Presbyterian registers are in three main locations

The PRONI also has microfilm copies of almost all registers in Northern Ireland that have remained in local custody and also lists those records held by the Presbyterian Historical Society. For the rest of Ireland, almost all of the records are in local custody. It can be very difficult to locate these, since many congregations in the south have moved, amalgamated or simply disappeared over the last 60 years.

The very congregational basis of Presbyterianism further complicates matters, since it means that Presbyterian records do not cover a defined geographical area. The same town often had two or more Presbyterian churches drawing worshippers from the same community and keeping distinct records.

In the early 19th century especially, controversy within the Church fractured the records, with congregations in the same area often in violent opposition to each other. Apart from the PRONI listing, the only guide is History of Congregations which gives a brief historical outline of the history of each congregation. (The reference number is NLI Ir 285 h 8.) Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) records the existence of Presbyterian congregations within each civil parish, and Pettigrew and Oulton's Dublin Almanac and General Register of Ireland of 1835 includes a list of all Presbyterian ministers in the country, along with the names and locations of their congregations. Locations of Churches in the Irish Provinces, produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, flawed as it is in many respects, can be useful in trying to identify the congregations in a particular area. (The reference number is NLI Ir 7265 i 8.) In addition, the second edition of Brian Mitchell's Genealogical Atlas of Ireland (Baltimore, GPC, 2nd edition, 2002) includes a mapping of the locations of Presbyterian churches in the mid-19th century.

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