Church records, in particular the registers of baptisms, marriages and burials, are an obvious source for the family historian, especially for the period before the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in 1864.

Church Registers

Presbyterian and Roman Catholic registers were not kept as methodically as those of the Established Church and limited pre-1800 records have survived. Generally speaking, Presbyterian registers commenced in the early nineteenth century and Roman Catholic registers date from around 1820. Also the quality of the records varies from denomination to denomination and from church to church.

Census Returns

Some of the church records include census returns compiled by the local clergy and they can range from a list of a specific congregation to a list of the whole parish.

Marriage Licence Bonds

These were issued by the bishops of the dioceses of the Established Church. The original bonds were destroyed in the fire at the Public Record Office in 1922 but indexes to the bonds are available in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. They record the names of the bridegroom and the bride and the date of the bond.

Location of Church Records

The best single source of church records is the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland but it does not hold all records; some are still held by the churches themselves.

• Church of Ireland
• Roman Catholic Church
• Presbyterian Church
• Methodist Church
• Society of Friends (Quakers)
• Congregational Church
• Baptist Church
• Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church (Unitarians)
• Reformed Presbyterian Church (Covenanters)
• Moravian Church
• Hugenots