Seven volumes of watch job books from John Rudd, Watchmaker and Jeweller, Thurles, Co. Tipperary have been digitised and made accessible online by Tipperary Studies, the local history department of the county's library service.
The volumes hold 27,548 names and addresses of people who left an item for repair at Rudd’s Watchmakers & Jewellers from 1901 to 1930. Some of the names appear on several occasions, and will be of great interest to researchers trying to track down their ancestors in the mid-Tipperary area and beyond.
While the majority of names are of people who lived in and around Thurles, there are also names of residents from other parts of Tipperary, and even addresses in Counties Kilkenny and Laois.
Some of those named in the job books are also recorded in other collections on the Tipperary Studies Digital platform. For example, Mrs Benson of Main Street, Thurles (1914) also appears in a photographic collection from the late 1930s, and Tom Semple, a noted captain of the famed Thurles Blues, is referenced in the Tipperary GAA Yearbook collection.
Researchers can download pdfs of each of the seven chronologically-arranged volumes free of charge. To view the collection, click the image above.