Steven Smyrl has practiced as a specialist in legal and probate genealogical research for over 35 years. He was admitted as a member of his professional association, Accredited Genealogists Ireland (AGI), in 1991, and served a three-year term as its president from 2012 to 2015.
He is the current chairman of the Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS), a learned society and registered charity founded in 1936, with a worldwide membership dedicated to the study of Irish family history. He is a founding member of the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations (CIGO), serving twice as its chairman. In 2012, he appeared in Dead Money, a six-part RTE series based exclusively on research undertaken by his legal genealogy firm, Massey & King. Each episode told the story of searches for relatives for a person who had died intestate.
Beginning in the late 1990s, Steven led a long running and ultimately successful campaign calling for the improvement of biographical data noted in death registrations in both Irish jurisdictions. Beginning in 2006 in the Republic of Ireland, and later in Northern Ireland in 2012, his work ensured that death registrations began recording each deceased person’s date and place of birth and parents’ names.
In December 2009, Steven’s extensive and ground-breaking research on the history of the congregations (and the records) of Dublin’s Protestant dissenters was published under the title Dictionary of Dublin Dissent – Dublin’s Protestant Dissenting Meeting Houses 1660-1920. He writes a regular column for Irish Roots magazine.
Currently, Steven is working on a detailed guide to the holdings of the National Archives of Ireland, with a particular focus on identifying and drawing together references to alternative sources for material destroyed in the conflagration of 1922, which destroyed the holdings of the Public Record Office of Ireland (the precursor to the National Archives of Ireland).