Where do I research ancestors from County Carlow?
Carlow works a little differently: it has no standalone genealogy centre, so start on RootsIreland, where the county's Catholic registers for 14 parishes, some 217,000 records with baptisms and marriages running to 1899, are indexed and searchable. The local service behind them is Carlow County Library in Carlow town, which holds the county archive and local studies collection and runs a genealogy service by appointment. Carlow's registers start unusually early, Tullow's baptisms from 1739 and the cathedral's from 1744, and its Church of Ireland registers are free, with images, on IrishGenealogy.ie, so check there before paying anywhere. The National Archives holds the county's census and valuation material as it does for every county.
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
- IrishGenealogy.ie and the General Register Office: civil records of births, marriages and deaths
- National Archives of Ireland: the 1901, 1911 and 1926 censuses, nationalarchives.ie
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