Speak to Living Ancestors

• 1). Talk to living relatives to begin your journey. While recording details in your notebook, ask any living parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and others to detail information about their families. Encourage them to divulge as much as they know---especially endearing anecdotes.
  
  
• 2). Copy any letters, photographs or documents in possession of your living relatives. Scan and save digital copies on your computer.
  
  
• 3). Create a rough draft of your family tree. Begin with what you know, even if the tree includes only living relatives.
  
  
• 4). Verify information. Check spellings of names, places, dates of birth and death and port of entry with multiple living relatives. Be sure to collect the religions and sects of your ancestors as this can help determine their county of origin.
  
  
• 5). Take special note of inconsistencies in names. Many Irish names originally looked very different from their Anglicized spellings (O'Braidaigh versus O'Brady).
  
  

Use the Internet

• 1). Begin your online search with reputable sites such as Ancestry.com, IrishGenealogy.com, IrishGenealogy.ie, IrishGeanalogical.org and FamilySearch.org. Some of these sites allow for county-specific searches.
  
  
• 2). Start with what you know, then work your way outward. This will help specifically in terms of location. If you do not already know, working from recent times to the past will help you determine exactly which ancestor emigrated from Ireland.
  
  
• 3). Contact and research major ports of entry for the Irish in your country. In the United States, this would include Ellis Island (New York), Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
  
  
• 4). Get specific and don't be afraid to contact people when you uncover their information. You may discover that you have second, third and fourth cousins all over the world. Parish churches in Ireland have traditionally kept very thorough records. Speak with the local parish priest in Ireland to find out more information (a donation is polite if the priest is amenable to providing you with more information).