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Ireland: Irish Will Indexes 1484-1858
In 1922, at the beginning of the Irish Civil War, “Anti-Treaty” forces used the basement of the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) for storage of munitions. Unfortunately a fire broke out during the battle, reaching the munitions store, causing a huge explosion and destroying the majority of records.
Almost all original Irish wills in the custody of the PROI were destroyed (along with the 1821 to 1851 censuses and numerous other irreplaceable records for Irish ancestry).
Over the years the PROI, since renamed the National Archives of Ireland (NAI), has restored and catalogued what remains of the wills in their care.
This dataset is an index to those records where:
- An original document still exists with the NAI (e.g. an original will, administration or grant of
probate, a certified copy, a transcript, or even abstracts and extracts).
- The will was taken before 1858 (after this date the testamentary system was removed from Church control,
and taken over by civil authorities).
Documents which are not technically wills were often included in the NAI testamentary card catalogues because
it was genealogically useful and around 10% of this dataset is made up of these types.