Tuesday, 30 April 2024

Newly launched: County Armagh: The Irish Revolution, 1912-1923

Published April 2024

The most recent county to be studied in the Four Courts Press The Irish Revolution, 1912–23 series is Armagh.

The 240-page paperback, written by Donal Hall and Eoin Magennis, explains how Armagh's long-standing antipathy between unionism and nationalism intensified during the 'third home rule crisis' of 1912–14 and saw the unionists mobilize both politically and militarily to demand a partitioned Ireland. The IRA was largely forced from the county by 1922 by the dominant Crown Forces and many volunteers were interned on both sides of the new border.

Using both official and private archives, this study offers new perspectives on the continuities, changes and wider social and economic dynamics which shaped County Armagh during this tumultuous decade.

The illustrated paperback has been published this month and is now on sale at a reduced price of €22.45 from Four Courts Press. ISBN: 978-1-80151-080-6.

Click here for the full line-up of titles in this popular series which now covers Counties Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Kildare, Leitrim, Limerick, Louth, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Tyrone and Waterford.


Monday, 29 April 2024

Any ancestral connections to Borrisokane in Co Tipperary?

Tipperary Studies had added an interesting collection to its digital archives: the Kent Collection. It's a treasure trove of historical documents and photographs that were kindly loaned for digitisation by Roland Dyer, the great grandson of Walter Francis Kent, a prominent merchant and grocer from Borrisocane in the north of County Tipperary in the late C19th and early C20th.

Click for enlarged view of this sample

Born in 1856, Kent completed his apprenticeship with a hardward store in Birr before opening his own shop in Borrisokane. It offered a wide range of goods, including builders’ supplies, farm and garden seeds, coal, soap, cigarettes and groceries.

The shop’s ledgers, which span 1884 to 1932, provide insight into the daily lives of the local community, including farmers, carpenters, blacksmiths and shopkeepers.

Account transactions were recorded in these ledgers, noting the name of customers, their residence and, in many cases, their occupations, and keeping the necessary tally over time. Fascinating to look through, and an absolutely terrific discovery if you can identify an ancestor.

Each of the two ledgers has been digitised into a set of eight downloadable pdfs. Each holds about 100 pages.

The remaining parts of the collection are mostly photographs, including several of Roland, one of his sons, who enlisted in the South Irish Horse in 1915, and other WW1 army memorabilia.

Take a look through the collection, which is free to access on Tipperary Studies' Digital Archive, here and read a well-research article, including the family's genealogy, by Mary Flynn here

Friday, 26 April 2024

BNA and FMP add to Irish historical newspaper collection

The Irish collection within the BritishNewspaperArchive and its shared database at sister company FindMyPast has seen some action for the first time since early January.

Making its debut was the Banbridge Chronicle while the Belfast News Letter received a full-year update, as follows:

Some 652 editions of the Banbridge Chronicle are now available to search and view on either site. The 23,996 pages date from 1980 to 1998.

All editions of The Belfast News Letter published in 2002 have joined the online databasers. With only a few gaps, the holding now tots up to 553,298 pages dating from 1828.

With these updates being of relatively recent publication, they probably won't offer too much to genealogists. However, it's good to see that the Irish newspapers collection is still growing, even if at a much slower pace than we once enjoyed.

PRONI publishes second edition of free Ulster & Slavery guide

To mark #DouglassWeek in Belfast, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has updated and republished its Ulster & Slavery: The Story from the Archives, an essential resource for learning more about the region's historical connections to slavery and reflecting on its influence in the present day.

It was first published in 2007 by PRONI to mark the bicentenary of the slave trade's abolition in the UK.

This second edition contains revised text and additional documents including one written by American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. There is also a foreward by Kenneth B Morris Jr, the 3 x great-grandson of Frederick Douglass.

Other revisions include a refreshed list of PRONI sources and artefacts from other institutions telling the story of slavery and the slave trade, 1680s–1890s. There is also an updated Bibliography and Websites page.

Click the image to read or download the ebook free of charge from PRONI's website.

