Free tickets to Back To Our Past

I'm pleased to report that the organisers of Back To Our Past, the Irish genealogy feast that will be taking place this weekend at the RDS in Dublin, have 'opened the door', as it were, directly to the serious family historians who read this blog!

Readers can now download a free entry ticket. Just click on the image below to download the pdf. You'll see that not only will you be entitled to free entry on any of the three days of the show (Friday 11th, Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th), you can even take part in a competition being run by Select Hotels with the chance to win one of five weekend breaks for four people in Ireland. (Genealogy AND a holiday.... now you're talking!)

In addition to the forty-odd exhibitors who'll be ready, waiting and willing to talk to family historians about their research and see how they can help you find out more about your ancestors, there's a terrific schedule of lectures available. Every one of them is free, and they're offered on a first-come, first-served basis. The full programme is here and it's worth spending a bit of time plotting out your day at the RDS so that you don't miss the talks that will most help your research.

All the main details (opening hours, location) you need are on the free ticket, but if you want more info, visit the show website.

Click image to download free ticket

More digital conversions available from Eneclann

Over the last few months, Eneclann has been busily converting its range of useful publications into easy to download digital versions. This makes them cheaper, and there's no postage or packaging fees to stump up.

The latest batch to have the digital treatment consists of 29 titles. Here's a few of the titles, to give you a taster:

• Kenny's Irish Manufacturers' Directory 1919 – a special discount brings the digital version down to just €2.25 (+Vat for EU customers)
  
• Real Life in Ireland by a Real Paddy, 1821 – complete with cartoons. €9.90 (+Vat for EU customers)
  
• The (Quaker) Annual Monitor for 1849 – €3.79 (+Vat for EU customers)
  
• Mr Tuke's Fund for Assisted Emigration 1882-5. €9.90 (+Vat for EU customers)
  

You can find the full list of new titles here.

Take Three: Recent updates by the 'Big 3'

I've been away for a few days, during which time a few collections have been added to the three major family history databases. Here they are:

Find My Past UK has finally joined its sister sites in Australia/NZ, Ireland and the US in introducing a World subscription package. You can see the list of Irish records available through the UK site here.

An introductory subscription rate is currently available. This brings the normal price of a 12-month package down by £20 to £139.95, while the 6-month subscription has a £10 discount, reducing the fee to £89.95.

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Ancestry has added an index to Find A Grave Ireland. Within this index are details of 45,201 grave records covering deaths from 1750 to 2011.

A search on the main Ancestry search interface returns a Results page of likely candidates ie a search for Bridget Tierney born c1850 returns a list of just one. By choosing that option, you are advised that the Bridget Tierney to which this record relates is buried in Drumcliff Cemetery in Ennis, co Clare, and that the details can be found on FindAGrave. You can then click to see the details on that site.

Details provided by FindAGrave vary enormously.

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FamilySearch has added some more English and Welsh records that may be of use to your Irish genealogy research.

Montgomeryshire Parish Registers 1538-1912: For some unknown reason these 416,043 records were excluded from the big upload of 2.3million indexed Welsh records at the tail end of last month. These have now been added, and complete the Welsh parish register line-up (see updated list here).

Northumberland, Cumberland and Durham, Miscellaneous Records 1570-2005: This collection, published as browsable images only, includes parish registers, electoral registers, Non-conformist records and Parish Chest records for some 80-odd parishes.

History and the Media: Lecture

This Thursday, 11 October, at the School of English and History, University of Ulster, the inaugural T.K. Daniel Lecture will be given by Dr Patrick Geoghegan,Department of History, Trinity College Dublin.

Dr Geoghegan is the biographer of Daniel O’Connell and the presenter of Talking History (Newstalk 106-108 FM). He will speak on History and the Media.

A wine reception will follow the lecture.

Venue: Room MD008 (main building),Magee College,Derry.
Time: 6.30pm.
Fee: Free.
All are welcome to attend.

Foreign Births Registration system updated

Genealogy and citizenship come together in the Foreign Births Registration (FBR) system, which has just been updated.

Anyone who has gone the FBR route (essentially claiming citizenship – and with it the right to an Irish passport – through a grandparent born in Ireland) will know that the procedure was very expensive and very, very slow.

To use the official speak: A person born to a parent who, although not born in Ireland, was otherwise an Irish citizen at the time of the parent's birth, can become an Irish citizen by applying for Foreign Births Registration. In other words, if your Irish grandparent left Ireland before your parent was born, you are entitled to claim Irish citizenship.

To do so, you have to have your name added to the Foreign Births Register.

For the last five weeks or so the old manual application system has been suspended while an online procedure was put in place on the Department of Foreign Affairs website. This is now live.

