Countdown to Back To Our Past 2014

It's just two weeks to the start of Back To Our Past, Ireland's only major annual genealogy fair. When the doors open at Noon on Friday 17 October, it'll be the fifth time the show has brought together the great and the good of Irish genealogy to help researchers re-connect with their family roots and cultural heritage.

Download half-price voucher to BTOP

As always, the Industries Hall of the RDS in Dublin 4 will be the scene of a bustling market place, with exhibitors eager to show their wares, whether they be access to parish registers, census returns, military records, maps, records of baptisms, marriages and funerals, archival products, family tree makers and software, or photo restoration services, books and magazines, genealogical research societies and dna tests.

The event provides a unique opportunity for locally- and overseas-based families with Irish ancestors to tap into a huge archival resource – all under one roof at the same time.

While the exhibition area keeps the noise and energy levels up, the fair also offers an extensive programme of free lectures. Two strands of genealogy and heritage-themed presentations run concurrently throughout the three days (see Genealogy programme) and there's a separate dedicated DNA strand running, too, as part of the Ireland Genetic Genealogy conference (see Genetic programme). All the lectures are free to those attending BTOP and no booking is required – they're all available on a first-come-first-served basis.

Outside of the lecture rooms, the Family Tree DNA stand will be offering visitors DNA tests from as little as €46; depending on their surname, they may even qualify for a free test (find out more about these sponsored tests), and the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland (APGI) will be offering free one-to-one consultations each day. These need to be booked (form here) in advance.

So, once again, Back To Our Past promises to be a great three days of wall-to-wall genealogy. Tickets are €10 on the door, but Irish Genealogy News can offer a 50% discount price of just €5. Download and print off the voucher by clicking the image above for half-price entry.

Opening times are: Friday Noon to 7pm; Saturday and Sunday 11am to 7pm.

See you there!

Galway manuscripts joins online Schools Collection

Following on from my July blogpost about the fabulous work being done at UCD to digitise the Schools Collection, I'm pleased to report that the stories of Galway children have now been added to the free database at Duchas.ie.

Some 84 volumes have been uploaded, each containing dozens of stories on a wide range of topics. Given its location, it's no surprise the Galway batch contains a significant number of stories written in Irish.

This latest upload means the online Schools Collection now covers five counties: Dublin, Waterford, Galway, Mayo and Donegal. County Leitrim will be next.

I'm delighted to note that a new 'Topics' section of the site is currently under construction. This will allow the growing collection to be searched according to topic rather than by name or location, as presently.

My earlier post was written after a visit to the National Folklore Collection at UCD and contains more background to the Schools Collection. Read it here.

FindMyPast launches First benefits programme

New programme currently available only
to FindMyPast.co.uk subscribers

FindMyPast.co.uk has introduced a new 'premium benefits' programme for 12-month subscribers. It offers customers exclusive benefits and offers throughout their year's subscription.

Benefits include:

• Monthly webinars on record sets, hints and previews
  
• Having your say about the record sets you’d like to see added next
  
• Being first to know about all things Findmypast; from record sets to new features
  
• Priority support
  
• Monthly competitions (the winner of the first competition will win an afternoon with one of FindMyPast's genealogists)
  
• Exclusive Imperial War Museum Membership offers
  
• Free issues of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine
  
• Complimentary access to digital memorial website Lives of The First World War, worth £50
  
• Free digital copy of Your Family Tree magazine
  
• Exclusive discount to My History products
  
• Exclusive subscription offer to Saga Magazine

New perks will be added each month.

The FindMyPast First programme is currently available only to subscribers of findMyPast UK. Similar programmes will be launched shortly for findmypast.ie, findmypast.com and findmypast.com.au and will include offers and partners suitable for subscribers in the different localities.

Click image to find more details of the new (co.uk) programme.

Military Services Pensions Collection, Phase 2 released

Military Archives has released Phase 2 of the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection (MSPC) on its website, mililtaryarchives.ie.

Phase 2 consists of files relating to 1,158 veterans of the period from Easter Week 1916 to 30 September 1923, 176 members of Cumann na mBan, successful pension application files for senior officers, middle and lower ranking officers and the volunteers of the IRA.

