Before 1864, the only records kept were in the form of church and parish records (so usually baptismal records instead of birth certificates, and burial records instead of death certificates). Many of these have regrettably been lost over the years to fire and human error, however, all the surviving records have been sorted into county based
genealogical centres. In 1864 civil registration was introduced in Ireland, which is when we started to see the formal registration of births, marriages, adoptions and deaths.These records have been kept at the
General Register Office of Ireland (GRO), to this day. Additionally, once Northern Ireland was created in 1921, we saw the creation of PRONI, the
Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. This is important, because anyone who lived in one of the 6 counties that would later become part of Northern Ireland between 1864 and 1921 would have had their records stored with GRO, but if they were born or lived in Northern Ireland after 1921, then their records would be with PRONI.