New Irish Records Online Provide a Birthday

If you are tracing your Irish ancestors, you know that you need to know the parish they came from, or at the very least, the county in Ireland. In most cases, I do NOT know where in Ireland my ancestors came from. I do, however, know where the Hinch family was from; Wicklow County.

All my recent poking around through my records on Ancestry.com that are linked to my great-great grandmother, Annette Hinch-Henry, has resulted in a bunch of new hints. Many of those hints are from Irish resources; specifically the "Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915" and the "Ireland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1620-1911" databases on Ancestry.com.

For the longest time all I had for Annette's date of birth was the year; 1868. But the "Ireland, Catholic Parish Registers, 1655-1915" revealed that she was baptized on 7 March 1868 which means she was born before that date but probably not much more before. It is traditional for Catholic children to be baptized as infants. This database allowed me to look at a digital image of the actual book in which Annette's birth is recorded

. 

It shows under the year 1868, "March 7th Anne Jas. Hinch & Jane Kavanagh Jas. Sheridan & Eliz. B - - ? Barnamelia." To interpret that for you it says that Anne the child of James Hinch and Jane Kavanagh was baptized on March 7, 1868. Her godparents or sponsors were James Sheridan and Elizabeth B--something illegible, perhpas Browning. This took place in the area known as Barnamelia, Ireland.

The "Ireland, Select Births and Baptisms, 1620-1911" doesn't show a digital image of any record. It just provides indexed data. However, the images can be seen on microfilm through any family History Library; those are the genealogy research room run by the Mormon churches. You'll see the indexed information below provides the FHL Film # 101161. This data also states Annette's birth date as 22 February 1868. So although I want to see the image of the record book, I now have a birth date I will use for her.

Not only did these Irish databases provide me with birth and baptismal dates for Annette, they included 4 of her 5 siblings.

1. Hannah Hinch, baptized 13 May 1855.
2. Mary Hinch, baptized 10 May 1864.
3. James Hinch, born 1 July 1870.
4. Sarah Hinch, born 25 July 1873.

If you are tracing your Irish ancestry and have not poked around in the newly available Irish databases on Ancestry perhaps it is time you revisit your records too.