Map of Mourne Mountains in 1901 published

A 1901 map of the Mourne Mountains area of Co Down has been published by Alan Godfrey Maps. At a ratio of one inch to the mile, the map shows railways, canals and roads, and gives a broad view of an area of approximately 18 x 12 miles, from Newry eastward to Castlewellan, taking in Bryansford, Hilltown and Rathfriland.

On the reverse is a detailed map of Castlewellan.

The Mourne Mountains map joins a growing line-up of maps dating from the 1899-1902 period. Each costs £2.50, so it won't break the bank to get a historical view of your ancestors' local area.

More details.

Cork's Finding the Old Homestead conference finalised

The final programme for Cork Genealogical Society's "Finding the old homestead" conference has been announced, and it's looking great.

Taking place on Saturday 15 March, the one-day family history conference will be held at the Silver Springs Moran Hotel in Cork. Here are the lecture details:

Pre-famine Records - what is available? with John Grenham

Genealogical Developments in the National Archives of Ireland, with Dr.Catriona Crowe

Cork's Finest - Tracing Cork's Policemen, with Jim Herlihy

Irishmen and women who served in the American Civil War, with Damian Shiels

Ireland Reaching Out – genealogy/heritage activities in local communities, with Cynthia O'Connor

HistoricGraves.ie and the potential of community genealogy projects, with John Tierney.

Tony McCarthy will be M.C. for the day. There will be Question and Answer sessions where delegates can discuss their own research, and you'll find display tables by Irish Roots Magazine, FamilySearch, IARC and others.

The conference is open to all and advance booking is essential before 9 March.

The one-day conference costs €30, which includes tea/coffee and sandwiches. A gala dinner will follow the conference at 7:30pm and costs €35.

More details and booking from Cork Genealogical Society

IFHF looks back and forward in re-styled Clann

Click image to access flip-page version

The Irish Family History Foundation has produced a new flip-page digital version of its newsletter, Clann.

It's an attractive and well-designed 38-page publication that looks back over a busy year for the IFHF, with many regional activities organised around its network of local genealogy and heritage centres, the sponsorship of the genealogy programme at Dublin's Back To Our Past, and thousands of record transcriptions added to its online database RootsIreland.ie.

There's also a teaser of records to come in 2014. As we already know, Counties Carlow and Clare will be joining the RootsIreland line-up this year. But Clann tells us that there will also be census substitutes for Derry, death records for Waterford, as well as a mixture of records from Armagh, Monaghan, Kildare, Cork North and East, Wexford, Antrim and Down.

History course explores Dublin's unsavoury past

Here's an unusual class that may be of interest to Dublin-based researchers eager to discover what life was like for their ancestors.... really, really like... the ugly, unsavoury stuff, too.

It's presented by historian Donal Fallon, one of the trio behind the award-winning blog Come Here To Me (one of very few blogs I follow), and looks at the late 19th and early 20th century social history of the capital. Called Hidden Dublin: From the Monto to Little Jerusalem, the class examines issues such as the city's history of prostitution, working class childhoods, labour agitation and life in the tenements, and aims to explore the lives of the forgotten and marginalised, including women and children.

Half the course is in the classroom, and the other half is on the streets, with four walking tours of the city and suburbs.

It runs for four Tuesdays and four Saturdays, with the classes being held on Tuesday evenings (7:30pm–9:30pm) at UCD Bellfield Campus, and the walking tours at the weekend from 11am to 1pm.  It starts on 11 February.

The cost is €155.

The course reference code is AE-HN267. You can get further details, and book online, on the UCD Adult Education Department website.

FindMyPast releases British in India records

Findmypast has added more than 2.5 million records detailing the lives of the British in India from 1698 to 1947 to its online databases. The collection, released in partnership with the British Library, offers an unrivalled opportunity to explore family history on the subcontinent and includes many Irish people.

The records cast light on the careers and family lives of expats, the significance of the East India Company, the offices of power, infant mortality, Anglo-Indian marriages, family relationships, and the lives of women in India. The details of expats’ lives and deaths are documented in a variety of records ranging from returns of baptisms, marriages and burials, civil and military pensions and wills.

The British in India collection includes:

• British India Office birth and baptism records 1698-1947
  
• British India Office deaths and burials 1749-1947
  
• Indian Office wills and probate records 1749-1957
  
• India Office East India Company and Civil Service pensions 1749-1947
  
• East India Company cadet papers
  
• Applications for the civil service

I am reliably informed (a big thank you to genealogist Joanna Fennell) that researchers with Indian connections may already have searched some of these record sets on the Families in British India Society (FIBIS) site. FIBIS has been transcribing various records from the India Office Records and various other sources in the British Library (eg. directories, memorial inscriptions) for years. FindMyPast's new collection has the advantage of having images of the original documents, and it is the first time these have been available online. Some, but not all, of the information in these records has been transcribed by FIBIS in the past. The collection of wills, for example, has never been available outside the reading room of the British Library – not even the indexes were digitised before now.

