EPIC the Irish immigration museum

I cannot speak to the ancestry research offered by EPIC but I can say (with agreement from my--at the time-- 16 and 18 year old and husband) this was by far the best museum we've visited. Definitely worth your time whether you use their ancestry service or not.

My sister and I got a 30 minute consultation last year. In our case, the results were a little disappointing. In fairness, we didn't have alot of documentation for them to work with in a short time. They were able to access Ancestry.com and an Irish genealogy website to confirm the information we had was correct but that was it. Irish birth records are scant. The museum however was really interesting and I would suggest a visit if Irish emigration interests you. I also strongly recommend a tour on the Jeannie Johnson famine ship replica. You can get a combo ticket for both and they are very close to each other. That was my favorite afternoon in Dublin!

I normally budget one hour for stops, but I gave EPIC two hours. Luckily, the ticket is good for several days, so we were able to find two more hours the next day, and we needed them all. I asked about ancestry work, but the woman manning the booth was a little dismissive. My ancestor left Ireland (probably Tyrone) in the 1720s, and when I said our family considers our clan as Ulster Scots (Scot-Irish), she said there was no such thing in the 1700s and that there are no records from that period anyway.

I'll add another vote of appreciation for EPIC. Even my wife, who had thought she had no Irish forebears, found it fascinating. And it's actually an emigration museum. We did not use the ancestry research services, however.

The big issue with Irish records was their wholesale loss by fire in the events leading to Independence.

The original records in the main remained, and still do, in the hands of the local Parish. What was lost were duplicate records. If you don't know the Parish then either you or anyone else is seriously up against it.

As in Scotland, a number of counties have local historical societies who may well be your best bet if they have done transcriptions or indexed wills or done Monumental Inscriptions. In my experience they can be as frustrating as English records before 1812 in that no central form was provided- so the priest gave as much or as little information as suited him. It can often be a case of joining the dots.

There is a lot of work being done to try to recreate lost record sets, but it is the luck of the draw especially outside Dublin. In my part of England we had huge immigration from Ireland and my heart always sinks when a Census says born in Ireland, as I know that will usually be a dead end to nowhere for an enquirer.

“ If you don't know the Parish then either you or anyone else is seriously up against it.”

Not entirely. The British censuses of 1901 and 1911 are available and searchable on-line