However, the procedure is still far from automated. Basically, you fill in the form online, print it off, complete with your application number, and then spend a few weeks getting together all the documents you need.

A typical application has to follow the familiar genealogical trail, so would involve submission of the following documents:

• Birth certificate of Ireland-born grandparent
  
• Marriage certificate of Ireland-born grandparent
  
• Copy of passport, identity document or death certificate of Ireland-born grandparent
  
• Birth certificate of applicant's parent (child of Ireland-born grandparent)
  
• Marriage certificate of applicant's parents (if appropriate)
  
• Copy of passport, identity document or death certificate of applicant's parent (child of Ireland-born grandparent)
  
• Birth certificate of applicant
  
• Copy passport of applicant (or other identity document)
  

Needless to say, these certificates cannot be photocopies. So there's a fair expenditure involved in getting these together.

And then there's the cost of the application. For adults, the fee is €137, including an FBR certificate, which is needed for a subsequent passport application. For minors, it's €52.

Local embassies will set their own equivalents in their currencies.

The application, complete with all supporting documents and fee, is then submitted to the local embassy/mission.

Whether or not this speeds up the FBR process (I can't see much difference to the old system, except that an application number is allocated when the application form is submitted online) remains to be seen.

Department of Foreign Affairs/FBR applications: Official website.

Events in the first two weeks of October

Thursday 4 October: Celebrating Ireland's Archival Heritage Conference, Harbour Hotel, The Docks, Galway. Very interesting programme with well-respected speakers. Details.

Friday 5 October: The Civic Guard Mutiny, with Dr Brian McCarthy. Garda Siochana Historical Society. Garda Club, Harrington Street, Dublin. 7.30pm. All welcome. 

Saturday 6 October: An introduction to Irish family history, with Dr Irene O'Brien. Mitchell Library, Granville Street, Glasgow G3 7DN. 10am-1pm. £15. To book: tel: 0141 287 2999.

Saturday 6 October: Irish genealogy workshop, with Tom Toohey. Six ways to research your family history. Part of a series of three workshops, each independent of the others. Amesbury Public Library, 149 Main Street, Amesbury, MA 01913. 2pm. Space limited. Registration required. Tel: 978 388 8148.

Saturday 6 October: Local History Day, at Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse Street, Dublin. See programme. Free, but booking essential.


Tuesday 9 October: The Military Archives, with Padraic Kennedy. Sources for military history and recent initiatives from the team at Cathal Brugha Barracks. National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. 7pm. Free. No booking.

Tuesday 9 October: The Augustinian's Tale, with Stuart Kinsella. Part of the Tales of Medieval Dublin series. 1.05pm. Free. Wood Quay Venue, Civic Offices, Dublin.

Tuesday 9 October: The Registry of Deeds as Aide for the Genealogist, with Dara Guidera and Emily Moore. Genealogical Society of Ireland. Dún Laoghaire College of Further Education, Cumberland Street, Dún Laoghaire. 8pm. €3.00.

Wednesday 10 October: Family History Workshop for beginners, at Dromore Library, Co Down. 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm. Free, but booking recommended. Tel:  or email.

Thursday 11 October: Great Hunger Museum/Museam An Ghorta Mór opens to the public at 3011 Whitney Avenue, near the Quinnipiac University's Mount Carmel and York Hill campuses, Connecticut. The museum claims to house the world’s largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the starvation and forced emigration that occurred throughout Ireland from 1845 to 1852. Details.

Friday 12 to Sunday 14 October: Back To Our Past, Ireland's very own genealogy exhibition and fair,  RDS, Dublin. €10.00 on the door.

Saturday 13 October: Sean McLoughlin, Ireland's Forgotten Revolutionary, a talk with author Charlie McGuire about a man who played a major role during the Easter Rising in 1916 and progressed from republican to socialist and communist politics. He not only played a major part in Ireland's fight for freedom but also contributed to the struggle for revolutionary socialism in Britain in the early-mid 1920s. Working Class Movement Library, 51 The Crescent, Salford M5 4WX, UK. 2pm. All welcome. Admission free. Details.

Ancestry updates Chicago Irish families 1875-1920

Ancestry says it has updated its Irish in Chicago 1875-1920 collection. I guess we'll just have to believe them!

As is typical of these 'updates', no detail is provided to explain what, exactly, has been updated. The news listing gives a figure of 8916 records, but no indication as to whether this is the number of updated records or the total number of records within the collection.

The main description doesn't help very much, either. It reads as follows:

Source Information
Cook, Tom. Chicago Irish Families, 1875-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2000.

