Irish Quaker records move online
Over 1.5 million Irish Quaker records are now available online
Over 1.5 million Irish Quaker records are now available online.
This is the first phase of a major project to digitise all surviving Quaker records in Ireland.
The collection, which is available on the website Findmypast, consists of both transcripts and scanned colour images of original births, marriages, burials, congregational records, school records and migration records held by the Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland Archives.
Spanning more than 350 years of Ireland’s history, the collection contains over 1.5 million names. When complete, it will cover all thirty-two counties.
The collection includes 232 pedigrees documented by Dublin Friend Thomas Henry Webb in the early twentieth century to record the ancestry of Irish Quaker families, applications for membership, disownments, removals and lists of those who refused to pay tithes to the established church.
The online resources include the migration records of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland. This makes the collection of special significance to those Irish emigrants wishing to trace their families’ Quaker origins.
Noel Jenkins, research assistant at Friends’ Historical Library, Quaker House, Dublin, says: ‘Quaker records are continuous, dating from 1654 to the present, and pre-date the Williamite wars of the late seventeenth century. This release is a momentous occasion as researchers from all over Ireland and beyond will now be able to readily access these records in their own homes.’
