Irish Family Photos Found: Collections from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Dorman family of Keady, County Armagh - Wedding Portrait - 5th August 1925

Have you ever wondered if you have family photos sitting in an archive in some far away country? Well, turns out you well could! We are happy to share with you Sharon Tate Moody’s article Find your Irish ancestors in new online collection, where she reveals the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’s new photographic collections, including wedding and family portraits shot from 1900 to 1952!

Calvert family of Armagh, County Armagh - Wedding Portrait

This news is thrilling for those of us with few family photos—always looking to find something new. One can only imagine the many hours that went into this project; as Moody explains “the pictures were transferred from fragile glass plate negatives commonly used by photographers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries…Only about 200 images currently are available but over the next few weeks, all 15,330 will be posted. Viewers can browse them alphabetically by surname.”

Diffin family - Wedding Portrait - 29th September 1937

Moody also notes: the Irish record office recently indexed and digitized wills from 1858 to 1900 from three district probate registries of Armagh, Belfast, and Londerry. Click here to visit these records.

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