This research commenced as an attempt to document the family history of a Brazil family who were dyers in the Liberties in Dublin. During this research considerable information concerning other Brazil families (under various spellings) was found and it was decided to change the work into a history of all the Brazil families in the Dublin area appearing in the Birth, Marriage and Death indexes from 1864. It was subsequently discovered that many families who appeared in the Dublin records were either new arrivals in the area or that one or more members of their families subsequently married and went to live outside the Dublin area. This has considerably widened the scope of the present investigation.

Where a present day member of one of the families appearing in the work can be identified a copy of the section appropriate to that family has been supplied to them in the hope that blanks can be filled. When all the research has been completed a copy of the final work will be supplied to all those who have assisted. It is hoped that members of other families will in turn document their own off shoots so that in time this work will become a reference for future generations.

The main difficulty experienced in the research was that no family documents appear to have survived. The basis of the research was therefore "oral tradition". This was verified where possible by research in the files of the Registrar-General, the census returns for 1901 and 1911, and the grave records where an accurate date of death was known.

An interesting point discovered was the number of occasions where a branch of the family under investigation died out either due to the large number of girls, to marriages without issue or to the failure of male members to marry.