The FindMyPast collection is now available across the company's portfolio of FindMyPast.ie, FindMyPast.com; FindMyPast.com.au and FindMyPast.co.uk.

PRONI's Archival Sources lectures nearing full capacity

Seems that PRONI's 'Overlooked Archival Sources' lecture series has most definitely not been overlooked...

Lectures taking place this week and next (Using Church Records for Family and Local History - First Steps, with Valerie Adams (29 Jan) and Family trees - How GRONI can help them grow, with Alistair Butler (5 Feb), are fully booked, so you're out of luck if you hoped to attend.

There is limited space for the two following workshops:

Wednesday 12 February: "Maps from Snaps": Archive Mapping and Aerial Photography for Local and Family History, with Drew Ferris.

Wednesday 19 February: Understanding an Ancestor's Neighbourhood - The Griffith's Valuation Books, Maps, and Revision Books, with Dr Bill McAfee.

If you want to be at these free lectures, best book straightaway by email.

Valuation Office trials Cancelled Books viewer

Valuation Office's Cancelled Revision Books

John Grenham's column in yesterday's Irish Times reminded me that I'd been meaning to follow up a tip about recent developments at the Valuation Office in Dublin (I think the intention may have got pickled in mulled wine and festive spirit last month).

So, without further ado...

The Valuation Office is currently scanning its library of Griffith's Valuation Cancelled/Revision Books. These are the books that recorded all changes to land ownership following Griffith's great land survey in the mid-19th century; as each Revision Book was filled up, it was declared 'Cancelled', and a new Revision Book created in that series. Some of the series continue right up to the year 2000.

So far, the books for counties Mayo, Kerry and Tipperary, plus those for both Dublin City and County, have been scanned. The scans have then been loaded into a trial database that is accessible via a solitary computer terminal at the Valuation Office at the Irish Life Centre, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin. The areas chosen for the trial cover the entire spread of Ireland's landscape from rural settlements and small towns to densely populated urban locations.

Scanning of the remaining counties is ongoing – Counties Limerick and Cork are underway. 

In the meantime, personal researchers to the Valuation Office pay the same fee (€3.80 per Electoral Division) whether looking at the books for their chosen area or browsing through the scans on screen, and they follow the same procedure, too, by identifying the Electoral Division and then selecting from a list of the townlands within that ED. At that point, you start browsing the scans.

Valuation Office - Cancelled Revision Book - scan

The scan quality of the books is very high. They're in colour (one of the most important considerations for copying the Cancelled Books because notations were recorded in different coloured inks according to the year) and have good contrast. I'm told the viewer makes the scan easy to manoeuvre and to zoom into.

To see a sample, taken from the Dublin City, Inns Quay Ward, click the image to the right. On the landing page, click the 'download' arrow (near top left) and either open or save to your computer.

(Irish Genealogy News has been granted permission to publish this image by The Commissioner of Valuation. Do not reproduce it elsewhere.)

It's important to stress that the Valuation Office's new viewer is an early prototype. There is not yet an option to print from the public access terminal, although such a facility will be added when the trial reaches maturity. At that point, a number of terminals may be made accessible to researchers, allowing the old and increasingly fragile Cancelled Books to enter semi-retirement on the shelves. It is also easy to see how the database (or a developed incarnation of it) could ultimately make its way online*. However, there are no dates, firm plans or even official talk of that just yet.

More probable in the immediate future is the introduction of an email delivery service of scanned images, allowing family historians who can't get to Dublin the chance to order jpg versions of townlands they are researching. The launch of such a service is not imminent, however.

Right now, the Valuation Office needs feedback, especially from experienced genealogists who already know their way around the Cancelled Books. So if you're visiting the VO, spare some time to test out the trial viewer and let the staff know your opinion of it.

 * Online access to the Cancelled/Revision Books for the counties of Northern Ireland is already available, free of charge, via PRONI, here. 

More CofI baptisms added to AncestryIreland database

The Ulster Historical Foundation has added 19,000 Church of Ireland baptismal records (transcribed by Dr Brian Trainor, retired Research Director of UHF) to its online database at Ancestry Ireland. The registers included in this batch are below:

Church name	County	Dates	Number
Antrim	Antrim	1824–1844	698
Carrickfergus	Antrim	1740–1875	4805
Comber	Down	1684–1877	3026
Donaghadee	Down	1771–1845	3526
Down	Down	1749–1857	4058
Drumallyroney	Down	1838–1871	812
Kilcoo	Down	1786–1829	767
Kilmore	Down	1823–1856	1167

These records are also available via the County Down and County Antrim databases on the RootsIreland website.