Thursday, 25 April 2024

Any connections to WW2 Nurses from Ireland? New resource online

In partnership with the Royal College of Nursing NI, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has today launched a ground-breaking Biographical Dictionary of Nurses from Ireland, which describes the lives of those nurses who served on the home front and in various theatres of war around the globe during WW2.

       Click to view online or download

The 325-page online publication full name The Biographical Dictionary of Nurses from Ireland in Service on the Home Front and on Allied Battle Fronts during the Second World War, 1939-1945, is edited by Seán Graffin and provides a comprehensive (but incomplete*) list of those nurses born on the island of Ireland who served. It is available via PRONI's website and is free to view online or to download.

It is well-illustrated and laid out, with a handy Timeline of the war itself and a good listing or Primary Sources, newspapers & journals, websites and a bibliography. There is also a listing of abbreviations used in the nursing profession.

The partnership project began in 2020 following the commemorations to mark the 75th anniversaries of Victory in Europe (VE) Day and Victory in Japan (VJ) Day, in order to identify those who had served in that war.

As names were gathered, it became evident that many nurses, mostly women, from across Ireland applied to train in British hospitals and when qualified applied to enlist to support the war effort.

* Research is continuing.

Fifteen Dublin City databases taken offline for redevelopment

The popular databases.dublincity.ie site which hosted fifteen free-to-access collections (see list below) was taken offline on 4 March 2024. According to a subsequent tweet, this action was taken by Dublin City Council, which manages the site, as "a precautionary measure due to cyber security concerns". I assumed this was a newly identified technical issue that would be quickly corrected. And then I forgot about it. Apologies.

Unfortunately, it looks as though there is no speedy fix in sight.

The reason the material was removed is that the site needs to be redeveloped to meet the EU's Web Accessibility Directive of 2016.

Web accessibility allows everyone, including people with disabilities, to perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Internet. So what was that about the cyber security concerns?

DCL&A, Pearse Street, Dublin 2

In an undated statement released on the Council's online news pages, the organisation apologises for the inconvenience and adds: "Until such a time as the site can be redeveloped in accordance with the EU’s Web accessibility Directive, material previously accessed online must be accessed instead via the Dublin City Library & Archive (DCLA) Reading Room, 139-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. Where possible, we will add links to digital catalogues and listings as soon as possible. Please contact cityarchives@dublincity.ie to make an appointment to view materials."

The phrase "Until such a time as the site can be redeveloped" sounds ominous, doesn't it?

But so does the increasingly frequently heard 'make an appointment'. Isn't it quite the fashion statement since Covid. Previously open throughout normal office working hours, the DCLA Reading Room is another of those repositories to have switched to appointment-only access. Appointments have to be booked in advance and are usually available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Here's the full list of databases affected:

~ Ancient freemen of Dublin (1461 to 1491, and 1564 to 1774)
~ Cemetery Burial Registers (Clontarf, Drimnagh, and Finglas)
~ Community Memory
~ Dublin City Electoral Lists 1908 to 1915
~ Dublin Directory 1647-1708
~ Dublin Guild Merchant Roll
~ Dublin Graveyards Directory
~ Medieval Manuscripts of Dublin
~ Parish Registers
~ The Dublin Fire Brigade Ambulance Log book, Easter 1916
~ The John V O'Connor Papers, 1692-2015
~ The Index to Dublin City Council Minutes 1881-1987
~ The Monica Roberts Collection

Wednesday, 24 April 2024

Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, 1600-1800 - special saving

Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors: The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600–1800 is on special offer until the end of this month.

Written by the highly regarded Dr William Roulston and published by the Ulster Historical Foundation, the 640-page paperback is an essential reference book for any genealogist or historian looking for reliable guidance to sources of material from this period.

This is a second edition of the book. It includes a lot of additional material on church records and landed estate papers, as well as new chapters looking at records relating to law and order, emigration, business and occupations, diaries and journals, and clubs and societies.

