Just as the Internet has become more useful to the Irish family historian, various CD-ROMs published in the past two to three years have also helped make CD-ROM research an important component of Irish genealogy. The following review describes and evaluates some of the most important CD-ROM publications now available for Irish genealogical research. The products are arranged according to publisher, and details of cost and availability are provided for the reader’s convenience.

Census Index: Ireland, 1831—41 (CD 197) $19.99. Almost 63,000 listings from the 1831 census of County Londonderry and 14,000 listings from the 1841 census of County Cavan are included on this CD.

International Records: Index to Griffith’s Valuation of Ireland, 1848—64 (CD 188) $59.99, plus postage. This is an alphabetical index by occupier’s name to Griffith’s Primary Valuation (1847—64). It lists the county, parish, and "location" (townland, town, or street in a city) of each occupier. However, the index on the CD doesn’t specify the year of publication for specific entries. Also, researchers have found that certain parts of the Valuation were left out of the index.

Searches are conducted using a rather unsophisticated program called Family Archive Viewer, which can be difficult to use for the kind of search a family historian may want. It is possible, however, to search for all the occupiers in a particular townland, or to search for everyone of a particular surname living in one county. Users can employ wildcards to produce a list including variants of a surname or place name.

This CD is a giant step forward in Irish research. But users must remember that it is only an index and that it is known to include many omissions and errors. It can be a very useful tool, but conclusions should be carefully drawn.

International Land Records: Tithe Applotment Books, 1823—38 (CD 262) $49.99. This index details the six counties of present-day Northern Ireland: Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, and Tyrone. Each entry lists surname, given name, county, civil parish, townland, and year of the tithe book in that place.

International Land Records: Irish Flax Growers, 1796 (CD 271) $29.99. The Spinning Wheel Premium Entitlement List, commonly called the Flax Growers List, includes about 60,000 individuals who were rewarded with spinning wheels for planting a specified acreage of flax. Each entry in the index lists the person’s name, county, and civil parish. During the eighteenth century, when records of common Irish people are scarce, a census substitute like this is very valuable for genealogical research.

Passenger and Immigration Lists: Irish Immigrants to North America, 1803—71 (CD#257) $39.99. This CD indexes the names of approximately 46,000 Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States and Canada. The information is taken from 12 books of compiled passenger lists. This is an efficient resource for searching all 12 books. (One source is actually from the eighteenth century.)

Passenger and Immigration Lists: Irish Immigrants to North America, 1846—65 (CD #357) $59.99. This CD helps alleviate one of the great thorns in the side of Irish researchers: the lack of an index to New York City passenger lists between 1846 and 1892. The CD, produced in collaboration with the Balch Institute for Immigration Research and the John F. Kennedy Trust of New Ross, County Wexford, indexes about 1.5 million Irish immigrants who arrived at Boston between 1846 and1851 and at New York between 1846 and 1865.

In addition to Ireland, the index includes passengers whose country of origin is listed as England, Great Britain, Germany/Prussia, Austria, Wales, Scotland, the United States, and France.

Topographical Dictionaries: Lewis’s Gazetteers of England, Ireland, and Scotland (CD#270) $39.99. This CD indexes every occurrence of a place name, whether or not it is the head of the entry in the gazetteer. Thus, researchers can find gentleman’s seats and small villages listed. Three gazetteers are included in one index.

Index to Irish Wills 1484—1858 $39.95, plus shipping for non-EU residents. Only records at the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin are included in this index. The CD lists references to records that survive at the NAI in more than index form. In other words, original documents, copies, transcripts, abstracts (including the Crossle, Jennings, and Thrift abstracts), and extracts are referenced. A very important inclusion is the Inland Revenue, Will, and Administration Registers, 1828—39. (During this period, registers of Irish wills were kept in England and, therefore, survive.)

Two sources were not included and await publication in a subsequent volume of this series: the Betham Abstracts and the Groves Papers. The CD also does not include the indexes to the diocesan consistorial courts that survived the 1922 Four Courts fire.

The search engine capabilities of this CD are most admirable. Researchers can, for example, search for the names of administrators and executors in addition to the decedents themselves.

