Wednesday, 1 February 2017

2016 Family History website formally launched

Minister Humphreys (centre) at Muckross College
today, viewing the students' family history projects
The Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys TD, has formally launched 2016 Family History, an online genealogy website for schools, aimed at encouraging students to trace their roots and explore their family tree. (It's been online for a few weeks, see my blogpost.)

The website has been created by the National Archives of Ireland as a legacy project under the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme. Minister Humphreys met with students in Muckross College in Donnybrook, who have been trialling the website, to launch the new resource.

“Encouraging students to explore their family history can give them a greater appreciation of the seismic events which were happening in this country a century ago," she said. "It is now possible to explore records from the major conflicts which feature in the Decade of Centenaries, such at War World 1 and the 1916 Easter Rising. I hope this new website will serve as a valuable tool to help students reconnect with the past.”

National Archives of Ireland's Director, John Mc Donagh, said: “The site contains case studies on Sean Mac Diarmada and Sean Lemass as examples of how to research and contextualise family history, with poignant accounts of Mac Diarmada’s relationship with Min Ryan, who visited him on the night before his execution, and Sean Lemass’s accidental shooting of his baby brother, Herbert, in 1916.”