Going green: Ancestry.com indexes millions of Irish records

BOSTON (AP) — Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, genealogical research website Ancestry.com is making 10 million Catholic parish records from Ireland — some dating to 1655 — available online for free to help people trace their Irish heritage.

The documents, usually in English but sometimes in Latin, and dating from 1655 to 1915, had already been digitized by the National Library of Ireland, but Ancestry took the information and indexed it, making it possible to do much quicker and more efficient searches using names, places and dates.

The records from parishes in the towns tend to be more complete that those from churches in remote rural areas, said Rafferty, who is familiar with the records because of their availability from the national library.