Where do I research ancestors from County Galway?
Galway is now a one centre county: the Galway Family History Society, based at the Woodford Heritage Centre, is the Irish Family History Foundation centre for the whole county, the city and the islands, with more than 1.4 million records on RootsIreland. The database runs from Catholic registers beginning around 1766 and Church of Ireland records from 1747 to graveyard inscriptions across the county, and it holds one collection made for the diaspora: the Boston Pilot's Missing Friends volumes, advertisements placed by emigrants searching for family who had gone before them. For help in person, Galway Public Libraries' local studies service is the place to go. The county archives is between archivists and closed to the public at present, so do not plan around it.
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
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