Were your Irish ancestors among the first to receive the old age pension when Ireland introduced the regular payment in 1909? Did you know you can search the early pension records which are online and free? Read on for more information. An Old Age Pension scheme was introduced in Ireland in 1909. It was means-tested and to be eligible people needed: To be aged 70 and over – i.e. they had to be born in or before 1839; To be of good character; To earn less than £21.00 annual

Were any of your family Prisoners of War - either civilian or military - in any country during World War 1? Thanks to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, you can search five million individual World War 1 (WW1) Prisoner of War records online for all the combatant countries. There is no charge to access the records. According to the ICRC, approximately 8 million servicemen and two million civilians were captured and interned in camps for several yea

Great news from the General Register Office in the UK. It has further extended its trial service of providing pdf copies of civil birth and death records online at a cost of £6.00 compared with £9.25 for full, paper-based certificates sent via snail mail. No end date has been specified for the latest extension. They have simply said it will continue in order to assess longer term demand for the service. As a reminder, pdf copies of birth records are available from 1837-1917 a