PJU <[email protected]> said: >At 03:01 AM 2/10/2007, Denis wrote: >> There is a group of volunteers at >>the Cork County Library who are indexing parish records for Cork City, >>but they are not yet prepared to take research requests. >Denis, there is an old, but unconfirmed, story that implies that a >former bishop of Cork found that some professional researchers were >profiting from selling their services by searching diocesan >church-records. Based on that, he told all pastors to stop allowing >that practice as he did not want others to profit from what were >considered "church-owned records". As a result,very few such records were >ever opened to the public, and still are not readily available (even from >the Family History Library). >I am particularly interest interested in the West Cork areas of >Skibbereen, Leap and Union Hall/Myross. >Is there any truth in that old story and are old, transcribed records >of Skibbereen, Leap and Union Hall available anywhere? In the 1980s the Irish Genealogical Project (IGP) was initiated as a government-subsidized effort to put parish records on computer. Individual heritage centres were set up in different counties and people were hired for transcription and data entry. For various reasons some centres have been more successful than others in providing access to genealogical information that was formerly only available on microfilm at the National Library or at individual parishes. The civil and Catholic parishes of County Cork are divided mostly between the Diocese of Cloyne and the Diocese of Cork & Ross, though there are some that actually fall under the Diocese of Kerry. When the IGP was set up there was a heritage centre in Mallow working on the Cloyne records, and one in Bandon indexing the Diocese of Cork & Ross. While the Mallow centre came to fruition, the Bandon effort was abandoned when there was a dispute with the then-Bishop of Cork & Ross over "ownership" of the information contained in the records being indexed. Although I have heard tantalizing rumors in recent years about the opening of a Bandon centre, I wouldn't put any research goals on hold in the meantime. As for St. Mary's Shandon, which was the subject of the original query to which this responds, there is a group of volunteers at the Cork County Library which is indexing Cork City parish records, but there has been no announcement as to when they might be willing to consider the work complete, or when they will begin accepting research requests. The National Library in Dublin has parish records for County Cork on microfilm, but the records for the Diocese of Cloyne are restricted from open public access and you must first get a letter of permission from the Diocese of Cloyne. I understand these are freely given, but you should plan on getting it in hand in advance of going to the Library. See: http://www.rootsweb.com/~irlmahs/map10a.gif Map of the Diocese of Cloyne http://www.sci.net.au/userpages/mgrogan/cork/cork_map2.htm Map of the Diocese of Cork and Ross http://www.rootsweb.com/~irlker/kerrypar.html Map of the Diocese of Kerry (includes some County Cork) http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/hanson/mapindex.html Civil Parish Maps of Co. Cork http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ranch/4889/civil.html Civl and Catholic Parishes of Co. Cork by Diocese http://www.sci.net.au/userpages/mgrogan/cork/cork_map2.htm Map of the Diocese of Cork and Ross http://www.corkandross.org/html/history/genealogy.jsp Genealogy in the Diocese of Cork and Ross Mallow Heritage Centre (Cloyne Diocese parish records) http://www.irish-roots.net/mallow.asp -dja