Apologies to all. My post below was in reply to a post by Alannal.  It was NOT in reply to Joyce Presnall's most helpful post.  I'm sorry for the confusion.              Virginia   I find your comments about priests unsubstantiated and offensive. Most Catholic parish registers were microfilmed decades ago and have now been digitized and are free online up to about 1880.  After that, civil records are available for another few decades.  Later church and civil records are not online for privacy reasons tho you can obtain them thru the processes described by the government for civil records or individual parishes for church records. Many--most?--people could not afford headstones.  Very old headstones crumble or break and sink into the soil. Or the inscription is unreadable after so many years. It's not the least surprising you can't find old headstone information. Many priests were true Irish heroes and I hope you will read Irish history to learn more.      Virginia       From: alannal via <ny-irish@rootsweb.com>   Just remember that there are probably stil the priests who keep a tight fist around their parish records.  Maybe they want the money that might come from allowing the records to be seen as there would be no money if the records were totally released. In Balnacalley [sp?] the headstone information from the graveyard was put on line, but my kin except for a couple of current burials who should have been buried there over 200 years have no headstones -- lack of money to hand to the priest?