Irish ancestors can be very elusive due to a variety of factors. Don't get frustrated - get educated. You CAN hunt your Emerald Isle ancestors successfully when armed with the knowledge in this book.
While covering all of the standard civil, church, census, and land records, Grenham's book also covers wills, deeds, newspapers, directories, and other less-used records. The final third of the book is a county-by-county reference guide describing extant censuses and substitutes, available local histories, monumental inscriptions and other sources for each county.
One of the outstanding features of the book is the Catholic parish maps for each county. These were drawn by the author's father and give the date of the earliest records available for each parish.
A researcher with Irish heritage must be as indefatigable and adaptable as their own Irish forebears were in order find them in the existing records. This book is one of the tools you need to start with.
Here are some of the highlights of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors: Maps of all Catholic parishes, checklist of sources for wills and testamentary records, list of manuscripts in the Genealogical Office in Dublin, itemization of passenger and emigration lists, various county by county source lists, complete listing of family histories in the National Library of Ireland, complete listing of all Church of Ireland parish registers, and a listing of Irish research services, societies, and repositories.
The tremendous growth of interest in Irish family history since the publication of the first edition of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors has brought to light many new sources and has radically changed the way in which some familiar sources can be used. These developments--along with a need for updates and revisions to the existing text--are the primary reason for publishing a new edition, which includes an expanded account of Northern Ireland repositories and a more comprehensive description of the holdings of the Family History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
But the most significant advance in this 2nd edition is the inclusion of a list of Roman Catholic parish records--a 150-page list of copies of all known Roman Catholic records that can be found in the National Library of Ireland, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, the LDS Family History Library, and in local Irish Heritage Centers. County by county and church by church, this list gives the dates, locations, and formats of all existing copies of baptism, marriage, and burial records. Keyed to parish and county maps, it is perhaps the single most important finding aid available to the genealogist.