About Chicago Irish Families, 1875-1925
Perhaps as important a destination as Boston or New York for Irish immigrants, Chicago was the destination for many immigrants from the Emerald Isle in the 19th and 20th Century. This database is a collection of records regarding many of the Irish families who made their home in this city between 1875 and 1925. Newly updated to add over 5,000 entries, information provided includes births, marriages, and deaths, often including names of relatives. Taken from a wide variety of sources, including local histories, parish records, local newspapers, and cemetery inscriptions, this can be an extremely helpful database for those researching Irish-American ancestors.

So now we have mention of 'over 5000' newly updated entries. But is this an updated description?

It gets even less clear if you then venture into the records. After making a search, the results page will include a little note 'about this collection' (see right), which states that there are 12,500 records....

Come on Ancestry. If it's worth highlighting an update to an existing collection, give your customers a clearer indication of what's improved.

October issue of Irish Lives Remembered published

The October issue of Irish Lives Remembered has been published.

This month, the free digital-only magazine highlights genealogy resources in County Sligo. It also includes features on School Roll Books, Emigration and family photographs.

You can view online or download to pdf here.

Back To Our Past: official preview

Back To Our Past is just over a week away, and the organisers have issued the following preview of what's on offer.

The organisers of the Back To Our Past Show are pleased to announce that Ancestry.com has become the event’s title sponsor. Ancestry.com recently moved its international operations to Dublin and its support for such an important feature within Irish genealogy is a welcome development.

BTOP 2012, an Irish heritage experience, takes place in the Industries Hall at the RDS, Dublin, on the weekend of 12-14 October 2012. This time it embraces the broader historical world, while genealogy remains at the core of the event.

The programme of presentations to be given over the three days of BTOP may now be viewed on the event’s website www.backtoourpast.com. The Friday morning starts appropriately with ‘In the Beginning … ’ and Sunday afternoon finishes with ‘Dead Money’. Sandwiched between are talks on diverse historical and genealogical topics given by highly regarded speakers.

There are two strands of presentations running concurrently. They are free to those attending BTOP and there is no booking facility, so the tip is to choose your favourite talks in advance and get to the relevant presentation area early.

There’s a great choice. From care of documents and photographs to exploring your DNA, family historians have plenty to look forward to. In the run up to The Gathering in 2013, Helen Kelly talks about the deeply personal connection involved in ‘retracing ancestral footprints’. If looking overseas for emigrant great-granduncles and their descendants is part of your research, Else Churchill’s presentation on the Irish in Victorian London may be on your list, while there are other talks on researching British, American and Canadian records. Back home, John Tierney talks about exploring graveyards on-line.

You can also learn about two new genealogical sources. One is TIARA’s Foresters Project, involving over 50,000 life insurance policies from the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters. The Foresters were founded in 1879 by Irish immigrants, and the records provide valuable genealogical information, often linking back to Ireland.

The other new source is the Morpeth Testimonial Roll, a document containing the names and addresses of almost 300,000 Irishmen. The roll was presented to the departing Chief Secretary, Lord Morpeth, in 1841. Currently it is held in NUI Maynooth and it is being indexed as part of Ancestry.com’s World Archives Project.

As all genealogists know, historical context is vitally important. Lorna Elms of the National Museum – Country Life – introduces her audience to the on-line Irish Community Archive Network, which is bringing local history to the world. Also championing that cause is Larry Breen of the Federation of Local History Societies. Learning about the Irish Landmark Trust or post office history are other options. Then there are three authors telling you about the Cistercian Order in medieval Ireland, Martello towers in Dublin and some of the greatest villains of Irish history.

Don’t forget that Eric Knowles of BBC’s Antiques Roadshow will be offering his expert opinion on treasured heirlooms, while other familiar faces from television – Nicola Morris, John Grenham and Steven Smyrl – will be offering advice on genealogy when they’re not speaking in the presentation areas. You may be planning to visit BTOP on one of the days, but when you study the line-up of speakers you may just be tempted to spend the whole weekend at the RDS.

Limerick Leader post-1948 online

Click logo to visit site

The Irish Newspaper Archive has quietly added the Limerick Leader 1948-2000 to its online subscription-based collection.

These more recent issues join those from 1905 which were already available on the site.

There is no indication on the home page, nor indeed in the search options, of this update, but the post-1948 issues are there! I've just done a search for 'Pat Tobin', using the Limerick Leader 1905-1948 filter, and there he is, bold as brass, on page 39 of the newspaper dated September 09, 1995. In fact, the issues available seem to go past the year 2000, as I've just looked at some from 2002.

Thanks to John O'Gorman for spotting that this unheralded update had been made!

UPDATE (9 October): I've just received official confirmation that the dates included in this recent upload are from 1949 to 1970 and 1989 to 2004, both chunks inclusive. There is currently no access to the paper from 1971 to 1988.