Tracing Your Roots

Tracing your roots in Ireland is extremely difficult due to the catastrophic destruction of extensive archives at the Public Records Office, Dublin, during the Irish Civil War in 1922. This war resulted when the newly formed Provisional Irish Government were in conflict with their former comrades who opposed the new treaty segregating North and South Ireland.

The absence of census and other records forces researchers to use substitute sources to identify their ancestors. One aim of this website is to combine as many of these other sources in a single, searchable database.

This website does not contain lists of births, deaths and marriages or details from church records for the Borough of Ballymoney. Alternatively, it amalgamates a series of other resources from archives in Ballymoney Museum and other libraries. These assorted lists include:

Ballymoney Borough Council burial registers
Business directories for the district
Tithe Applotments
Householders Indices

Births, deaths and marriages for the Borough of Ballymoney. These may be accessed at the General Registry Office of Northern Ireland.

Church records for Ballymoney and the surrounding districts may be researched on microfilm at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and the Irish Library, North Education & Library Board, Coleraine. In many cases, the original records are still retained by the respective place of worship. Please see below for more information on places of worship in the Borough of Ballymoney.

Where did they live?

Click here for a map of the Borough of Ballymoney 2003

The Borough of Ballymoney is the second smallest in Northern Ireland (NI) covering an area of 41,855 hectares and is predominantly rural in character. It is bounded to the west by the River Bann and to the east by the uplands of the Antrim Plateau. The Borough is home to 26,000 people, with the town of Ballymoney as the main population centre with approximately 10-12,000 inhabitants.

Other main settlements in the Borough are:

Balnamore (formerly Harmony Hill)
Ballybogey (or Ballybogy)
Cloughmills
Dervock
Dunloy
Loughguile (or Loughgiel)
Rasharkin
Stranocum

The present Borough contains the whole of, or portions of, twelve different Civil Parishes and it is composed of nearly 300 individual townlands. Below are links to lists of the townlands and parishes in the Borough.

Acknowledgements

Ballymoney Borough Council would like to thank the following contributors to this site:

Lord Dunluce.
Catherine McMenamin, for surveying the Finvoy Presbyterian Church Graveyard.
Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.
Robert Thompson, for his dedication and diligence inputing many of the databases.
Ulster Historical Foundation.