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*Tracing Your Roots > Irish > Irish Records
* Newspaper Indexes and Locations 
 
A number of indexes exist to the biographical material to be found in newspapers, which can greatly lighten the burden of research. Those dealing with single publications are as follows:

  • National Library index to the Freeman's Journal from 1763 to 1771
  • National Library index to marriages and deaths in Pue's Occurences and the Dublin Gazette 1730-40: NLI Ms 3197
  • Henry Farrar's Biographical Notices in Walker's Hibernian Magazine 1772-1812, (1889)
  • Card indexes to the biographical notices in the Hibernian Chronicle (1771-1802), and the Cork Mercantile Chronicle (1803-18), held by the Irish Genealogical Research Society in London
  • Index to biographical material in the Belfast Newsletter (1737-1800), held by the Linenhall Library in Belfast
  • Southern Education and Library Board (Northern Ireland) contains a chronological list of article references, indexed by person, subject and place. Copies available for sale. Newspapers covered: Co. Down Spectato r 1904-64, Downpatrick Recorder 1936-1886 , Mourne Observer 1949-80, Newtownards Chronicle 1871-73, The Northern Herald 1833-36, The Northern Star 1792-97.
  • As well as these, Volume 6 of Albert Casey's O'Kief , Coshe Mang etc. reprints the biographical notices from the Kerry Evening Post from 1828 to 1864, and these are included in the general index at the back of the volume.
More useful than any of these, however, are two extraordinary works produced by Rosemary ffolliott : the 'Index to Biographical Notices Collected from Newspapers, Principally Relating to Cork and Kerry, 1756-1827', and 'Index to Biographical Notices in the Newspapers of Limerick, Ennis, Clonmel and Waterford, 1758-1821'. These are extensive collections of biographical information from a whole range of newspapers and are not as widely available as they should be.

Locations
The best single *repository for Irish newspapers is the British Library. After 1826 the British Library was obliged to hold a copy of all Irish publications, and from that date its collection is virtually complete. It also has an extensive, though patchy, collection before that date.

Within Ireland, the largest collection is held by the National Library of Ireland, though this is by no means comprehensive. Many unique copies are held in local libraries and other repositories. The Report of the NEWSPLAN Project in Ireland (NLI, 2nd edition 1998) lists all known *hardcopy and microfilm holdings of Irish newspapers and is searchable online at *www.nli.ie/fr_cata.


Creators: John Grenham

 
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