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:
– 11 May
– 25 May
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 across the four NLI sites, see the NLI website.
FindMyPast.ie's latest addition is a collection of voters' registers relating to three elections held in the second half of the 18th century. The record-set has been launched as the Limerick City & County Electoral Registers 1760-1776 collection and holds 2,548 transcriptions.
As far as I'm aware, these records, sourced from the National Library of Ireland, have not previously been available online.
The registers record those who voted in the Limerick in the elections of 1761, 1768 and 1776. They note who the individual voted for, their place of residence and the address of the property through which they qualified for a vote.
At this time, County Limerick was entitled to elect two MPs to the Dublin Parliament; entitlement to vote was restricted to adult men who possessed freehold property with a minimum value of £2 per year or were Freemen of Limerick City.
A sample search return from the 1768 election (which took place at St Francis's Abbey, 11-16 July) shows Patrick Fitzgibbon, who lived at Newcastle and held property at Manister-nenagh valued at more than £2pa, voted for "m.o.". Eight years later, now residing in Manister, he voted for Hugh Massy ("hm").
Be sure to read the collection home page before searhing.
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 General Register Office of Ireland's Public Search facility in Dublin has changed its opening hours again.
The office, which is located in Werburgh Street, to the west of Dublin Castle, is now open on Tuesdays only, from 9:30am to 4:30pm and will remain open over the lunch period.
It's true this is an improvement on the original post-pandemic timetable, which changed from week to week with little advance notice, required two-hour appointments and had a lunchtime kick out.
Oh, for the days, pre-lockdown, when the walk-in service operated a full five days a week.
The Monday–Friday email service is often extremely efficient, sometimes with turnaround within less than 24 hours. Sadly, such speed can't be relied upon. (In April, I waited for just under three weeks for a birth cert research copy.)
The hugely successful free-to-view RIP.ie database has been acquired by the Irish Times Group.
Founded in 2005 by brother and sister team Jay and Dympna Coleman of County Louth, the site has been publishing death announcements and funeral notices (and much more) since July 2006.
Although so recently established, it has become a trusted resource in Ireland and can be useful to genealogists looking to update their family trees. Each notice is placed by the funeral director and typically includes information about the deceased's relatives and sometimes other personal details.
The opportunity for family, friends, colleagues and other acquaintances to upload condolences to the site has become extremely popular since Covid 19 arrived, and can often be another rich source for family history.
The site's sale raised immediate concerts that the platform would be placed behind a paywall. However, in a statement issued yesterday, the Irish Times Group committed to keeping RIP.ie 'free to view' following its acquisition.
Last month brought another bumper delivery of files to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives from the volunteer team. The additions include headstone photos and transcribed inscriptions from seven burial grounds plus church records from two Ulster congregations, one Presbyterian, the other Methodist.
As always, these files have been contributed by researchers for the benefit of other researchers, and are available on a free-to-access basis. If you have any similar records or photos, please consider donating them to IGPArchives. You can find out how to contribute here.
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| Headstones to Conway family in Illinaspic graveyard, Mooncoin, Co. Kilkenny. Photo courtesy of Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives and the contributor, Emma Bates. Click for enlarged image. |
CARLOW Genealogy Archives - Headstones
St. Lazerian Cemetery, Kildavin
CAVAN Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Laragh Old Cemetery (Updated)
CLARE Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Holy Rosary Graveyard, Doolin, Part 2
DONEGAL Genealogy Archives - Church Records
Ballyshannon Methodist Marriages, 1872-1920
KERRY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Listowel Burial Ground - Partial
KILKENNY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Killinaspic Pt 2, Mooncoin, Completed
TYRONE Genealogy Archives - Church Records
Sion Mills Presbyterian Marriages 1866-1921
WEXFORD Genealogy Archives
HeadstonesCalvary Cemetery Pt. 2, Bunclody
Memorials St David's Interior, Family of Adoration Convent, Ferns
WICKLOW Genealogy Archives - Headstones
St. Brigid's Graveyard, Annacurra
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 previous list, see 11/4 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.
Figures in parentheses are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in each new collection.
AncestryUnless otherwise stated, where there is only one figure in parenthesis, it reflects the total number of records in the updated collection. Where there are two figures, the first is the number of records added in the recent update, the second is the revised total number.
FamilySearchSome 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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
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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
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?
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| 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)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
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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
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 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.
As previously reported, construction work has closed the Reading Room of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast since early March.
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| 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.
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:
For more information, see TCD's press release or explore the new dedicated project website at voicesproject.ie.
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.
Figures in parentheses are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in each new collection.
AncestryUnless 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.
AncestrySome 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.
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.
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| If the link doesn't work for you, log out of your Ancestry account and try again. |
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.
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.
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| 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
The National Library of Ireland will be running an eight-week Beginners Genealogy Research course starting this Wednesday, 10 April.
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 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.)
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.
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.
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| 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
The Society of Genealogists (SoG) is to host an 8-week online Irish family history course starting next week.
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| 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
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.
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| For enlarged view, click image |
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:
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.
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.
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.
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| Sample entries from the 1865 edition of The Belfast And Province Of Ulster Directory |
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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.
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.
