Dead Money TV series resurrected by RTE 1

L-R: Steven and Kit Smyrl

Dead Money, the RTE1 documentary series depicting the work of legal genealogists Steven and Kit Smyrl, is being repeated from this Friday at 8:30pm.

The show follows the brothers as they search for next-of-kin to unclaimed estates. Although their firm, Massey and King, is based in Dublin, they have a network of researchers and agents across the globe, so they can trace beneficiaries no matter where they now reside, and the six episodes of Dead Money take them to England, the USA, France, Scotland, as well as Ireland.

While it is dogged genealogical research that moves each story along at a pace, each family's case is set in its historical context, right up to the often emotional reveal when the located relatives discover their entitlement to a sum of money – sometimes a small fortune.

Produced by ProMedia, Dead Money was first screened in 2012 when it was watched by some 29% of the total viewing public. The series has been repeated twice since then, and received a 2013 Irish Film & Television Award nomination.

The series will be screened over the next six Fridays on RTE1. In this Friday's episode, Steven and Kit Smyrl visit America as they search for the heirs to a Galway estate worth €500,000, and discover how a family overcame poverty to build a new life after emigrating from Ireland. The Smyrls' quest also sees them reuniting Irish and American cousins in Boston.

New book tells Derry's emigration story

A new book, Derry~Londonderry: Gateway to a new world, has been published. Written by well-known genealogist Brian Mitchell MAPGI, who heads Derry City Council's Genealogy Service, the book is subtitled The story of emigration from the Foyle by sail and steam.

Having taken Brian some thirty years of research to compile, the book outlines three centuries of Irish emigration through the port of Derry.

The dust-jacket explains: "Derry remained a major Irish emigration port throughout all significant phases of emigration: such as the 18th century outflow of Ulster-Scots to colonial America; pre-Famine, Famine and post-Famine emigration to North America and further afield; and cross-channel migration to Britain via Glasgow and Liverpool.

"In the age of sailing ships, from 1680 to 1860, Derry was the port of departure for the peoples of Derry, Donegal and Tyrone. In the age of steamship and railways, from 1861 to 1939, migrants from Ulster, north Connacht and north Leinster left Ireland through Derry.

"The journey for some 9 million of the Irish Diaspora, now living in Great Britain, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, began in Derry. This is where the story of their new life began: for example, their ancestor may have boarded a sailing ship at Shipquay Place; or stopped at Gweedore Bar, Waterloo Street on their way from west Donegal to Glasgow on the Scotch Boat; or arrived in Derry by rail, lodged in Bridge Street and then headed down the Foyle, on a tender, to connect with a transatlantic liner at Moville."

The book costs £3. ISBN is 978-0-9515977-2-9.

UPDATE 14 May: The book is now available in the USA via Genealogical.com.

Morpeth Roll: two lectures in Belfast, 23 January

With the Morpeth Roll exhibition at the Naughton Gallery, QUB, now in its final week, two lectures will be presented at Queens University Belfast on Thursday 23 January, as follows:

3pm–4pm: The Morpeth Roll and its role in Irish Genealogy, with Niamh McNally of Ancestry.com
5pm–6pm: The Irish viceroyalty in the era of the Morpeth Roll 1835-47, with Prof Peter Gray, QUB

The venue is the Auditorium, McClay Library, and the free event is open to the general public, as well as students and staff of Queen's University Belfast.

The exhibition will be open until Sunday 26 January in the Lanyon Building, from 11am–4pm daily. Tel: 028 9097 3580.

All about funerals! Lecture series at Glasnevin

Glasnevin Museum is to host a weekly lecture series on the subject of funerals, that is funerals of historical figures, and how they have shaped the political and public consciousness.

The lectures start next month will be held on Thursdays. Brief details are below.

