Thursday 9 July 2015

Work continues on Limerick Museum's research aids collection

Research Aids are accessible from the
Limerick.ie Local History Resources page
A week or so ago, I spotted some newly uploaded Limerick resource aids on Academia.edu. These materials had been added by Brian Hodkinson, acting curator of Limerick Museum, so I contacted him to find out more.

It turns out that the 'new' materials and finding aids, many of them compiled or created from Brian's own research, have been available for some time on the Limerick Museum site, along with many others. I wasn't aware of them, despite having made frequent visits to the limerick.ie site to keep up to date with the busy Archives team. It had never occurred to me to click from the Archives web section to the Museum section for such resources and I don't imagine I was alone in this.

So, while these resources may not be brand-new, they are new to me, and probably to many others. And what a treasure trove they make for family historians with Limerick roots.

They can be accessed from the Local History Resources page under two headings:
Research Aids – People, and
Research Aids – Places.

Among the goodies are the following:

Estate Maps of County Limerick: Having begun as a listing of the estate maps, the project evolved to include sale catalogues, rentals etc. Names of tenants, lessees etc are being added. This is an ongoing project.

Who Was Who in Medieval Limerick; from Manuscript Sources: This is a fully referenced index to people in medieval Limerick. It's believed to contain well over 95% of people whose names were recorded through the medieval period.

Who's Who of Early Modern Limerick: This index straddles the medieval period through to c1700. It is a fully-referenced index to people in Limerick during that period and is an on-going project.

The Black Book of Limerick
: This is a new and superior index of people mentioned in The Black Book of Limerick, a collection of medieval Latin documents relating to St Mary's Cathedral, published by James MacCaffrey in 1907.

Placenames of County Limerick: Another on-going work compiling minor placenames gleaned from maps, deeds etc in the museum's collection and from the Limerick City Archives.

Placenames of the Desmond Survey: This could help unlock the survey for many researchers as it identifies places (where possible) and brings all different spellings together. The personal names are incorporated into the Early Modern Who's Who, and the full survey is online on UCC's Celt site.

In addition to the on-going projects mentioned above and on the site, Brian told Irish Genealogy News that he's also well into a project to abstract Limerick names from the Fiants (of the Tudor Sovereigns). The Fiants were warrants dealing with notable appointments, government adminstration, pardons etc. and they frequently name individuals and locations. Brian has already compiled a database of some 5,000 names.

He has also just started compiling a list of Bengal officers from Counties Limerick and Clare who joined the East India Company up to the 1830s. Details of the careers of these men are available into the 1860s/70s.

What are you waiting for?