Among the appendices is a parish-by-parish breakdown of the sources available in the nine counties of Ulster, a listing of surviving pre-1800 church records); a detailed description of around 350 collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century landed estate papers; and a listing of more than 500 towns and villages in Ulster with parish locations.

PLEASE NOTE: This book is sold in the UK and Ireland as Researching Ulster Ancestors but is identical in content to the book, Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors. Customers are welcome to purchase either version.

The book is reduced from £19.99 to £12.99.

ISBN 9781909556652

NAI technical issue: Calendars of wills 1923-1982 currently offline

If you're needing to download any of the National Archives of Ireland's Calendars of grants of probate of wills and letters of administration from 1923 to 1982 (held in CS/HC/PO/4), you're out of luck. This won't be a surprise to some researchers. The online links to download pdf copies of the annual calendars, previously available via the the online catalogue, are out of action.

I don't know how long this has been the case. While an NAI member of staff told me this problem has been ongoing for 'a while', he wasn't able to confirm how long 'a while' meant. However, he was able to tell me that the technical team is aware of the problem and will fix it as soon as is possible.

From 1858 to 1922 (excluding 1921 which has not been digitised), the full collection of calendars cover the whole of the island of Ireland and can be searched at the National Archives of Ireland's Genealogy site. From 1923 to 1982 the NAI's main catalogue cover only the 26 historical counties in the Republic.

(Indexes covering the six counties of Northern Ireland since 1918 are in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and are not affected by this NAI techie issue. You can search and view here.)

UPDATE, 26 APRIL 2024: A message advising the above had been placed on the home page of the NAI and a parallel tweet says that researchers can email query@nationalarchives.ie for any calendars they may need.

UPDATE, 20 May 2024: PDFs of the 1923–1982 Calendars are available to download again from the NAI's online catalogue. They have fresh links. Make a simple search using 'Calendar of Wills 19xx', and then download the pdf.

Two new WW1 record sets join Ancestry's Ireland collection

Ancestry has added two World War 1 record collections today that will be of interest to Irish family historians. They are as folllows:

United Kingdom, Red Cross Volunteers During WWI, 1914-1918. The index cards making up this collection provide details of more tha 8,200 people who were born in Ireland and/or resident on the island during WW1 and who volunteered to help the Red Cross in a variety of roles.

Click for enlarged view

They could well bring a smile to their researcher descendents. I mean... who wouldn't want to know that their ancestor had committed two hours of unpaid work a week to the cause and had, over more than two years, created 24 D shirts, 9 vests and 15 pairs of men's D socks (click the image right for enlarged image of Miss Christina Mooney's records), or that they were dedicated to moss picking (it had many medicinal uses), nursing, cleaning and kitchen duties in veteran hospitals and rehabilitation centres, making and mending hospital supplies such as bandages, pyjamas, sheets and uniforms, and so on.

The majority of the volunteers recorded were women and while some were paid, most were not. Commendations, badges, mentions in despatches are noted, and some of the cards give praise for the quality of the individuals produced.

The collection holds a total of 244,156 records covering England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.


Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland, World War I Memorial Records, 1914-1918 This collection contains images of the forms (or Memorial Registers) issued after WW1 and completed by the deceased soldiers' families to confirm their name and rank. These details were required for an impressive new memorial, erected in 1927 at The Diamond within Derry City's walls, to commemorate local soldiers who fought and died in the conflict.

There are 1,033 individuals recorded. Details provided on the forms typically include the serviceman's name, birthplace and date of death; his rank; the company or ship he served with; his regiment and regimental numberm abd whether or not he received any military honours.

The original material is held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and has been digitised in pdf format for free download.


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Tuesday, 16 April 2024

More RC baptisms join RootsIreland's Co. Kerry database

The RootsIreland database has been updated with the addition of 16,762 baptismal records for the Roman Catholic parish of Ballyferriter in County Kerry.

They date from 1807 to 1899, with a gap in the first year.

These join the existing marriage records for the parish, which date from 1808 to 1895.

