Where do I research ancestors from County Antrim?
Start online with the Ulster Historical Foundation, the Irish Family History Foundation centre for Antrim and Down: its parish registers, civil transcripts and gravestone inscriptions are on RootsIreland, including Presbyterian, Church of Ireland, Catholic and Baptist records. In person, Antrim has no county archive, so the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast is where the originals and copies sit: church records, valuation revision books and wills. Certificates come from the General Register Office of Northern Ireland online. Antrim's gift is its census substitutes, the 1740 Protestant householders' lists and surviving fragments of the 1851 census, which stand in for the censuses Ireland lost.
Useful pages: The Irish surnames map · Trace your Irish roots · The 1926 Census guide · Coming home · Irish around the world · Plan your journey
Sources
- Irish Family History Foundation: RootsIreland and the county genealogy centres, rootsireland.ie
- Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the General Register Office of Northern Ireland, via nidirect: valuation revision books, church records and civil records
More in Surnames and your Irish roots
- Where does the Irish Escapes surname information come from?
- What does the surname map actually show: where a name lives now or where it was rooted in 1890?
- How do I find my surname, its Irish form, meaning and heartland counties?
- My surname is not among the 795 mapped names. What should I do next?
- Does an Irish surname mean I can claim a family coat of arms?