Friday 17 April 2015

More goodies from Clare County Library

Clare County Library's website has more valuable additions to its genealogy section.

More Baptism records for Kilmaley Parish

John Mayer has continued his transcription work from LDS microfilms of the parish registers for Kilmaley Parish. The most recent batch sees the 1846 to 1852 baptism registers completed. This addition means that all the baptism registers from 23 September 1828 to 27 December 1852 have been fully transcribed.

Immigration to Australia – Research suggestions

June Tomlinson, Secretary of the Genealogical Society of the Northern Territory and a member of Clare Roots Society, has written a handy and concise guide (a free to download 506kb pdf) on researching Irish convicts and other immigrants to Australia.

It will be useful to all family historians researching ancestors who headed Down Under, not just those who came from Clare.

Biographical Notices (mainly BMDs) in newspapers, 1751 – 1946

Donated by Lucille Ellis, this file holds some 900 Birth, Marriage and Death Reports transcribed from the Clare Journal, Ennis Chronicls, Saturday Record, Limerick Chronicle, Limerick Gazette and Irish Times. the timeframe is wide; the oldest entry dates to 1751, the most recent to 1946. Marriages are double-entered by name of bride and name of groom.

Newspaper Extracts of leases relating to Clare 1778-1894

Also from Lucille Ellis is a list of newspaper extracts relating to property (buildings and land) for sale/rent, as reported in the Clare Journal, Ennis Chronicle and Limerick Chronicle between 1778 and 1894. There are around 120 extracts, many of them mentioning the previous occupants of the property or land.

The Devon Commission, County Clare, 1845

This is an unusual addition to the website. It contains extracts from the 'Digest of Evidence taken before Her Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Law and Practice in respect to the Occupation of Land in Ireland', which is a dry factual description but hardly a juicy enticement to explore further. This is unfortunate, because the extracts present interesting details about our rural ancestors' lives, and prevalent social attitudes just before the Famine.

If in-depth examination of sub-soil doesn't get you excited, you can swiftly move to the extracts about recovery of rents and ejectment, or agrarian outrages, conacre or cess charges. Rather than genealogical information, there's a lot of social history in these extracts and, while they relate only to County Clare, they are probably representative of most rural areas in Ireland at the time. Read the extracts here.