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 paper's holding. With only a few gaps, the holding now tots up to 553,298 pages dating from 1828.

With this updates being of relatively recent publication, they probably won't offer too much to genealogists.

However, it's good to know that the Irish newspapers collection is still growing, even if at a much slower pace than we might have come to expect.

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.

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

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 1858-1982 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 1858 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.

Up to 1917, the calendars in this collection cover the whole of the island of Ireland. From 1918 onwards they cover only the 26 historical counties in the Republic. Those 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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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

• UK, Historical Photographs and Prints, 1704-1989
• Blacksmiths and Related Trades Index, 1720-1940 (9,955)
• Battle of Jutland Crew Lists, 1916 (61,495)
• London, England, Stanfords London Maps, 1890 (341)

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

• Lincoln Leader & County Advertiser |  Piercy's Coventry Gazette |  Coventry Graphic |  Foleshill & Bedworth Express |  Matlock Mercury |  Gainsborough Evening News |  Bedworth Times  |  Sleaford Standard |  Daventry & District Weekly Express

FindMyPast

• Warwickshire, Coventry, Vehicle Registrations 1921-1944 (143,824)
• Warwickshire, Coventry, Company Directories and Publications 1908-1966 (22,243 pages)
• Coventry Bomb Damage 1940-41 & Coventry Blitz, German Air Raids 1940-41 (74,615)
• Coventry Workhouse Admission and Discharge Registers, 1853-1946 (70,437)

MyHeritage

• England, Lancashire, Manchester Parish Baptisms, 1571-1907 (2,397,318)
• England, Lancashire, Manchester Parish Marriages, 1570-1940 (1,607,084)
• England, Lancashire, Manchester Parish Burials, 1603-1910 (632,593)
• England, Cornwall Parish Births and Baptisms (968,495)
• England, Cornwall Parish Burials (376,294)
• England, Cornwall Parish Marriages, 1569-1938 (377,612)
• England, Cheshire School Registers, 1796-1909 (722,357)

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

• UK & Ireland, Newspapers.com Marriage Index, 1800s-current (41,275 / 8,967,629)
• UK and Ireland, Obituary Index, 2004-Current ( 28,217 / 6,984,995)
• Hampshire, England, Wills and Probates, 1398-1858

FamilySearch

• England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 (45,160,818)
• England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991 (14,487,850)
• England Marriages, 1538–1973 (11,671,259)

FindMyPast

• Greater Manchester Rate Books, 1820–1940 (384,785 / 14,336,653)
• Greater Manchester Electoral Registers 1820-1940 (1.2 million / 26,351,205)
• Warwickshire Burials 1847-1896 (37,963 from London Rd Cem, Coventry / 2.23 million)

FreeBMD

• Civil birth, marriage, death registrations from 1837 (254,697 / 293,890,022 unique entries)

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I 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 contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

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.

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

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.

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.)

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.

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

Save 30% on 3- and 12-month subscriptions to FindMyPast UK

FindMyPast UK is offering eggcellent (ho ho ho) Easter savings to researchers taking out 3-month or 12-month subscriptions to the Plus, Pro or Premium packages.

The discount offer is valid from today until 9:59am (IST/BST) on Monday 1 April.

This discount will be available only via the UK site.

To take advantage of this generous price reduction, click the image, right. On the landing page you'll see the discount has already been applied, and you'll be able to compare the different packages.

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I 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 contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

Easter closures of archives and libraries across Ireland

It's a long weekend across the island but with different closure patterns on either side of the border. Here are the main arrangements for the main repositories:

Northern Ireland
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and all libraries will be open on Friday 29 March and closed on Easter Monday and Tuesday, 1 and 2 April.

Republic of Ireland
The National Archives of Ireland and all public county and branch libraries will be closed from Good Friday 29 March until Monday 1 April inclusive, returning to normal hours on Tuesday 2 April. While the Reading Rooms at the National Library of Ireland will also be closed over the same period, the NLI's Exhibitions (Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and People & Places) have bespoke arrangements, which you can check here.

Recent releases & updates for English, Scottish & Welsh genealogy

Below is a two-week summary of newly-released and updated genealogy collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major family history database providers. (For previous list, see 12 March blogpost.)

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

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

The figures in parentheses in the New Collections section are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parentheses in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made this figure 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.

