Monumental Inscriptions (Ireland)

Nature of Source

Gravestone memorial inscriptions are an important source for Irish research. They commemorate a person’s death and often include not just names and dates, but also family relationships and occupations.

Before civil registration of deaths began in 1864 in Ireland, a gravestone inscription may be the only surviving record of a death. Together with published memorial transcriptions and cemetery registers they might provide a crucial resource for tracing Irish ancestors especially when civil or parish records are incomplete or missing.

An additional source are Cemetery Registry Books, which were kept by larger municipal cemeteries such as the well-known Glasnevin, Mount Jerome, and Deansgrange cemeteries in Dublin. These registers often record the date of burial, age, last residence and grave location and can provide vital details not found elsewhere.

From 1888 to 1934, the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland journal was published by the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead. This important series recorded thousands of epitaphs and transcriptions from gravestones across Ireland. These are especially valuable since many original gravestones have deteriorated or been lost over time.

In the 20th century, genealogist Brian J. Cantwell transcribed headstones in cemeteries focusing on Wicklow and parts of Dublin, Wexford and other neighbouring counties. Both the published volumes and Cantwell’s transcriptions are available in libraries and family history centres or online.

Additional Resources
The following GenGuide sources could assist in researching death records:

• Cemetery, Burial Ground & Crematoria Records
• Civil Registration, Death (Ireland)
• Parish Registers and Other Records, Church of Ireland
• Parish Registers and Other Records, Catholic (Ireland)
• Parish Registers and Other Records, Presbyterians (Ireland)
• Parish Registers and Other Records, Methodists (Ireland)

The following GenGuide sources could assist in researching Irish ancestors:

• Ireland Resources

Where Found

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
The Archives has collections of gravestone inscriptions from various cemeteries and graveyards across Northern Ireland, often compiled by local historical and family history societies. PRONI also hold copies of the Journals of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland, commonly known as the “Memorials of the Dead” journals.

Linen Hall Library
The Library’s holdings include published compilations and transcriptions of gravestone inscriptions from graveyards across Northern Ireland and Ireland, as well as indexes and other printed sources. They also hold “Memorials of the Dead” journals.

Irish Genealogical Research Society
The society holds a collection of memorial and gravestone inscription records. The IGRS holds copies or indexes from Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland.

Irish Family History Foundation
Genealogy Centres. The centres hold transcribed headstone inscriptions from local burial grounds and cemeteries.

Society of Genealogists
SoG collections include transcripts, abstracts, or indexes of Irish monumental inscriptions gathered from graveyards and burial grounds. The library includes the ‘Journal of the Irish Memorials Association’ which recorded gravestone inscriptions across Ireland from the late 19th century through the 1930s.

Period Covered

1300 – Onwards

Genealogical Value

• Place and date of birth and death.
• Family members and relationships.
• Address (parish).
• Occupation.

Further References

M.I. Related

• Mitchell, Brian. A Guide to Irish Churches and Graveyards: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2010