With this latest update, there are now more than 457,000 baptism and marriage records from 35 RC parishes across Kerry (see the menu of online sources here). Or click the logo above to login, subscribe or find out more about this important database.

Monday, 15 April 2024

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: closures next week

As previously reported, construction work has closed the Reading Room of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast since early March.

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Next week, on Monday 22 April and Tuesday 23 April, the Reading Room will be unavailable until 1pm in order to facilitate the last stages of the building works.

There will be no document production while it is closed. However, the PRONI Search Room and self-service church microfilms will be fully accessible.

Normal working arrangements 'should' be resuming from Wednesday next week.


Friday, 12 April 2024

Let's hear it from the girls! New project to release women's voices

A ground-breaking research project, launched yesterday by Trinity College Dublin's School of Histories and Humanities, aims to discover how our female ancestors – so often overlooked in history – experienced and responded to social upheaval and extreme violence in early modern Ireland.

New digital technologies, including AI and ChatGPT, will help release previously forgotten or 'lost' stories from within the vast repositories of historical documents and manuscripts now being made available digitally by institutions in Ireland and around the world.

VOICES: Life and Death, War and Peace, c.1550-c.1700: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland is a €2.5 million five-year European Research Council project and is led by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer.

Among its aims, the project will:

  • Uncover the roles women played in Ireland at a time of profound economic, political, and cultural transformation.
  • Document women’s experiences of social upheaval, bloody civil war and extreme trauma, especially sexual violence.
  • Harness the immense power of AI and knowledge graph technology to represent and give voice to these women.

For more information, see TCD's press release or explore the new dedicated project website at voicesproject.ie.

Thursday, 11 April 2024

Two-weeks of English, Scottish & Welsh genealogy record releases

Please find below a two-week summary of newly-released and updated family history collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major genealogy databases. (For the previous list, see 27 March blogpost.)

These regular listings are designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

By default, they will also be useful to anyone carrying out research in those three nations, regardless of the origin of their ancestors.

Please note that I don't usually include updates of fewer than 1,000 records.


NEW COLLECTIONS

Figures in parentheses are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in each new collection.

Ancestry

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

FindMyPast

MyHeritage

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parentheses reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made the numbers available so the figure is the new total. Where two figures are given, the first is the number of additions, the second is the new total.

Ancestry

FamilySearch

FindMyPast

FreeBMD

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Save 25% on Ancestry DNA test kits this weekend (UK only)

Until 11:59pm (GMT+1) on Sunday 14 April, Ancestry UK is offering 25% savings on the company's DNA test kits. The discounts are via Ancestry UK only.

If the link doesn't work for you,
log out of your Ancestry account and try again.

Ancestry DNA is the world's best selling consumer DNA test. With more than 25million people in its DNA database, it is – by some distance – the most useful dna test for genealogists looking to expand their research. That's my opinion, based on my own experience having also tested with MyHeritageDNA, LivingDNA, and FamilyTreeDNA, and from talking to other family historians.

Click the image, left, to take advantage of this offer, which reduces the cost from £79 to £59 plus shipping.

Be sure to check through the terms and conditions before placing your order.


Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means Irish Genealogy News may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does make a contribution to the costs of keeping the blog online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

Tuesday, 9 April 2024

Special offers on a selection of books from Four Courts Press

Dublin-based Four Courts Press, one of Ireland's top academic publishers, has special offers on fifteen of its titles. As you'd expect from this independent and history-focussed publisher, some of the discounts have been applied to books likely to be of interest to genealogists. You can view them here. I don't know how long the reduced prices will hold.

On special offer for just €9.95 – a bargain!

I'm going to pick out one particular title that I consider to be essential for any family historian, professional or not, who may have a space (or can create one) on their reference shelves.

It's Jim Herlihy's The Irish Revenue Police: A short history and genealogical guide to the 'Poteen Hussars', which I bought when it was launched back in 2018.