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

NEW COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• Isle of Man, Birth, Marriage and Death Civil Registration Index, 1849-2015 (349,789)
• Aberdeen & North-East Scotland, Index, Memorial Inscription Bklets 1500-2021 (185,928)

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

• Scarborough Evening News
• Gravesend Messenger
• The Regiment
• Kent County Examiner and Ashford Chronicle
• Halifax Daily Guardian
• Prisoners of War News
• Country Life

FindMyPast

• Scotland, Mental Health Institutions Registers & Admissions 1858–1921 (220,7317)

MyHeritage

• Wales, Glamorgan Parish Marriages, 1802–1958 (199,906)
• Cheshire Parish Marriages, from 1538 (1,617,527)

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK & Ireland, FindAGrave Index (193,032 / 19,716,828)
• Global, FindAGrave Index for Burials at Sea and other Locations (381,182 / 15,823,357)

FamilySearch

• England, Manchester, Miscellaneous Records, 1700-1916 (678,488)
• Scotland, Death Records,1998-2015 (429,095)

FindMyPast

• Scotland, Poor Law & Poor Lists Wigownshire and Scottish Borders added (7,906)
• Scotland, Court & Criminal Database (more than 1m transcriptions added)

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I 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 contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

Free booklet published exploring the Great Famine in Co. Donegal

An illustrated booklet that explores the Famine in County Donegal has been published as a free flip-book on ISSUU.

Donegal County Council hosted Ireland's National Famine Commemmoration in Milford last year and marked the event by commissioning Historian in Residence Dr C. Hilary Mc Laughlin-Stonham to research and write about this period in Donegal's history using surviving workhouse records (and other collections) held by the County Archives and other institutions.

The booklet, which has been widely distributed in paper format to schools, libraries, colleges and heritage centres across Donegal and beyond, is entitled The Consequences will be fearful: The Great Famine in County Donegal. It presents four essays, as follows:

• The impact of the Great Famine on County Donegal
• Life and Death in Letterkenny during the Great Famine
• Inishowen Workhouse in a time of crisis
• Emigration: Farewells and Beginnings

An excellent list of reference material and digital sources is also provided.

I'm sure any family historian with Donegal ancestors who lived through the mid-1800s would find this publication very informative and helpful to their own research. Click the cover image to start reading.

Society of Genealogists' online Irish genealogy course starts 2 April

The Society of Genealogists (SoG) is to host an 8-week online Irish family history course starting next week.

Jill Williams FIGRS

Jill Williams, a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society, will present this new practical course which requires no previous experience with Irish records and will focus on collections available online.

The course will highlight the differences between Irish records and those from English and Welsh sources, and will use two families – one Catholic from county Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, the other Protestant from Ulster in the north of the island – as case studies.

Each online presentation will be followed by an optional short exercise for delegates to undertake at home and a handout covering key websites mentioned in the session.

Video recordings of each weekly class (excluding Q&A elements), will be made available the day after the session and for one month after the course ends.

The course will be held on zoom from 18:30hrs* to 20:30hrs* on Tuesdays, from 2 April to 21 May.

For further details and to book your place on this course, see the SoG website.

If you're not sure if this course is for you, why not consider taking the first session as a taster? Find out more about this option here.

* UK & Irish Summer time

Deansgrange and Shananagh burial registers return online

Regular readers of Irish Genealogy News will recall that images of burial registers for Dublin's Deansgrange and Shananagh cemeteries disappeared from view on the EverAfter/PlotBox website towards the tail end of last year. (See my belated blogpost.)

I'm happy to report that the burial registers have been safely returned to the public pages. This means that headstone photos, transcribed inscriptions, cemetery maps and digisted burial registers can once again be viewed on the free to access website here.

Register entries usually include the deceased's name, age, religion, address of last residence and, for most men, profession or occupation, plus date of death, date of burial, a precise location of the grave or plot, fees paid, and the name of the funeral director. The example below is from 1948.

For enlarged view, click image

There's a party going down, and everyone's invited!

TheGenealogist uploads more than 3million Irish records

Also getting in on St Patrick's Day celebrations is TheGenealogist database. Principally known for its extensive collections covering England and Wales, TheGenealogist has extended its Irish and, to a lesser extent, Scottish coverage recently.

This week's releases aee more than three million records join the database. They fall into two categories: parish registers and probate, as follows:

Irish Catholic Parish Records: Some 1,769,007 individuals have been indexed from the Baptism and Marriage registers for more than 80 County Tipperary parishes. Additionally, Baptism and Marriage registers in four County Carlow parishes have made their way into the county's existing collection. This means the database now has significant collection of parish registers for Counties Carlow, Kildare, Laois, Tipperary and Wexford. You can see the list of available parishes, and the dates of the registers, on this page.