Genealogy and history events this week (27 Jan–1 Feb)

Until 30 March: The Dublin Lockout Exhibition at National Library of Ireland, No 2 Kildare St, Dublin 2. This major exhibition shows Ireland in 1913 as a country in turmoil, divided by the issue of Home Rule – self-government for the country. Against this backdrop, a violent industrial conflict took centre stage. The exhibition draws upon the NLI’s extensive historical and literary collections. It combines original documents, such as Jim Larkin’s hastily scribbled advice to union colleagues on the eve of “Bloody Sunday”, with multimedia presentations. Open 7 days/week.

Monday 27 January: Sporting activity and wagering in 18th century Ireland, with Kieran Sheedy. Host: North Clare Historical Society. Venue: The Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon. Co Clare. 8pm. Admission: €5.

Monday 27 January: The founding of the Irish Volunteers in Limerick 1914, with Tom Toomey. Host: Thomond Archaeological & Historical Society. Venue: Tara Building, Mary Immaculate College, SCR, Limerick. 8pm. Free. All welcome.

Tuesday 28 January: Griffiths Revisions Books, an illustrated talk with Dr. Bill MacAfee. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society. Venue: Guide Hall, Terrace Row, Coleraine, Derry-Londonderry. 8:00–10:00pm. Details.

Tuesday 28 January: Protestants and the Irish Language – Past and Present, with Gordon McCoy from ULTACH. Venue: Newcastle Library, Co Down. Tel: 028 4372 2710. Admission to this talk is free and everyone is welcome. 6:30pm. Free. All welcome.

Tuesday 28 January: Every picture tells a story: photographs, posters and cartoons from the Home Rule Crisis 1912-1914, by Hugh McShan. Brownlow Library, Craigavon, Armagh BT65 5DP. Tel: 028 3834 1946. Free. 6:45pm.

Wednesday 29 January: Using Church Records for Family and Local History - First Steps, with Valerie Adams. Venue: PRONI, Titanic Boulevard, Belfast. Part of PRONI's Overlooked Archival Sources lecture series. 1pm. Admission is free but you need to book by email.

Wednesday 29 January: 100 Years On: Addressing the Issue of Shell-Shock and Ireland’s involvement in the Great War, with Michael Robinson. In association with Nottingham Irish Studies Group, www.nottinghamisg.org.uk Venue: Five Leaves Bookshop, 14a Long Row, Nottingham NG1 2DH. 7.30pm-9.00pm. Tickets: £3 on the door. Refreshments included. Tel: 0115 8373097.

Wednesday 29 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: Rathmines Library, 157 Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6. 5:30–7:30pm. Free and booking essential. An unusual event to take part in. See details.

Wednesday 29 January: Recreating the Battle of Mount Street Bridge: opportunities and problems in the digital era, with Dr Hugh Denard. Lecture followed by Q&A and discussion. Host: Centre for Contemporary Irish History, TCD. Venue: Neill Hoey Seminar Room, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin. 4:00pm. Free.

Thursday 30 January: The Origins of Social and Philanthropic Housing in the 19th century, with . Free Lunchtime lecture series at Crawford Art Gallery Lecture Theatre, Emmett Square, Cork City. 1pm.

Thursday 30 January: Their fight for Irish freedom, with Tim Horgan. Host: Heritage Iveragh. Venue: Tech Amerin Arts & Education Centre, Waterville, Co Kerry. 8pm. All welcome.

Thursday 30 January: Civil Registration Records Online, with Alistair Butler. Host: Ballymena Branch of the North of Ireland Family History Society. Venue: Braid Arts Centre, Ballymena. 7:15pm. £1/£3 members/non-members.Details.

Thursday 30 January: Phthisis, Melancholia, Childbirth: hospitals and patients in early 20th century Dublin census records, with Catriona Crowe. School of Nursing and Midwifery, 24 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2. 5:15pm. Free, but email booking advised.

Friday 31 January: Kith and Kin: The Continuing Legacy of the Scots-Irish in America, with Alister McReynolds. Venue: Killyleagh Library,52 High Street, Killyleagh, Co Down BT30 9QF. 1:15pm. Free. For more information, tel: 028 4482 8407.

Saturday 1 February: The Poor Law and Assisted Emigration during the Great Famine, with Dr Gerry Moran. The 13th Annual Irish Migration Studies Lecture. Venue:  Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, 2 Mellon Road, Omagh, Tyrone BT78 5QY. 11am. Booking is preferred but not essential. Contact: Christine Johnston, Tel: 028 8225 6315. Email.  £12.00 (£10.00 concession for students, unwaged and senior citizens). Cost includes morning tea/coffee before lecture.

New resource: Co Clare boy pupils at Co Kildare school

A list of boys from County Clare who attended Clongowes Wood College secondary school in Clane, Co. Kildare, has been contributed to County Clare Library and has been made available for free download from its website here.

The source of the information was The Clongowes Record: 1814-1932 by Timothy Corcoran, S.J. (Dublin, 1932).

The list holds the names of 86 boys with their addresses and years attended.