24/09/2003

Minister hails digitised public records availability

NIO Minister, Angela Smith today hailed the availability of a second collection of public records on the Internet as a boon to historians and genealogists.

The Minister was speaking at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast where she was announcing the completion of a project to digitise Freeholders’ Records covering the period 1740 to 1840.

She said: "Since the Four Court’s fire in Dublin in 1922, there has been a gap in recorded knowledge about census data for Northern Ireland. Finding substitutes for those lost records has long been an important objective for the Public Record Office and I am delighted that their efforts to fill that void have been successful.

"Thanks to a £100,000 grant from the New Opportunities Fund, the Public Record Office has now digitised registers of men entitled to vote at elections during the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the poll books showing how they actually voted. It is yet another important addition to our store of knowledge about social and political developments in this island."

The Minister applauded all those involved in the project, which saw more than five thousand pages of manuscript and printed information being digitised, as well as the compilation of a fully searchable database. The data covers the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone together with the cities of Belfast and Londonderry.

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