Irish Wills: Six probate collections have been released, making available a further 1,263,399 records. They are listed below:

• Dublin Will and Grant Books 1272-1858
• Calendar of Wills and Administrations 1858-1922
• Irish Will Indexes 1484-1858
• Prerogative and Diocesan Copies of Wills and Indexes 1596-1858
• Will Registers 1858-1900
• Soldiers’ Wills 1914-1918

If you're interested to see what TheGenealogist offers Irish genealogists, you might like to take up the offer of a free trial. Click the logo above to find out more.

FindMyPast Ireland adds three record-sets and three directories

This year's St Patrick's Day delivery from FindMyPast.ie comprises three new 18th-century record sets and a significant expansion of the existing Directories collection. These additions to the Irish database tot up to fewer than 8,000 short of a cool one million records.

18th century census substitutes

The originals of this trio of record sets were lost in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office of Ireland. Fortunately for Irish family historians, antiquarian and professional genealogist Tenison Groves had spent the previous twenty-odd years transcribing many of the documents that went up in flames. The transcriptions are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and have been digitised by other suppliers. Their arrival in the FindMyPast collection will help many researchers. In chronological order, the record sets are:

Ireland, Census of Protestant Householders 1740: The 15,957 individuals recorded in this listing are arranged by their parish and county. Geographical coverage includes the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone and in some instances include the townland of residence. The purpose of the 'census' is not certain, but may have been connected with the Hearth Tax. See PRONI's article, here, for further background.

Ireland, 1766 Religious Census: These 20,505 transcriptions include returns from the six counties now in Northern Ireland and fifteen counties in the Republic of Ireland, and are arranged by parish. Geographical coverage is far from complete and the information collected is far from consistent; in some parishes, only a headcount was taken of each commuinity, while in others the names of the heads of household were noted. See PRONI's article, here, for further background.

Ireland, 1775 Dissenters' Petition: Presbyterian congregations across Ireland petitioned the Dublin parliament to repeal laws that restricted political, civic and professional postitions/occupations to communicant members of the Established Church of Ireland. Some members of the Established Church were also signatories. The petitions consist of dissenters' names categorized by parish, congregation, town, neighbourhood, or, in one case, barony. This small collection of 4,683 records includes parishes in Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone. For more details, see PRONI's article here.

Belfast & Ulster Directories

FindMyPast's existing collection of Belfast and Ulster Directories has been extended with the addition of three more titles and more than 951,000 names. It means that this collection now consists of 58 Belfast and/or Ulster directory titles spanning 1831 to 1900 and offer a total of 2,874,586 indexed name entries. (View the full list of titles here.) Both transcriptions and original page images can be explored to locate your ancestors by name, residence, occupation, and year.

Sample entries from the 1865 edition of The Belfast And Province Of Ulster Directory

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Free access to MyHeritage's Irish Collection until Monday

For St Patrick's Day, MyHeritage has opened up its entire Irish collection of nearly 14 million records.

These are held in 104 record sets including censuses, census substitutes, births and marriages, wills and a good spread of publications and directories. It's a collection thiat is growing but in my opinion it is still quite a way from being a go-to database for Irish researchers.

However, for any family historians making their first foray into Irish records, it might be worth a free weekend dip.

You can find brief details and links to each of the record sets in the Ireland catalogue. Select one and enter your search criteria. You'll then be prompted to create a free account. Go ahead. It's free and doesn't require you to hand over any financial information.

Big discounts from IrishNewspaperArchives mark St Patrick's Day

With St Patrick's weekend just around the corner, here's an opportunity to grab yourself a tidy discount from the Dublin-based IrishNewspaperArchive.com. Two offers are available as follows:

• Gold Membership: 35% off monthly and annual subscriptions
• Silver Membership: 30% off monthly and annual subsriptions

Gold membership includes full access to the main Irish Newspapers Archive, which holds some 158 titles, AND full access to its unique Radical Newspapers Archive, which holds 103 titles.

Silver membership includes full access to the main Irish Newspaper Archive, which holds some 158 titles.

The archives offer more than ten million pages of newspaper content from titles published and circulated across the island, some of them dating back to 1738.

