Search for Paddy and find Patrick. Search in Draperstown and discover relatives just over the county border in Tyrone. Plus: maps that actually work, a mobile-friendly redesign, and full household records for everyone.
Smarter Name Matching
If your ancestor was called Paddy at home but Patrick in the census, you used to have to search for both names separately. Not any more.
We have added over 90 Irish name variants to the search engine. Search for Paddy and you will also find records for Patrick, Pat, and Patsy. Search for Kitty and you will find Catherine. Search for Biddy and you will find Bridget. This works in both directions searching for the formal name finds the nickname too.
Some of the names covered include:
- Paddy, Pat, Patsy ↔ Patrick
- Mick, Mike ↔ Michael
- Jack, Johnny, Sean ↔ John
- Bill, Billy, Liam ↔ William
- Jim, Jimmy, Seamus ↔ James
- Ned, Ted ↔ Edward
- Kitty, Kate ↔ Catherine
- Peggy, Maggie ↔ Margaret
- Biddy, Bridgie ↔ Bridget
- Nell, Nelly ↔ Ellen
- Molly, Polly ↔ Mary
- Betty, Lizzie ↔ Elizabeth
Search in Irish
You can now search by the Irish name for any county. Type Tír Eoghain instead of Tyrone, or Doire instead of Derry, and you will get the same results. All 32 counties are covered, including historical names like King’s County for Offaly and Queen’s County for Laois.
Also Found Nearby
This is the big one. When you search for a name in a specific location, Down The Road now looks at neighbouring areas within 10 miles and shows you matching records from those places too, even if they are in a different county.
For example, if you search for Duffy Draperstown (County Derry), you will now see Duffy households from places like Goles in County Tyrone, just a few miles over the county border. Before this update, those cross-county connections were invisible.
We computed geographic centres for over 7,000 census districts and calculated more than 250,000 neighbour relationships to make this work. The "Also found nearby" section appears automatically below your main search results whenever there are matching records in the area.
Wikipedia Integration for Places
County and townland pages now pull in relevant information from Wikipedia, including alternative place names and image galleries. This gives you more historical and geographic context when exploring a location.
Contact Form Replies
When you send us a message through the contact form, we can now reply directly to your email. You will receive a response from Down The Road with your original message quoted, so you have full context of the conversation.
Griffith's Valuation: 1.34 Million Records
You can now search 1,340,016 Griffith's Valuation records covering the 1840s to 1860s. Griffith's Valuation was a property survey carried out across all of Ireland to determine the value of land and buildings for taxation. For genealogists, it is one of the most important pre-famine sources because it lists the name of every occupier and lessor of property in the country.
Records are available for all 32 counties, with the largest collections in:
- Cork — 409,175 records
- Tipperary — 203,552 records
- Limerick — 122,865 records
- Kerry — 109,085 records
- Waterford — 92,976 records
- Wexford — 56,983 records
- Dublin — 45,212 records
- Galway — 39,034 records
You can search Griffith's Valuation from the Griffith's Valuation tab on the search page, or from the Explore menu in the navigation bar.
The Annals of Ireland
We are working on bringing The Annals of the Four Masters into Down The Road. The Annals are a chronicle of Irish history from the earliest times to 1616, compiled by Franciscan scholars in the 1630s. They record battles, deaths of kings and chieftains, church events, natural disasters, and the movements of clans across the Irish landscape.
Our goal is to connect the Annals to the geographic areas already in our database so when you are exploring a county or townland page, you will be able to see what historical events the Annals recorded for that area. This feature is currently in development and will be available in a future update.
These updates are all live now. Head to the search page and try searching for a family name with a nickname. You might be surprised what turns up nearby.