13 February: Illustrious Corpses: Burying Nationalist Ireland's Heroes,
                   with Professor Michael Laffan

20 February: Theobald Wolfe Tone's grave at Bodenstown: From long silence to milling crowds,
                    with Dr Christopher J. Woods

27 February: Poor Granua weeps: mourning and political mobilisation in O'Connell's Ireland,
                    with Dr Maura Cronin

6 March     : Terence Bellew MacManus and the Making of the Fenian Funeral,
                    with Dr Pauric Travers

13 March     : 'A great city wrapped in gloom': the demise of Paul Cullen, Ireland's first cardinal'
                    with Professor Daire Keogh,

20 March     : ‘Under the great comedians tomb’: the funeral of Parnell
                    with Frank Callanan

27 March     : 'I would wish to be buried... without any funeral demonstration': Michael Davitt's
                    death and funeral, with Dr Carla King

3 April        : ‘...as nothing has moved her in living memory’: mourning and burying Michael Collins,
                    with Dr. Anne Dolan

Lectures will be at 7pm in the Milestone Gallery, Glasnevin Cemetery Museum.

Tickets €10 (or €8 if booking one or more in the series). To book, phone +353 (0)1 882 6550 or email.

Trio of new Ulster Scots titles for free download

The Ulster Scots Community Network (USCN) has published three new e-titles, each available for free download. Two of them will be of interest to researchers with ancestors in Canada and Pennsylvania, as these books are focussed on emigrants (or their descendents) who settled in those locations after leaving the northern province.

This trio of new publications joins a growing bookshelf of titles from USCN. You can download them all from the USCN Publications page. Hard copies are also available.

The Ulster-Scots Community Network was established in 1995 to promote awareness and understanding of the Ulster-Scots tradition in history, language and culture, and to highlight the significant contribution of the Ulster-Scots community to the development of life in Northern Ireland, the border counties of the Republic of Ireland, and the wider Ulster-Scots diaspora. The organisation has more than 400 member groups.

Exclusive: Upload of 'enhanced' GRO indexes delayed

The 'enhanced' version of the General Register Office's civil registration indexes will not be uploaded to IrishGenealogy.ie's database during January. The website's administrators have told Irish Genealogy News that some 'kinks are still being ironed out' and no date has been set yet.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news on a Monday morning.

Flyleaf publishes another Wexford Small Source

Flyleaf Press, publisher of the 'Tracing Your Ancestor in...' series of county-by-county books, has published another of its Small Sources. These small sources have typically been discovered during research for the books but didn't make the final pages for one reason or another.

The latest is from County Wexford and is a list of payments to the poor in the parish register of Killinick. As well as recording payments to families in that parish, it picks up details from neighbouring parishes of Maglass/Mayglass, St Iberius, and Kllmacree, too.

The list is free to view on the website of Flyleaf Press.

Genealogy and history events taking place 20–25 Jan

Monday 20 January: Northern Ireland Digital Film Archive, with Mary Bradley. Host: North of Ireland FHS, Larne Branch.Venue: Larne Bowling & Lawn Tennis Club, 112-120 Glenarm Road, Larne, BT40 1DZ. 7:30–9:30pm. Details.

Tuesday 21 January: ‘To hell or to Kimmage’: planning outcomes of the 1913 Church Street disaster, a HistoryIreland Hedge School with Ellen Rowley, Ruth McManus, Mary Daly and Chris Corlett. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. 7pm. Free.

Tuesday 21 January: In Depth Family History Research, with Frank Collins. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Venue: Omagh Library, Dublin Road, Omagh, Co Tyrone. 7:15pm – 9:15pm. Details.

Wednesday 22 January: Irish Research 101 - Learning the research process. A free webinar with Judith Eccles Wight showing how to resolve a research problem or two using records in both the country of settlement and the Irish place of origin. Timezones: 2pm Eastern USA; 1pm Central; 12pm Mountain; 11am Pacific; 7pm GMT. Register for webinar.

Wednesday 22 January: The 1641 Depositions: An Early Source for Local History (and Beyond), with Dr Annaleigh Margey. Venue: PRONI, Titanic Boulevard, Belfast. Part of PRONI's Overlooked Archival Sources lecture series. Admission is free but you need to book by email.