Archival content is regularly updated, and new titles added. Here's a list of the updates and new releases over the past five months:

Connaught Journal 1793–1828
Celtic Times 1887
Rights of the Irishmen 1792
The Press 1797–1798
Sligo Weekender 2005–2008
Belfast Newsletter 2006
Andersonstown News 1972–2000
Post 1955,1958-1959
Evening Echo 2001–2002
Evening Telegraph 1916–1919

The generous savings will be available until Sunday 24 March.

Click the image to type in the promo code and view the discounted price for your choice of Membership, or, to view the list of titles available in each archive, click here.

PRONI's Reading Room closed for six weeks

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has introduced some temporary changes to the in-person service provided at its offices in Belfast's Titanic Quarter.

To facilitate some construction work to the building, the Reading Room has been closed and will remain so until about the middle of April.

Researchers visiting the site will still be able to access original records in the PRONI Search Room and, although they've been relocated within that room, the self-service microfilms will be available as usual.

If you're planning to visit the site over the next few weeks, be sure to check this PRONI webpage where any important changes to the above will be posted.

Latest updates/releases for English, Scottish and Welsh genealogy

Below is a two-week summary of newly-released and updated genealogy collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major family history database providers. (For previous list, see 16 February blogpost.)

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

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

The figures in parentheses in the New Collections section are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parentheses in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made this figure 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.

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

NEW COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK, Admiralty Records of Marriages and Baptisms, 1754-1878 (7,206)
• London, England, Parish Maps, 1860-1880
• UK, Imperial Gazetteer Maps, 1900

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

• Kent County Standard
• Fashion and Craft (Creative Needlecraft)
• Halifax Daily Guardian
• Kent Evening Post
• Tunbridge Wells Standard
• Brighouse Echo

FindMyPast

• Canada: British Home Children Inspection Reports (25,534 images and transcriptions)
• Canada, Home Children Board of Guardian Records, 1880s–1916 (10,678 trans/images)
• Lancashire, Liverpool, Children Sent To Canada 1883-1925 (466)
• Britain, Children's Legislation Correspondence Browse Browse only.
• Women's Land Army Service Cards 1939-1950 (128,440)

MyHeritage

• England, Cheshire Bishop’s Transcripts Baptisms, 1526-1909 (2,987,072)
• Cheshire Bishop’s Transcripts Marriages (478,468)
• England, Cheshire Parish Deaths and Burials (2,009,427)
• England, Cheshire Parish Births & Baptisms, 1538–1969 (5,136,832)
• Wales, West Glamorgan Electoral Registers 1839-1925 (1,643,484)
• United Kingdom Newspapers from OldNews.com (3,894,581 pages/3 newspaper titles)

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK and Ireland, Find a Grave® Index, 1300s-Current (374,863 / 19,716,828)
• Global, Find a Grave® Index, Burials at Sea/Select Locations (174,193/15,823,357)
• UK and Ireland, Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current (710,497 / 15,823,357)
• UK, World War II War Diaries, 1939-1946
• UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856 (28,256)

FindMyPast

• 1871 England & Wales Census (occupation and birthplace added to 22,808,909 entries)
• England & Wales, Crime, Prisons & Punishment, 1770-1935 (62,569 / 6,662,616)
• Teachers' Registration Council Registers 1914-1948 (612 new plus improvements to existing records / 102,118)
• Northamptonshire Militia Lists 1762-1819 (13,351/26,819)

FreeBMD

• Civil birth, marriage, death registrations from 1837 (new total: 293,635,325 unique entries)

TheGenealogist

• Worcestershire parish records (120,000 / 2,650,000)

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I 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 contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

The Spring edition of Irish Roots Magazine has been published

The latest edition of Irish Roots magazine, Ireland's only independent magazine dedicated to Irish genealogy, has been published.

It is, as always, filled with helpful guidance, informative features and all the latest news and developments to help researchers discover more about their ancestral heritage, whether their family remained on the island or emigrated to near or distant new homes.

You'll find the following articles in the new issue:

- Visiting the UCG Archives: The James Joyce Library
- Local resources for family history research: County Mayo
- Mayo's connection to Saint Thomas More
- St Patrick's Day in Holyoke, Massachusetts
- Genealogy tips from the IGRS
- What's New? Review of latest record releases
- Surnames of County Mayo
- Tracing my ancestors from Wisconsin to Westmeath Pt2
- Australian Connections: Irish in the North End
- Using Irish naming conventions to research
- Overcoming the pitfalls of online church records
- DNA research: Frequent queries answered

Irish Roots is published quarterly and is available in print and digital formats, in single issues or on subscription.