This is only the first of a series of CDs Eneclann plans to publish. In the next year they, the following two additional sources have been planned for publication: The Petitions for the Release of William Smith O’Brien, 1848—49 and The Calendars of Irish Wills and Administrations, 1858—1900.

Clooz 1.22 39.95, plus shipping (the electronic filing cabinet for genealogical records). Rather than being another genealogy program, Clooz is a database for systematic organization and storage of the information you have collected about your ancestor. This CD is a filing system that includes forms to fill in with data found in some of the most important records in Irish research. Available templates include the Irish censuses of 1901 and 1911, the Irish Valuation Records, and, for researching the Irish abroad, the censuses of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Cassell’s Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland. Being A Complete Topographical Dictionary of the United Kingdom with Numerous Illustrations and Sixty Maps (CD#14) $39.95. Six volumes, 2,840 pages, originally printed in 1900. CD-ROM Reproduction, 1998.

Indexes to Irish Wills (CD#34/51) $29.95. Edited by W.P.W. Phillimore. London, 1909. Five volumes. CD-ROM Reprint, 1999. Made before the 1922 Four Courts fire, these are indexes to many pre-1800 wills from Irish consistorial courts.

British Isles Vital Records Index. $15. Parts of the very early years of Irish civil registration of births, circa 1864—67, are on the LDS computer database known as the International Genealogical Index (IGI). The IGI can be accessed at the Family History Library, a Family History Center, or on the FamilySearch.org Web site. The content of the British Isles Vital Records Index CD set includes Irish civil registration (birth and marriage) extracts that are not yet part of the IGI.

This set indexes marriages from 1847—50 and 1863—64 and births from 1864—74. The information for the births can be accessed in various search formats, including a "parent search."

This CD does not include all marriages or births in these years; it is an incomplete extraction. Thus, if an entry is not found on the CDs or in the IGI, the original Irish civil registration indexes still need to be consulted.

Grenham’s Irish Recordfinder, Version 4 IR£490, including shipping. This CD is an amazing reference source that could take the place of half a dozen Irish genealogy reference works. Researchers can use the Autoquery function to enter information about their ancestors and the places those relatives lived in Ireland, and the Recordfinder will produce screens showing references to many types of records available for that place. Alternatively, you can use the Recordfinder’s browse functions for detailed queries of each source type. This is not a CD on which you find your ancestors listed; it is a resource you use to find references to the original records you can search for your ancestors.

Version 4 includes several new features: a surname dictionary; Samuel Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), including its maps; civil parish maps interactively linked to record references; the Householder’s Index to Griffith’s Valuation, 1848-64, showing the number of occupiers with a particular surname in each county and parish. A map of Ireland showing the frequency of the surname in each county can also be generated.

The Journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, Volumes 1—16 (CD#1162, 1999) $46, plus shipping. This CD uses Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is provided on the CD. It covers the time period 1898—1917 in 16 volumes (5,168 pages). Articles include details of early Irish families in Virginia, Illinois, Connecticut, Texas, and New Hampshire. The search engine allows you to search by any keyword in the text.

Wrindex II: Irish Societies in Early San Francisco, A Vol-unteerism Directory (1997—99) $59.95, including shipping. According to its advertising, Wrindex II contains 194,000 items about 1,300 Irish societies in San Francisco. Researchers can search the database by a person’s name or by a society’s name. A list of each mention of the name or society is generated, along with a brief description of the activity mentioned in the publication and the name and date of the publication.

The database was compiled from microfilm and manuscript copies of historic publications in the Wrin Family Library. The CD is a wonderful example of how fraternal and benevolent society records, especially when indexed, can be very useful in researching Irish immigrants for genealogical or historical purposes.

Kyle J. Betit is a professional genealogist, author, and lecturer specializing in Irish, Canadian, French, and immigration research, as well as the application of genealogy to medical genetics studies. He is co-author of A Genealogist’s Guide to Discovering Your Irish Ancestors (Betterway Books, 2001) and was from 1993-99 co-editor of the genealogy journal The Irish At Home and Abroad.