Research in England Wales and Scotland

• England and Wales
• Scotland
  

• Census returns
  If your family migrated from Northern Ireland to England and Wales in the 19th century and you know where they migrated to, then you may be able to locate their details in the census returns for England and Wales.
  The indexes and digitised images of the returns from 1841 -1901 are freely available at The National Archives in London and can be accessed online for a fee.
  
  The North of Ireland Family History Society has a list of 15,000 records of ‘strays’ from the census returns, i.e. persons living in households in England with one or more people of Irish origin.
  
  In most cases the place of origin is simply given as Ireland but occasionally the county or town is given.  You will also find census strays for a number of English counties for 1871 on irishorigins.com .
  
  
• Royal Irish Constabulary
  Records of serving members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) from 1816 can be found in TNA.  The RIC was disbanded in 1922.
  
  The entries are arranged numerically by service number and record, for example, age, religion, county of birth, wife’s county of birth, marriage date (if during the period of service), date of appointment, counties in which they served and dates of death and retirement.
  
  These service records are also available in PRONI (main PRONI Reference MIC/454), in the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin and at the Family History Centres of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
  
  The Royal Irish Constabulary: A complete Alphabetical List of Officers and Men, 1816- 1922 (Dublin 1999) by Jim Herlihy, provides a quick means of access to the service records.  It is available in PRONI.
  
  
• Militia and Yeomanry records
  The scarcity of 18th and early 19th century sources for Irish genealogy means checking all available records for clues.  That’s why the militia and yeomanry records held in the The National Archives, London are worth checking out.  You will find muster rolls arranged by county and pay lists from 1793 and 1876 (TNA Reference WO 13), but there are large gaps in the series.
  
  
• Records relating to the First World War
  Thousands of Irish people served in the British army during the First World War.  The National Archives, London hold the service and pension records of over 2 million of these soldiers and non-commissioned officers (TNA Reference WO 363 and 364), including regular soldiers who may have enlisted before the outbreak of the War and stayed in the army during the course of the War.
  
  Unfortunately, around 60% of the service records were destroyed during the Second World War so you only have a one in three chance of obtaining a service record.
  
  The first phase of a names index to make the service and pension records fully searchable and available on-line was launched in February 2007.  Searching the names index is free but there is a charge for access to the content of the files.  The type of information that you can obtain from these records includes names and addresses, date and place of birth, names of next of kin,  former occupation and service history.
  
  Also available on The National Archives, London website are the First World War medal index cards (TNA Reference W0 329).  Information that you might expect to find are name, rank, unit serviced in, date of commission, theatre of operation, date of death or discharge and entitlement to a medal.  For further details see William Spencer's Army Service Records of the First World War (Public Record Office, 2001).
  

The Society of Genealogists, London

If you are living in England and your ancestors came from Northern Ireland, you can access some information at the Society of Genealogists at Goswell Road in central London.  They hold:

• some street directories;
• published gravestone inscriptions;
• indexes to some church records;
• some of the surviving 19th century census returns;
• the 1901 census indexes for Counties Fermanagh and Tyrone;
• indexes to some Northern Ireland newspapers;  
• copies of some of the 1860 Griffith’s printed valuation lists;
• indexes to pre-1858 wills for many dioceses;
• published guides to church records;
• published passenger lists for Irish immigrants arriving at ports in the United States;
• the Householders’ index of surnames occurring in the tithe books and the Griffith’s valuation lists;
• indexes to the Old Age Pension claim forms (which contain abstracts from the 1841 and 1851 census returns);
• many published local and family history books.

Held either in the National Archives of Scotland or at the General Register Office of Scotland (and also available on the scotlandspeople website ), available records include:

• all of the19th century census returns,
• the earliest civil registers of births, marriages and deaths,
• parish registers up to 1854
• wills up to 1901