Gravestone inscriptions can be a useful source of family history information. Gravestones may give birth, marriage, and death information. They may also give clues about military service, occupation, or family members buried in the same area. Sometimes they give more information than the parish burial register or civil certificate of death. Gravestone inscriptions are especially helpful for identifying ancestors who are not recorded in other existing records.

To find an ancestor's gravestone inscription, you must know where he or she was buried. Your ancestor may have been buried in a church, city, or public cemetery usually near the place where he or she lived or died. You can find clues about burial place in church records, death certificates, probate records, newspapers, or family histories.

If your ancestor was buried in a churchyard, the parish minister of the church may have information about your ancestor in the church's burial registers or burial plot records. For help in finding a minister's address, see the “Church Directories” section of this outline.

Some gravestone inscriptions have been transcribed by Ireland's county heritage centres. Contact the centre in the county where your ancestor was buried for more information.

Gravestone inscriptions that have been transcribed by other organizations or individuals are listed in:

• Catalogs and inventories of various repositories (see the “Archives and Libraries” section of this outline).
• Hayes's Sources.
• John Grenham, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors: The Complete Guide. (See the “For Further Reading” section.)
  

The Family History Library has a growing collection of transcriptions of gravestone inscriptions. To locate these, consult the Locality Search of the catalog under the following headings:

IRELAND - CEMETERIESIRELAND, [COUNTY] - CEMETERIESIRELAND, [COUNTY], [PARISH] - CEMETERIES

Gravestone inscriptions may be found in printed histories and periodicals. Many such inscriptions are listed in Smith's Inventory of Genealogical Sources: Ireland. Other periodicals and histories that may contain gravestone inscriptions are listed in the Locality Search of the catalog under the following headings:

IRELAND - PERIODICALSIRELAND, [COUNTY] - PERIODICALSIRELAND, [COUNTY] - HISTORYIRELAND, [COUNTY], [PARISH] - HISTORY

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