To find out more, and to download a sample copy of this new edition, click the cover image.

Records from 15 more Cork graveyards join SkibbHeritage database

Skibbereen Heritage's excellent Cork Graveyard Database has been updated with another tranche of burial register records. This upload of 27,000 records brings the total number of burials in the collection to 82,702, while the number of cemeteries and burial grounds covered has risen to 128.

Most of the deaths occurred in the 20th century and early 21st. Burials in the last ten years are not included.

The records have been made available to Skibbereen Heritage Centre by Cork County Council, who are now responsible for each of the sites and hold the original registers.

This latest tranche of records relate to burials from the following graveyards:

The updated database includes records from 128 graveyards

• St Mary's Passage West
• Ballyclough
• Burnfoot
• Banteer
• Killingley
• Carrigaline St Mary's
• St John's Coachford
• North Kilmurry near Berrings
• Kilmurry St Mary's
• Marmullane, Kilmueey
• Matehy
• Aghabulloge
• Garrycloyne, All Saints
• Dunbullogue
• Kilfauygnabeg, Old Graveyard

Having extended the geograpahical spread of this collection, the West Cork Graveyard Database has been renamed the Cork Graveyard Database.

Huge congratulations and thanks to the SkibbHeritage team for their ongoing hard work in creating this wonderful and free collection.

Four new record-sets join Ancestry's Ireland collection

Ancestry has uploaded four new Irish collections to its database:

Ireland, Guinness Employee Records, 1799-1939
Of the four, this is the collection that has the potential to unlock genealogical information about your ancestor if he or she was employed by Guinness.

The 204,605 records can include the following information for each individual: name, age and gender, marital status, date and place of birth, marriage date, employment and death dates, street address, occupation and place of work, spouse's name, age and birthdate, and the names, ages and relationships of up to four relatives.

The collection contains many different types of records: wages, authorization logs, next of kin records, and how and when a person worked for the company.

Ireland, Guinness Trade Ledgers, 1860-1960

This record set contains images of trade ledgers produced by Guinness Brewery employees in Dublin and England between 1860 and 1960. The ledgers record sales to trade customers, typically pubs and general grocers.

These entries sometimes show details of individual orders and their value, but may also record the deaths of publicans, and the names of their successors (see image).

In total, there are 1,452,426 records in this collection.

Ireland, Dublin Coopers Society and Brewers' Guild Records, 1702-1945
This small index of just 276 names can be used to confirm whether your ancestor was a member of the Coopers and Brewers Guild in Dublin at a specific point in time. It can also provide details of your ancestor's residence while a Guild member and, sometimes, a date of death or even exclusion.

Ireland, 2nd and 3rd Edition Map, 1899-1905
This collection contains images of second- and third-edition Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland produced between 1899 and 1905.

The maps use a scale in which one inch equals a mile, and they were based on previous maps that used a larger scale. They show details of cities and villages, roads, railroads, and topographical information and can be useful in family history when borders might have shifted over time or the names of places have changed. Comparing maps of a similar scale allows you to accurately place your ancestors.

UPDATE, 9 March: Ancestry has announced that the Guiness collections will be free to search and view until 22 March 2024.

New at FindMyPast: Irish Land Purchase Acts: transfers to tenants, 1891-1920

Making its debut online at FindMyPast is an important collection recording (pre-Independence) government loan advances made to tenant farmers for the purchase of their land. The source material is the monthly/annual Returns of Advances Under the Irish Land Purchase Acts, published by HM Stationery from records created by the Land Commission. It contains more than 741,000 records noting the transfer of about 13.5million acres from the landlord elite to some 400,000 tenants.

FindMyPast has named the record-set the Ireland, Land Commission Advances, 1891-1920 collection.

If you're unfamiliar with the purpose and work of the Irish Land Commission, read FindMyPast's 'Learn More' description as a starter. You'll find some useful background material in Professor Terence Dooley's History Today feature, Wikipedia, and this Irish Times article from 2022.

As I'm attending a family wedding this weekend, I've had only a brief chance overnight to peek into these records, so can't provide a detailed overview at this point. I'll explore further next week and gather some reaction from genealogists, too.

Enjoy!

My great-grandfather's purchase of his tiny allotment on which he and his wife had raised nine children.