Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors is an expert introduction for the family historian to the wealth of material available to researchers in archives throughout Northern Ireland. Many records, like the early twentieth-century census returns and school registers, will be familiar to researchers, but others are often overlooked by all but the most experienced of genealogists.An easy-to-use, informative guide to the comprehensive collections available at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland is a key feature of Ian Maxwell's handbook. He also takes the reader through the records held in many libraries, museums and heritage centres across the province, and he provides detailed coverage of records that are available online. Unlike the rest of the British Isles, which has very extensive civil and census records, Irish ancestral research is hampered by the destruction of many of the major collections. Yet Ian Maxwell shows how family historians can make good use of church records, school registers and land and valuation records to trace their roots to the beginning of the nineteenth century and beyond.Dr Ian Maxwell, a former record officer at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, is now a freelance writer and a leading expert on Irish genealogy.He conducts courses on genealogy throughout Northern Ireland and he is a regular speaker at genealogical conferences in Belfast and Dublin. He writes articles regularly for Family History Monthly, Your Family Tree and Ancestor magazines on Irish, Scottish and English social history and genealogy. His previous publications include, Researching Armagh Ancestors, Researching Down Ancestors, Your Irish Ancestors and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors.