And another upload for RootsIreland's County Kerry collection

Here we go for another upload - the fifth since May – to RootsIreland.ie's County Kerry database.

This time, it's a batch of nearly 3,000 Roman Catholic marriage records from two parishes, as follows:

• Allihies* Parish, 1823-1872 (1594 records)
• Kilgarvan Parish, 1818-1895 (1304 records)

* Please note that Allihies Parish is located on the Atlantic tip of the Beara Peninsula and is in County Cork. However, like all RC parishes on the Peninsula, it is within the boundaries of the Diocese of Kerry, so these records are correctly, if confusingly, held in the County Kerry database.

With this upload, there are now 346,000 records in the Kerry database.

To view an up-to-date list of Kerry sources, click the logo above right. Or to search the records go to kerry.rootsireland.ie and login or subscribe as required.

Irish History from Plantation to Partition: Free online lecture series

    Petty's map of Ireland, 1695

Armagh Robinson Library, in collaboration with Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, has organised a six-week lecture series that will explore Irish history from the Plantation of Ulster to Partition.

The free lectures will be delivered by Zoom on Wednesday evenings (7.30pm-8.30pm) from 13 October to 17 November.

Here's the programme:

• Wednesday 13 October: The establishment of Ulster's Plantation Towns, with Dr Brendan Scott (Historian-in-Residence, Cavan CoCo)
• Wednesday 20 October: From the 1641 Rising to the Restoration, with Dr Robert Armstrong (TCD)
• Wednesday 27 October: The Williamite-Jacobite War, with Professor David Hayton (QUB)
• Wednesday 3 November: Revolutionary Ulster, 1776-1801, with Dr Andrew Holmes (QUB)
• Wednesday 10 November: The Great Famine and 19th-century politics pre-1870, with Professor Peter Gray (QUB)
• Wednesday 17 November: Home Rule and the Road to Partition, with Dr Eamon Phoenix

You can book online here for the full series or for individual lectures. If you prefer, you can reserve your place by email to admin@armgahrobinsonlibrary.co.uk or call 028 3752 3142.

Irish genealogy and history events, 28 September to 16 October

Continuing to 10 October: Dublin Festival of History 2021 presents some 100 free events, both online and in-person. Host: Dublin City Council. More tickets have already had to be made available, such was the response to some events, so don't delay in booking your tickets. See http://dublinfestivalofhistory.ie

Tuesday 28 September: Tracing your Irish Family online, with Chris Paton. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Belfast Branch. An online lecture. All welcome to join the zoom meeting. 7:30pm. Email belfast@nifhs.org by 6pm for details and links.

Wednesday 29 September: From Townhouse to Tenement, with Dr Tim Murtagh and Ciarán Wallace. Part of the 14 Henrietta Street Teatime Talks series. Zoom. Free. Need to register.

Friday 1 October: Aspects of life and death in the Workhouse, with Clare Doyle MAGI. A First Friday Talk from the Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna. Online at 8pm. Fee €5 via paypal. To book.

Wednesday 6 October: The Path to Partition, 1900–1922, with Dr Eamon Phoenix. Host: Heritage from Home Series / LibrariesNI. A free online lecture starting at 12:30pm. Booking essential.

Thursday 7 October: Rathmines Through Time and Space: From Medieval Rath to Flatland, with Seamas O Maitiu. Hosted by the Irish Historic Towns Atlas/Royal Irish Academy as part of Dublin Festival of History. Zoom lecture. Free. 7pm to 8:30pm. Need to book.

Thursday 7 October to 6 November: The Art Of Negotiation: John Lavery's Anglo Irish Treaty Portraits, an exhibition, with talks and tours throughout the month. Embassy of Ireland, 17 Grosvenor Place, London SW1X 7HR. Free tickets.

Tuesday 12 October: The Significance of the Irish Townland as an Analytical Tool for the genealogist and local historian, with the founder of CavanTownlands.com, Michael McShane. Host: The Genealogical Society of Ireland. 8pm, on zoom. All welcome. For details, email Membership@familyhistory.ie

Tuesday 12 to Saturday 23 October: The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives, an in-person exhibition. Hosts: Irish Embassy in London, National Archives of Ireland, British Academy and Royal Irish Academy. Venue: British Academy, Carlton House Terrace, St. James's, London SW1Y 5AH. Free but booking essential. Timed admission slots available throughout the day.

Tuesday 12 October: More than two sides to every border story, with Dr Darach MacDonald. Host: Heritage from Home Series / LibrariesNI. A free online lecture starting at 12:30pm. Booking essential.

Tuesday 12 October: A fight to the finish: The 1920 Hunger Strike of Michael Fitzgerald, an online lecture with Gerard Shannon. Host: Áras Uí Chonghaile | James Connolly Visitor Centre. Zoom. 8pm. YouTube or Facebook. No need to book.

Wednesday 13 October: The Boer War and its Legacy, with Dr Spencer Jones. Host: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Free. Online. 8pm to 9pm. Need to book.

Thursday 14 October: The 1798 rebellion in Offaly, with Dr Ciaran Reilly. Host: Offaly Libraries History Lecture Series 2021. Online via Offaly Libraries’ Facebook and YOUTUBE channels. Free to view. 7:30pm.

 

A small addition to RootsIreland.ie's Kerry database of RC records

RootsIreland.ie, the database created by the Irish Family History Foundation's island-wide network of genealogy centres, has received another update, this time with more records from County Kerry.

This update is small – just 2,300 baptism records for the parish of Knocknagoshel dating from 1867–1907 – but as welcome as any others. It also pushes the number of Kerry records added to the database in the last four months to an impressive 340,300. All have been Catholic records.

To view an up-to-date list of Kerry sources, click the logo right. Or to search the records go to kerry.rootsireland.ie and login or subscribe as required.

New and updated British genealogy collections: 10-day summary

Below is a summary of new and updated family history record collections for England, Scotland and Wales released by the major genealogy databases over the last 10 days (see previous summary, 13 September).

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help family historians 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 parenthesis in the New Collections section are the numbers of records/images in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parenthesis 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. 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

BritishNewspaperArchive (and shared with sister company FindMyPast)

• New titles in main collection ($£€) – (now more than 45m pages in holding)

	Borough of Greenwich Free Press	Hammersmith Advertiser
	South London Times and Lambeth Observer	Southwark Mercury
	Clerkenwell Dial & Finsbury Advertiser	Islington Times
	The North Londoner	Lynn News & County Press
	British Banner 1856	British Banner 1848
	Deal, Walmer & Sandwich Mercury	Paddington Advertiser
	Cornish Press & Mining News	Surrey Middlesex Standard
	Liverpool Chronicle 1767	North-West London Times
	West Londoner and Select Advertiser for the Borough of Marylebone	Palladium 1825

FamilySearch

• England, Archdiocese of Birmingham, RC Parish Records, 1539-1910 (589,802)

ScottishIndexes

• Criminal Database – Crown Counsel Procedure Books, 1863–1871 (22,391) see video

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK and Ireland FindAGrave Index (new total 13,116,964)

FamilySearch

• England, Herefordshire Bishop's Transcripts, 1583-1898 (3,260)
• England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988 (181,728)
• England, Northumberland Non-Conformist Church Records, 1613-1920 (12,883)
• England, Lancashire Non-Conformist Church Records, 1647-1996 (39,138)

FindMyPast

• England & Wales, Electoral Registers 1910-1932 (32m names/12m addresses added. New total 157,307,378 records)
• Scotland Monumental Inscriptions

FreeBMD

• Civil registration indexes 1837–1992 (3,664,966 / 285,283,867)

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.

Next in the Irish Historic Towns Atlas's Suburb Series is Rathmines

The next publication from the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Historic Towns Atlas desk will be the second in the Dublin Suburb Series and will explore the vibrant neighbourhood of Rathmines.