Family History Guides

• Adolph, Anthony. Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History: HarperCollins, 2007
• Begley, Donal. Handbook on Irish Genealogy: How to Trace Your Ancestors and Relatives: Heraldic Artists, 1984
• Connell, Gretta. Tracing Your Westmeath Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2012
• Corrigan, Mario & Durney, James & Kiely, Karel. Tracing your Kildare Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2014
• Davis, Bill. Irish Ancestry – A Beginner’s Guide: FFHS, 2001
• Falley, Margaret Dickson. Irish and Scottish-Irish Ancestral Research: GPC, 1981 (1962)
• Franklin, Margaret. Tracing your Limerick Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2011
• Grenham, John. Irish Ancestors, A Pocket Guide to Your Family History: Gill & Macmillan, 2004
• Grenham, John. Tracing Your Irish Ancestors: Gill & Macmillan, 2011
• Hamrock, John. Tracing your Roscommon Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2007
• Kinealy, Christine. Tracing Your Irish Roots: Appletree Press, 2009
• McCarthy, Tony. The Irish Roots Guide. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1991
• McCarthy, Tony & Cadogan, Tim. Tracing Your Cork Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2011
• Maxwell, Ian. Tracing Your Ancestors in Northern Ireland: A Guide to Ancestry Research in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: Stationery Office, 1997
• Maxwell, Ian. Researching Armagh Ancestors: A Practical Guide for the Family and Local Historian: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000
• Maxwell, Ian. Researching Down Ancestors: A Practical Guide for the Family and Local Historian: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000
• Maxwell, Ian. How To Trace Your Irish Ancestors: How To Books, 2009
• Maxwell, Ian. Your Irish Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians: Pen and Sword, 2008
• Maxwell, Ian. Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians: Pen and Sword, 2010
• Meehan, Helen & Duffy, Godfrey. Tracing Your Donegal Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2008
• Mitchell, Brian. A New Genealogical Atlas of Ireland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2009
• Mitchell, Brian. Basic Guide to Irish Records for Family History: Clearfield Company, 2009
• Mitchell, Brian. Tracing Derry-Londonderry Roots: Clearfield Company, 2014
• Mitchell, Brian. NEW Pocket Guide to Irish Genealogy Paperback: Clearfield, 2020
• O’Connor, Michael H. Tracing your Kerry Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 1994
• O’Dowd, Peadar. Tracing your Galway Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2010
• Ouimette, David. Finding Your Irish Ancestors: A Beginner’s Guide: Ancestry.com, 2005
• Paton, Chris. Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet: A Guide For Family Historians: Pen & Sword Books, 2013
• Prochaska, Alice, Irish History from 1700: A Guide to Sources in the Public Record Office: British Records Association, 1986
• Raymond, Stuart. Irish Family History on the Web: The Family History Partnership, 2007
• Roulston, William. Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors: The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600-1800: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2005
• Ryan, James. Irish Records: Sources for Family & Local History: Flyleaf Press, 1997
• Ryan, James & Smith, Brian. Tracing Your Dublin Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2009
• Ryan, James. Tracing your Sligo Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2012
• Smith, Brian. Tracing your Mayo Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2010
• Smith, Brian & Kennedy, Gerry. Tracing Your Clare Ancestors: Flyleaf Press, 2013
• Stewart, Alan. My Ancestor Was Irish: A Guide to Sources for Family Historians: Society of Genealogists, 2012

Other

• Bradshaw’s Railway Map Great Britain and Ireland 1852: Mapseeker Publishing, 2013
• Connolly, S.J. The Oxford Companion to Irish History: Oxford University Press, 2007
• Coogan, Tim, Pat. The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
• Dickson, R.J. Ulster Emigration to Colonial America, 1718-1775: Ulster Historical Foundation, 1976
• Grenham, John. The Little Book of Irish Clans and Tartans: Book Sales, 1995
• Robinson, Philip. Plantation of Ulster: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2000
• Smith, Paul & Turner, Keith. Railway Atlas of Ireland Then & Now: Ian Allan Publishing, 2014

Websites

Ulster Historical Foundation
History from Headstones. The site encourages interest in the graveyards of Northern Ireland. Resources include a ‘Graveyards of Ulster Map’ that identifies over 1,800 burial grounds, helping users locate and explore graveyards across Ulster as well as guides to researching graveyards and gravestones.
FamilySearch Research Wiki
Ireland Cemeteries. The provides extensive information on gravestone inscriptions and cemetery records.
Irish Graveyards
The website is Ireland’s premier graveyard surveying company founded in 2007. The site includes extensive graveyard databases, detailed maps and memorial submissions.
John Grenham
Dublin City Library and Archive Dublin Records: Dublin Graveyards Directory. The directory provides a searchable listing of all graveyards in the Dublin area and gives information on the location, contact details, titles of published gravestone transcripts, links to on-line gravestone transcripts, location of surviving burial records and other information.
Irish Geneaography
Monumental Inscriptions: Guidance on resources available for researching Irish monumental inscriptions with a section on Brian Cantwell’s ‘Memorials of the Dead’
Irish Heritage News
Tracing your roots online using old records of Irish gravestone memorials and “Mems Dead”.
BillionGraves Blog
Gravestone Cleaning Tips, by Cathy Wallace.
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Research Guide: Gravestone inscriptions. The information leaflet gives an overview of gravestone inscriptions.
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
Research Guide: Guide to Church Records. This guide is an easy way to identify what churches are in a parish, what records exist for each church, the covering dates for each series of records (for example baptisms) and their PRONI reference number.

