Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland Correspondence

The North of Ireland Family History Society (NIFHS) has on permanent loan the genealogical correspondence of the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland (PHSI), fully indexed.  It is held in many boxes of envelopes in the Randal Gill Library.

Over many years members of the public seeking genealogical information have written to the archivist of the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland.  This correspondence was filed away in a great many envelopes, which are now on permanent loan to the Society and have been indexed by Members of the Society.  Each envelope is numbered and is labelled with a surname and most include references to other surnames. Altogether almost 4,000 surnames are mentioned; for some names there is next to no information and for some there is a wealth of genealogical material.  For Members unable to visit the Research Centre we offer a Look Up Service.

There are four indexes:

• PHSI Index – This is the main index to all the names.
• Index to Presbyterian Historical Society Envelopes; other_names_mentioned – This is the index to all the envelopes and can help to locate the right family (added Feb. 2013).
• USA Obituaries – One of the envelopes contains newspaper cuttings of death notices, obituaries and biographical information from the United States, (mainly Bangor and Portland, Maine) (added Feb. 2013).
• Notes from Canada – Another envelope has information on folk who had originated in Ireland and settled in Canada, mainly Saskatchewan.  The notices have been transcribed and are listed alphabetically, with some additional emigration information added by the transcriber.  (added Feb. 2013).