Wednesday 22 January: Dublin's Little Jerusalem. Did you or your parents grow up in Portobello among the Jewish community in the 1920s/30s/40s/50s/60s? What are your happy memories of your Jewish neighbours & friends? What stories did your parents pass on to you? Venue: Terenure Library, Templeogue Road, Dublin 6. 5:30–7:30pm. Free and booking essential. An unusual event to take part in. See details.

Wednesday 22 January: The science of heraldry, with Michael Comyns, Herald of Arms. Host Carrick-on-Shannon Historical Society. Venue: The Bush Hotel, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, at 8.30 pm. All are welcome to attend. Members free; non-members €5/€3 concession.

Thursday 23 January: Alleys, annals and anecdotes: a new look at Gilbert’s History of Dublin – the 17th Annual Sir John T. Gilbert Commemorative Lecture will be given by Dr Séamas Ó Maitiú. Venue: Dublin City Library and Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. 6pm Wine reception. No booking required but come early to ensure a place. Email for more information.

Thursday 23 January: Morpeth Roll lectures. Two presentations hosted by Queen's University Belfast. Venue: Auditorium, McClay Library. 3pm–4pm and 5pm–6pm. Free. Open to the public and students/staff. Details.

Friday 24 to Saturday 25 January: Ireland and the First World War: 'In defence of right, of freedom and of religion?', a conference hosted by the School of History, University College Cork. Details.

Four Irish genie sites gain places in Top 100 chart

The Genealogy In Time Top 100 2014 chart has been revealed. Rather than a popularity contest, this chart ranks the world's genealogy websites using mainly Alexa rankings, which provide objective statistics of visitor traffic to some 35million sites.

Just four Irish sites gained a place in the Top 100. Highest placed was RootsIreland.ie, which earned position #60. The Irish Genealogical Research Society's IrishAncestors.ie came in at #79, which is a remarkable achievement for a website that launched only ten months ago. I have to own up to a particular interest in this performance because I've been involved in the development of the site, but even without my bias, you have to admit this is a hell of a success for a site created and run by volunteers. It was also one of only five societies (the others being in North America and Norway) to feature in the Top 100.

FindMyPast.ie and the Government-run site IrishGenealogy.ie came in at #80 and 100 respectively.

I admit to being a little disappointed that Irish Genealogy News didn't gain a place. With an Alexa ranking of 306,322, it was only a smidgeon short of the finishing line. I'll have to content myself with the knowledge that I'm mainly chasing the Big Boys ie huge corporations and/or state funded websites. Difficult for a lone voice to compete against that.

Even so, there are a handful of winning lone voices in the Top 100. The highest placed are Dick Eastman (#11), whose Newsletter turned 18 only this week, and John Reid of Anglo Celtic Connections (#60), who covers mainly British/Irish records from a Canadian perspective. I take my hat off to both of them. The only other blogs playing with the big boys are Geneabloggers and GeneaMusings.

The Genealogy In Time team used their chart to calculate additional statistics and found that Ancestry controls 32% of the genealogy industry, MyHeritage controls 8% and brightsolid (FindMyPast etc) controls 4%. Taken together, these three companies control 44% of the genealogy industry.

A Century On: Remembering WW1 in Europe

A day of talks on the memory and legacy of WW1 will be held at Collins Barracks on Saturday 1 February.

A panel of renowned historians will discuss the seminal event of the 20th century from Irish, British, French and Russian perspectives.

Their lecture titles are as follows:

Memory Frameworks of the Great War: a European and Global Perspective, with Prof John Horne
The Forgotten War? World War I in Soviet Memory, with Dr Judith Devlin
Our Glorious Dead: Commemorating the Great War in the UK, with Dr Edward Madigan
Connecting History: Exploring the First World War at the Ulster Museum, with William Blair
From the Battle of Mons to Gallipoli - stories of Irish soldiers at war, with Lar Joye

Time for Q&As has been built into the programme.

The talks will be held in the Palatine Room at Collins Barracks, Dublin 7, from 10am to 1pm.

While the event is free, booking is required.

This will be the sixth conference on the war to be held at the National Museum of Ireland, Decorative Arts and History, and a follow-up conference will be held in October.