General Ireland Resources
Irish Genealogy
Irish Genealogical Research: Getting Started. The site offers practical advice and guidance for people beginning their journey into Irish family history research with a number of key recommendations.
FamilySearch Learning Center
Getting Started in Irish Genealogy presented by Marie E. Daly. Lecture designed to acquaint beginning genealogist with strategies and sources for getting started in Irish genealogy
John Grenham
Irish Ancestors. The website is dedicated to Irish ancestry and genealogy research. It offers various tools and resources for people interested in tracing their Irish family history. Key features include a surname search and place name search and guides to researching Irish ancestry.
The Irish Times
How to trace your Irish family history: a step-by-step guide, by John Grenham.
Timeline Research Ireland
Tracing Irish Ancestors Online. A free up to date guide by Nicola Morris.
Irish Genealogy
The site provides information about available church records for family history research in Ireland.
Irish Archives Resource
IAR does not hold any collections itself but helps researchers locate archival records and collections in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland by entering the name of a person, place or subject. The catalogue includes many organisations, societies, political organisations and businesses.
RASCAL
Research and Special Collections Available Locally. An electronic gateway to research resources in Ireland. You can use this website to search and browse information about the wide range of research and special collections held in libraries, museums and archives across the region.
Fianna Study Group
The site offers a comprehensive resource for individuals researching Irish ancestry including:

• Transcriptions of primary sources including birth, death and marriage records.
• Guides to Irish genealogical research, including basics, frequently asked questions and detailed instructions on searching records and understanding Irish naming patterns.
• Articles and timelines covering Irish history.
• County-specific resources devoted to each county in Ireland.
• Emigration and migration help including passenger lists, ship records and resources for tracing Irish ancestors who moved to the USA, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

Irish Genealogical Research Society
The Society, founded in 1936, is dedicated to promoting the study of Irish genealogy and preserving genealogical materials, particularly those compiled before the loss of many documents in the 1922 Public Record Office fire in Dublin. The Society manages an extensive reference library of printed and manuscript genealogical materials, considered the most important private collection of Irish genealogical resources globally. Details on how to access these materials are available on their website, along with specifics about their contents. The society offers guidance to family historians through its publications and various other resources.
Online Historical Population Reports
Histpop. University of Essex. The collection provides online access to the complete British population reports for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937 including official reports, legislation and essays on the censuses including statistical analysis. The documents on the site include indexes to parishes, townships and places used in the official reports.
Findmypast
Ireland Census Reports. Learn about the community in which your ancestor lived with census reports detailing population and area statistics from the latter half of the 19th century up to the early 20th century. The reports provide statistical details regarding the number of inhabitants in a given townland. The statistical details are broken down by gender, age, or other similar categories.
Findmypast
Ireland Statistical Surveys. Search these surveys from the early 1800s to learn about the history, customs, politics, and industries of these 10 counties: Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, King’s (Offaly), Leitrim, Mayo, Meath, Roscommon, and Tyrone. Discover what pre-famine life looked like for your ancestor.

Townland Resources
Irish Genealogical Research Society
Index of Townlands, 1901. The site offers access to the Index of Townlands from 1901. The index, published in 1904 by the Commissioners of Census, was created as an aid in processing the returns for the 1901 census of Ireland. The index provides an alphabetical listing of townlands and towns in Ireland, along with various administrative divisions such as parishes and electoral divisions.
Irish Townland and Historical Map Viewer
Tailte Éireann (formerly Ordnance Survey Ireland). The service allows users to view historical and townland boundaries and features for the island of Ireland on interactive maps. Enables fast search and pinpointing of particular Irish townlands, names and boundary features.
The IreAtlas
Townland database. Search of the IreAtlas Townland database. The results of a county or townland search show all the townlands within the requested county together with the barony and parish.
nidirect
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. In this section you can access lists of townlands arranged in the following different ways by county, by parish, within the estates of major landowners and alphabetically.
Irish Homelands
The website offers a tool for exploring Irish townlands. Users can access a detailed list of townlands and search by parish or county if you’re unsure of the townland name.
John Grenham
Irish Placenames. 1851 General Alphabetical Index to the Townlands and Towns, parishes and Baronies of Ireland. Search the entire Index, together with street listings from Dublin, Cork and Belfast cities, more than 65,000 entries in all.
Irish Genealogy
Family Research 2016: Placenames. This article explains and explores how townlands and parishes got their names with links to useful resources.

