Starting your family tree research? The National Archives have a free service to help

More than a couple visits to my great aunt Gladys’s house in Killeshandra, Co Cavan have been spent sitting in the front room poring over a stack of family photo albums. Familiar faces peered back out from behind clouded films of plastic: men in suits too big for them, women who share my smile posing in their Sunday best and children squinting into the camera. The memories of these long-gone relatives are still vivid to Gladys (94). Fuelled by a strong pot of tea, we spent one afternoon putting pen to paper, piecing fragments until the branches of a family tree formed. Certainty came and went: names, approximated dates, parishes and town lands surfaced. Still, a fuller tree seemed far from reach. That sense of half-formed history has become more solvable for thousands of people across Ireland and far beyond with the release of the 1926 census on Saturday. The first census conducted after the establishment of the Irish Free State will add a new layer to Ireland’s archival record. The National Archives of Ireland has digitised a vast data set of more than 700,000 pages, painstakingly transcribing census returns in a process which took three years, that will give an intimate snapshot of a nation in its infancy and the lives of a recorded population of 2.97 million. The returns will be free to browse online, following the precedent set by the landmark releases of 1901 and 1911. “For a lot of people, it will be a starting point, a launching pad,” says Linda Tobin, public services officer at the archives, when I meet her at reception. It’s the week before the census is released to the world, exactly a century after being taken, and I have decided there is no better time than to begin tracing my ancestry. On arrival at the building on Bishop Street, Dublin 8, I add my name to a sign-in book that has marked the beginning of countless similar searches as Tobin tells me that the 1926 project was the first to be completed in-house. “There was plenty of work in it,” she says, explaining that after cataloguing and conservation was complete much of “it was then manually transcribed to ensure that any errors and spellings were caught by staff”. Although optical character recognition (OCR) technology trained using patterns identified in the 1911 census was used, the 1926 census presented some new challenges thanks to the inclusion of forms completed in Irish. Identifying words written in seanchló, a traditional Irish typeface, required a human touch. Tobin leads me into a cosier office space where the shelves are neatly lined with surname guides and reference materials. “Welcome to the genealogy advisory service,” Hilary McDonagh says, looking up from her computer. “Where we’re going to get all our secrets.” Genealogist Hilary McDonagh at the National Archives. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times 'Focusing on my father’s side of the family we start to build a clearer picture of the lives of the people from his aunt Gladys’s photo albums.' Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Time McDonagh is part of a rotating team of genealogists who help people demystify the archives and start to untangle their pasts. She speaks about her work with enthusiasm. “It keeps you on your toes ... Somebody comes in and you don’t know what they’re looking for. They could come in with a bundle of stuff and you have to try to find the gap.” [ Census 1926 released: What can you find out about your family? Opens in new window ] The range of queries is part of the appeal. Some arrive with folders thick with research, others with almost nothing at all. “Sometimes people have hit a brick wall and they don’t really know where to go or it could be something that people have no idea of any of their background and you are starting from scratch. “We have visitors from all over the world. Obviously from the [United] States. A lot of people from Ireland will come in as well but right across Europe. We’ve had Japan, we’ve had God knows – obscure places that you wouldn’t think had Irish ancestors.” The service is deliberately accessible. It is free, open daily, and requires no appointment. To make things easier, I submitted a skeleton of names and dates in advance from my chats with Gladys to get us started. “You’ve given me your background information, which I’ve transferred into a family tree,” says McDonagh, sketching it out with quick, practised movements. The National Archives service is free, open daily, and requires no appointment. Photo: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Time From there, she points to sources that will be most useful on my journey. “I call it the three Cs; census, civil and church.” Land records are also important. We search for births, marriages and deaths (civil) on a free website called irishgeneaology.ie. For church records, McDonagh suggests starting with registers.nli.ie, also free to use. Focusing on my father’s side of the family we start to build a clearer picture of the lives of the people from his aunt Gladys’s photo albums. My great-grandparents (her parents), John Sloane and Millicent (née Taylor), raised their family in Co Leitrim. A few quick searches revealed the couple married at St Ann’s Church, Annaduff on May 16th, 1923. 'I leave the archives with many more questions to answer knowing this visit has only skimmed the surface.' Photo: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Time Tracing back to Millicent’s parents, Thomas Taylor and Sarah (née Hill) we manage to find their marriage records and census returns. “There’s no doubt the family were comfortable, they’re living in a first class house in 1911,” notes McDonagh, inspecting my great-great-grandfather’s handwriting. “He comes in as a footman (in 1905), he’s a domestic (1911), he’s a gardener (1923). To me, he’s obviously working for some landed person.” Sarah also worked as a domestic servant. I would love to know where or who they worked for – the 1926 release might reveal more. For now, we know that the family of 11 lived in Kilmacurragh, Co Wicklow, so I let myself wonder whether Thomas Taylor might have worked at the botanic gardens there. What I’m not yet sure of is when exactly and why their daughter Millicent made the move to Leitrim. Genealogist Hilary McDonagh helps people to demystify the archives and start to untangle their pasts. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien/The Irish Times Armed with a folder of printed records, going back as far as my great-great-great-grandparents, I leave the archives with many more questions to answer knowing this visit has only skimmed the surface. “Your family will never see you again, you know that,” says McDonagh, laughing as she sees me out the door.