,000 Roman Catholic baptism records from County Monaghan to its searchable database. They include the parishes of Carrickmacross, Donaghmoyne, Drummully-Currin, Ematris, Errigal Trough, Inishkeen, Magheross, Monaghan and Tydavnet.


These are the first records from Monaghan to appear on the pay-to-view site and more will follow 'soon', according to the press release.

The announcement took family historians by surprise because they'd been alerted a few weeks ago that the state-funded IrishGenealogy.ie website would shortly be releasing RC records for Monaghan, free.

Seems RootsIreland has pipped IrishGenealogy to the post.

IrishGenealogy is not presently prepared to say which Monaghan records it will be releasing. I've no idea why they have to be so secretive about it! Nor will they say when they will be released (even though the 'few weeks' they stated on 23 March has pretty much expired).

Researchers with Monaghan roots will, therefore, have to make a decision: whether to fork out good money to view records on RootsIreland now or wait to see if those same records will shortly be available free on IrishGenealogy.