Ancestry.com has decided to make their entire Irish Heritage collection completely free of charge this weekend. If you have Irish or UK ancestors (or are trying to discover if you do) and don’t have a current paid subscription then this is a great chance to get some research done.
Please know that we have partnered with genealogy companies, including Ancestry, to bring you news about their services and may earn a commission to support our work if you purchase a subscription through links on this page.
To take advantage of these free Irish records you can head over to Ancestry’s landing page for the event and begin your search or you can find a more advanced search from and a list of all records included here. It’s always a good idea to search collections individually whenever possible.
Included in this event are such important collections as Ireland, Select Catholic Marriage Registers, 1775-1912 and Ireland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1620-1911, as well as Ancestry’s new Boston Irish Catholic Collection. A large number of records from the UK are also available at no cost as part of this event, so if you have ancestors from England, Scotland or Wales you’ll find a lot to keep you busy as well.
You will need to sign up for a free account, if you don’t already have one, before Ancestry will allow you access to the full details of the record.
Do also keep in mind that some of the records included are always free as part of Ancestry’s ongoing no-cost offerings, such as the 1901 Irish Census. You can read all about Ancestry’s free collections and how to find them here.
Please remember that although you will be able to attach records to your tree during the free event you will not be able to view the attached records from most collections after that time unless you have a paid subscription. For that reason you should always download records of interest so that you have access to them forever. It is a good idea to copy into a notepad all details from the record’s index as well as its source information and save the actual scanned record (when available).
If you’re looking for additional help (and free resources) for finding your UK and Irish ancestors you’ll want to check out our detailed Beginner’s Guide to UK and Irish Research and our list of free UK genealogy sites as well.
Happy Researching!
