Discover your Irish ancestors with Findmypast's enormous newspaper collection

Findmypast is working in partnership with IrishCentral to share fascinating insights into your Irish ancestors. Click here to get a special half price subscription, and discover your Irish roots today!

Researching Irish family history can be a tricky business. In 1922, fire destroyed the majority of the records held by the Public Record Office of Ireland, meaning that tracing your family any earlier than that can prove challenging.

As well as hosting the largest collections of Irish family history records online, Findmypast offer another valuable resource to anyone investigating their past; newspapers.

Findmypast’s collection of newspaper pages from the UK and Ireland now numbers over 10,000,000, spanning the years 1710-1955. The depth and breadth of the information you can glean from this archive is far greater than you may at first assume.

While there’s the obvious opportunity to investigate any famous (or infamous) ancestors that may have made the headlines, newspapers can give you:

Announcements of births, the records for which may have been destroyed in 1922

Marriage notices that may not be present in the records, providing you with vital information about your family history.

Death notices, giving you information that may not be in the records.

Business directories and adverts, adding historical context to your family tree.

And, of course, there is the chance that your relatives made it into the news for…whatever reason.

Visit Findmypast to explore their collection of newspapers today. You never know what you’ll unearth.

For more stories on tracing your Irish heritage from Findmypast click here.