Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors is an expert introduction for the
family historian to the wealth of material available to researchers in
archives throughout Northern Ireland. Many records, like the early
twentieth-century census returns and school registers, will be familiar
to researchers, but others are often overlooked by all but the most
experienced of genealogists. An easy-to-use, informative guide to the
comprehensive collections available at the Public Record Office of
Northern Ireland is a key feature of Ian Maxwell's handbook. He also
takes the reader through the records held in many libraries, museums and
heritage centers across the province, and he provides detailed coverage
of records that are available online. Unlike the rest of the British
Isles, which has very extensive civil and census records, Irish
ancestral research is hampered by the destruction of many of the major
collections. Yet Ian Maxwell shows how family historians can make good
use of church records, school registers and land and valuation records
to trace their roots to the beginning of the nineteenth century and
beyond.