Click cover image to order your copy

Written by lecturer, writer and editor Séamas Ó Máitiú, the 152-page paperback will be officially published next month. It presents a number of historic maps showing how the topography changed from medieval ráth to early modern castle, and from 19th-century village to wealthy residential suburb, local government administrative centre and 20th-century flatland. A gazetteer of over 1,000 sites and accompanying essay provides the detailed topographical history of Rathmines from earliest times up to c1970.

The Dublin Suburb Series was launched in 2017 with the arrival of Clontarf by Colm Lennon. The series is published by the RIA in association with Dublin City Council, and three more studies of the capital's suburbs are already planned. They will give the in-depth 'historical atlas' treatment to Drumcondra, Kilmainham/Inchicore and Ringsend/Irishtown.

To coincide with the launch of the paperback, Dr Séamas Ó Máitiú will be presenting a free online lecture – Rathmines Through Time and Space: From Medieval Rath to Flatland – on Thursday 7 October as part of the Dublin Festival of History. Find out more and book your ticket here.

BritishNewspaperArchive races past the 45-million-pages marker

The online BritishNewspaperArchive (BNA), a partnership between the British Library and BrightSolid (the owner of FindMyPast), has been adding historical newspaper titles to its database at an ferocious rate recently.

The online BritishNewspaperArchive, a partnership between the British Library and Brightsolid (the owner of FindMypast), has been adding historical newspaper titles to its database at an ferocious rate recently. To be precise, its total page count as of this morning (45,063,642) has increased by more than a million in seven weeks and, while still uploading additions to its existing titles, has seen 76 titles make their debut in the last 30 days alone.

Sadly, none of the new titles is an Irish paper, but some of the recently updated page count does include additions to the existing holding of 213 newspapers published in Ireland, so it's not as if we've been completely overlooked!

The full collection (British, Irish and colonial), is available to search on both the BNA site and, depending on subscription package, at FindMyPast's.

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.

FamilySearch's digitisation project completes nearly 30 years early!

FamilySearch has announced the completion of its ambitious project to digitise its entire microfilm library.

The work of digitising the organisation's 2.4million rolls of microfilm – a collection that started to grow some 83 years ago – began in 1998. It was expected to take up to 50 years to complete. To the great benefit of people all over the world, it has taken 'just' 23 years.

The Utah-based organisation has issued a statement today about this impressive achievement, and provides some interesting history and facts and figures about the project. You can read it here.

RootsIreland.ie adds 20,000 more records for County Armagh

Armagh Ancestry, the Irish Family History Foundation's Genealogy Centre for County Armagh, has announced the addition of more than 20,000 records to its database on RootsIreland.ie.

The new records include:

• Kilmore Church of Ireland – additional baptisms
• Portadown – Church of Ireland baptisms
• Kilmore – Church of Ireland deaths
• Gravestone inscriptions
• Various corrections and additions made to existing Armagh record sets

For a list of collections held by Armagh Ancestry, go to the RootsIreland's Online Sources for Armagh.

To search the records, click the logo above and login or subscribe as necessary.

PRONI reinstates on-demand document ordering for visiting researchers

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has relaxed some of its strictest covid-related regulations for researchers. This move will see the building open to the public between 10am and 4pm Monday to Friday, and appointment-only access to the Research and Search Rooms operating between these hours.

Appointments are allocated with a staggered arrival time between 10am and 11;20am on the day of the visit, and the appointment lasts all day.

One research appointment per week is the maximum any individual researchers can request, and appointments are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Bookings open every Monday at 1pm, and appointment slots are made available three weeks in advance.

From today, PRONI is returning to its on-demand (onsite) document ordering service. Researchers booking an appointment are no longer required to submit references for the material they want to consult;; they will be able to order an unlimited number of records onsite during their visit (up to five items at a time).

PRONI's website has been updated this morning with all the necessary information for visitors, along with a link to the booking system. You can read it here.