If you have Irish heritage, you can find out whether your family is connected to one of Ireland's most recognisable exports as The Guinness Archive has partnered with genealogy website Ancestry to digitise its records.
While they were made freely available for a period of time, you'll now need an Ancestry account to access them.
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The digitised records are made up of three ledgers:
- Ireland, Guinness Employee Records, 1799-1940 – Personnel records relating to employees of the St. James’s Gate brewery, mainly dating from around 1880s-1940s, where employees are now deceased and/or were born over 100 years ago.
- Ireland & Great Britain, Guinness Trade Ledgers, 1807, 1860-1960 – Customer/publican records by pub name, town and county detailing the amount of Guinness stout and porter purchased by publicans across Ireland and Great Britain. The records span almost 100 years and represent all pubs in Ireland.
- Dublin Coopers Society and Brewers' Guild Records, 1702-1945 – Records relating to the brewers and coopers (makers or repairers of casks and barrels) of Dublin.
You'll need to have a name of an ancestor to search the ledgers, but the records make it possible to discover whether they worked at the brewery, their career path and where they lived.
The collections date from 1799-1939, during a time when Guinness was thought to be the largest single private employer in Ireland. Who knows what you'll discover?
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Top image: Guinness brewery gate at St James's. Credit: Getty
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