Monday 15 March 2010

Ancestry adds Famine Relief Papers 1844-1847

Ancestry.com has released the Famine Relief Commission Papers 1844-1847. This collection is not going to be a mainstream Irish genealogy resource but it will be of interest to anyone studying the Great Hunger and it could be useful to those whose ancestors held some form of official or local establishment position.

It contains letters and other documents from members of local relief committees, lieutenants of counties, the clergy, and other citizens and touches on a broad spectrum of issues. Among these are reports of local food prices and relief efforts, requests for funds, lists of subscribers who had (or had failed) to donate to relief funds, queries about work projects or seed corn, names of committee members.

More than 10,000 names appear in the collection and there is a free index, so it's worth checking out even if your ancestors are unlikely to have held an official post.