Its 260 pages have created a compact and well-researched guide to the IRP from the 1830s, through The Famine, and on to 1857 when it was disbanded. In addition to providing its history, purpose and development (the force was formed to work with Customs and Excise to prohibit illegal distillation), the book explains how to find information on individual officers and highlights several relatively unfamiliar collections and resources.

It also includes a good number of illustrations and rounds out with nothing less than a complete list of every officer who served in the IRP's ranks.


Catalogue Price: €24.95      ISBN: 978-1-84682-702-0


Monday, 8 April 2024

NLI to host 8-week online Irish genealogy beginners' course

The National Library of Ireland will be running an eight-week Beginners Genealogy Research course starting this Wednesday, 10 April.

The course is aimed at researchers who are new to Irish family history and to those who have a little experience but feel they need an in-depth foundation to progress their research.

Professional genealogist and historian Sean Murphy MA will once again be the tutor for this course and all classes will be held on Zoom on Wednesdays from 2pm–4:15pm, Dublin time (9am–11:15am EDT in USA & Canada).

The course fee is €100.

Places are limited in number and there are only a couple of them still available as of this morning, so if you feel this may be the right course for you, contact Brid O'Sullivan at bosullivan@nli.ie as soon as possible for more details and to book.

Friday, 5 April 2024

Ancestry adds First Edition map of Ireland, 1856 to 1862

Ancestry has a First Edition map of Ireland dating from 1856-1862. It's digitised at a seriously high definition so it's wonderfully clear to view, and as a result, I've lost most of today moving my mouse around the south west Cork area (my father's childhood home) and gawping at some of the land features I've not spotted in previous online and hard copy maps. Ah, my best kind of Friday!

Even if you're not quite the map-head that I have to confess to being, do take a look at this map. It's easy to move around and zoom in to the individual pages of the maps once they've downloaded, and the index to places on the search page is (for Cork and Waterford, at least) excellent, allowing you to land on the correct map page. From there you can zoom in and use your mouse to locate the places of interest at some speed.

(If, instead, you try to boogie with your mouse around the island without using the index, you won't have as much fun. This mode is slow to shift from page to page (from west to east and vice versa) and I never did find the means to 'travel' north to south or south to north.)

Wednesday, 3 April 2024

National Library of Ireland: Saturday openings in April

The National Library of Ireland's Main, Microfilm and Manuscripts Reading Rooms, plus the Readers' Ticket Office will be open on the following Saturdays during the month ahead:

– 13 April
– 27 April

These areas of the library are all housed in Dublin's Kildare Street. Saturday opening is from 9:30am to 1pm.

Please note that the Family History Room is not open to the public on Saturdays.

For detailed opening hours, see the NLI website.

Tuesday, 2 April 2024

New at Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives - March summary

Below is a summary of the newly added material to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives (IGPArchive). As always, the files join a significant and free database of genealogy records and photos, all donated by researchers in the hope they might help other family historians. If you have any transcriptions of records or have taken headstone photos while exploring a graveyard, please consider sharing them with the IGPArchive. You'll find details here.

Monument plaque at St Mary's Graveyard,
Grangemockler, County Tipperary, to members of the
Coughlan family of Ballaugh. Photo courtesy
of Joanne Jacobsen Davin and Ireland Genealogy
Projects Archive. Click image for enlarged image.

CARLOW Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Rathoe Cemetery, Tullow

CAVAN Genealogy Archives - Miscellaneous
St Anne's RC Bailieborough
St Mary's RC Shercock

CLARE Genealogy Archives - Miscellaneous
Larkins Pub Ledger

DONEGAL Genealogy Archives - Civil Marriages
Ballyshannon Registry Office, Marriages 1845-1920

KERRY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Springmount Graveyard, Duagh

KILDARE Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Confey Graveyard Pt 12, Leixlip

TIPPERARY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
St Mary's Graveyard Pt 1 & 2, Grangemockler

TYRONE Genealogy Archives - Church Records
Droit, Lr Bodoney, Presbyterian Marriages, 1845-1921
1st Ardstraw Presbyterian Marriages, 1845-1921

WEXFORD Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Ballymore Old Graveyard