Online Databases

Findmypast
Ireland, Memorials of The Dead. Explore this collection of monumental inscriptions, drawn from transcriptions from the Journal of the Association for the Preservation of the Memorials of the Dead in Ireland. Created by volunteers, these journals aimed to record and protect gravestones, tombs, and memorials across Ireland.
Findmypast
Cantwell’s Memorials Of The Dead. Graveyard transcriptions complete and comprehensive for Counties Wexford and Wicklow and patchy coverage for other counties.
Findmypast
Ireland Memorial Inscriptions. Explore a number of publications that recorded monumental inscriptions and indexes to inscriptions from cemeteries in Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Wicklow.
Findmypast
Memorial Inscriptions, 1618-2005, compiled by Eileen Hewson. The records include full memorial inscription for each gravestone and can include cause of death and the profession of the deceased.
Ulster Historical Foundation
Irish Death/Burial Records. Counties Antrim and Down, c. 1660-1998. The database of death and burial records contains:

• Virtually all Roman Catholic burial/funeral registers for Counties Antrim and Down prior to 1900, and an increasing number of Catholic burials for 1900-1930.
• A large number of Protestant (nearly always Church of Ireland) registers of burials for Counties Antrim and Down.
• Burials in Belfast City Cemetery from 1869 onwards.

Historic Graves
The site offers Irish graveyard transcriptions and surveys compiled by local volunteers. The database is searchable by individual names and by individual graveyards. A map shows which graveyards have been surveyed.
BillionGraves
The site offers a resource for cemetery research, combining user-contributed photographs of gravestones with a variety of family history tools and features. Users can search for names, view related records and access detailed images of gravestones. High-resolution images require a subscription.
Ancestry
UK and Ireland, Find A Grave Index, 1300s-Current. This database contains an index to cemetery and burial details posted on Find A Grave by volunteers who upload images of grave markers from around the world as well as photos, biographies and other details.
Emerald Ancestors
Northern Ireland Ancestor Search. The extensive Ulster ancestry database covers Irish Family records from civil registration indexes, church registers and historical sources in Counties Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry & Tyrone.
RootsIreland
Irish Family History Foundation. The site offers a unique database of more than 23 million Irish records from 34 county genealogy centres on the island of Ireland. The main sources are Irish Catholic and other church records of baptisms, marriages and deaths. The site also features Civil Birth & Marriage Records, Census Records, Gravestone Inscriptions, Griffith’s Valuation for Ireland, Irish Ship Passenger Lists and Census Substitutes for Ireland.
Tipperary Studies
Gravestone Inscriptions: The site offers several lists of gravestones inscriptions for burial places throughout the county, the best served parts being the baronies of Owney and Arra, Upper and Lower Ormond. These were surveyed in the 1980s by the Ormond Historical Society and number c. 40 civil parishes.
Dublin Cemeteries Trust
Search fully transcribed and digitised burial registers covering Dublin’s Glasnevin cemetery, the largest nondenominational cemetery in Ireland, opened in 1832. Also covered the cemeteries Goldenbridge, Palmerstown, Dardistown, or Newlands Cross from 1828 to the present day.
Interment.net
Search transcribed entries from the Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, containing graves of over 1.2 million people. It opened in 1832 and is the largest nondenominational cemetery in Ireland, originally named Prospect Cemetery. More transcripts with headstone photos can be found at the Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives.
Kabristan Archives
The organisation is dedicated to preserving and transcribing memorial inscriptions from graveyards in Ireland, the Indian sub-continent, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and Jamaica, including many which no longer exist. Expect to find burial records, marriage records and birth/baptism records.
Irish Graveyards
The website is Ireland’s premier graveyard surveying company founded in 2007. The site includes extensive graveyard databases, detailed maps and memorial submissions.
Irish Genealogical Research Society
Early Irish Birth, Marriage & Death Indexes. The transcribed indexes cover the period 1660 to 1863 for the period before civil registration was fully implemented in Ireland in 1864. The sources used include newspaper announcements, Registry of Deeds in Dublin, Chancery Bill extracts, family bibles, military records, old age pension claims and many others.
Everafter
The site offers transcribed cemetery and burial records and monumental inscriptions with photographs of graves or headstones available for many entries. Country coverage includes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Ireland as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. The site has interactive cemetery maps to locate and view exact burial sites.
Gravestone Photographic Resource
The project photographs and indexes Irish cemeteries and war memorials.
Ancestry
Irish Records Index, 1500-1920. This database is an index containing a wide range of Irish historical records held at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. The index includes details such as name, date, residence and item numbers drawn from histories, pedigrees, parish registers, probates, and orphan’s court records.

CD Roms