Online & Free : Guinness Brewery : 20,000 Irish personnel records dating from 1759

Level : Intermediate

Reading time : 2 min

Did your ancestor work for the world-famous Guinness Brewery in Ireland? Did you know the company has an extensive archive with records dating back to 1759?

The good news for family historians is that it has employee records dating from the 1880s right up to the 1990s.

Even better news is that approximately 80% of staff records have survived and extracts of more than 20,000 personnel records are freely available on the Guinness website at:

https://www.guinness-storehouse.com/en/archives/archives-genealogy

The records are searchable and include some or all of the following information:

• Name;

• Date of birth;

• Date of death;

• Employee ID number;

• Date joined;

• Age joined;

• Date left;

• Department;

• Occupation;

• Spouse name.

As well as personal information, each record has a description of the person’s job in the brewery. An old photo of someone undertaking the role is also included in the record. The additional information is a nice touch and really adds value to the database as well as helping paint a broader picture of individual employees.

The Archive’s search function is buried deep in the website. So just in case you lose the direct url provided above, go to the Guinness Brewery’s home page then:

• Click the menu icon at the top right of the screen;

• Click About;

• Click The Archives. A horizontal bar will appear bearing The Archives again. Click the bar;

• Click Genealogy;

• Enter your ancestor’s name then click Submit.

Having found your ancestor’s details in the online database, the brewery invites you to make an appointment to visit the archive and view the person’s entire original file. Simply complete the online appointment request.

The Guinness Archive is located in the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin and is open by appointment on Monday afternoons, and in the morning and afternoon on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Guinness is to be congratulated on its generous and innovative delivery of historical personnel record online. This is a unique resource for finding Irish ancestors and even if you don't know if they worked for the brewery, it's well worth checking.

If you find an ancestor in the Guinness Brewery's archive, I'd love to hear from you in the Comments section below.

In the meantime, happy ancestor hunting.

Therese

Your Family Genealogist

Pictures : courtesy of Pixabay