Included in the release are files relating to ten veterans of Easter Week, notably the claims made by the dependents of Sean Mac Dermott (MacDiarmada), William Staines and Sean Furlong.

This release also includes nearly 800 files relating to casualties of the National Army during the Civil War.

Detailed lists of the files released are available as follows:

• Individuals’ pension files
  
• Administration files
  

Alternatively, you can search the entire MSPC collection, Phase 1 and 2, here.

NAI adds Leitrim, Mayo & Sligo Compensation claims

More listings of the Post-Truce Finance Compensation collection have been added to the National Archives of Ireland's online catalogue. This latest update covers counties Leitrim, Mayo and Sligo. They join the listings for counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Longford and Louth.

This collection of about 20,000 files relates to claims for compensation for loss/damage to property occuring from military action between July 1921 and March 1923. Claims were made under the Damage to Property (Compensation) Act, 1923 and record the name and address of the claimant, the amount paid out in compensation and a brief narrative of the military action or incident that resulted in the damage/loss. They also provide an inventory of the loss.

This latest update (the third since May) brings the total number of files listed to 6,578. The catalogue does not include images of the files; researchers can access the original files in the NAI Reading Room in Bishop Street, Dublin.

You can find out more about this collection, and access the county listings, here.

And here are a few examples of the claims contained in the latest update:

• Anthony O'Grady, Kildun, The Neale, County Mayo: Seizure of bicycle at Cross, County Mayo, by unknown persons on 26 October 1922.
  
• Henry T Gallagher, managing director of Urney Chocolates, Urney, County Tyrone: Chocolates taken during a raid on train at Leyney, County Sligo, by armed men on 10 April 1922.
  
• William O'Reilly, Manorhamilton, County Leitrim: Windows and household effects damaged at same address due to mine explosion during an attack on National Army forces by Irregular forces on 10 July 1922.
  
• George O'Connor, Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim: Boat commandeered at same address by National Army forces in July 1922.
  
• Michael Conway, Balla, County Mayo: Commandeering of whiskey, cigarettes and goods at same address by Irregular forces on 11 January 1923.
  

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives: latest update

C18th stone to Darby and Elizabeth Dickson, Rathnew,
Wicklow. Photo courtesy Joynce Tunstead.

The free online archive of Ireland Genealogy Projects (IGP-web) has been updated with the following items in the second half of September:

DONEGAL Genealogy Archives
Headstones – Malin Presbyterian Church

DUBLIN Genealogy Archives
Headstones – Bluebell Cemetery, Parts 1 & 2
Land – Rental, Estate of John Rogerson, 1813/14

FERMANAGH Genealogy Archives
Headstones – Roslea, St Tierneys (R.C.) Cemetery, Pt 2

KILKENNY Genealogy Archives
Cemeteries – Whitechurch Cemetery

WICKLOW Genealogy Archives
Headstones – Rathnew Old Cemetery

Marriage announcements: Limerick Chronicle, 1863

Many of you will already know of Sharon Slater's excellent website Limerick's Life. It's an essential site for any family historian with ancestors from the City, or indeed anyone with a current or past connection to the area.

Sharon's most recent updates sees the result of a project she set herself. She has transcribed all the wedding announcements published in the Limerick Chronicle during 1863, the year before civil registration of ALL marriages became obligatory.

At that time, it was usually only the wealthy that announced weddings in newspapers, so most of those captured from the Chronicle will have been high society affairs. Most of them were held in Church of Ireland churches, but there's a limited sprinkling of Wesleyan, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic marriages, too.

"I was surprised at the number of people who did not get married in their home counties." Sharon told Irish Genealogy News. "It blew the idea that you could trace marriages that way out of the water (at least for those whose marriages were reported in the newspapers)."

To accommodate this phenomenon, she has arranged the transcriptions into 32 county sections, repeating those marriages that mentioned two or more counties. For example, the wedding that took place in Waterford between Francis F Harney of Wexford and Frances Elizabeth Pollock of Youghal, Co Cork, appears in the listings for counties Waterford, Wexford and Cork.

There is also an Outside Ireland listing of marriages where the announcement makes some mention of a location abroad, typically a bride or groom hailing from England, Scotland or the USA.

Sharon says she may well repeat the project, choosing another year from the local newspaper's archives.

BNA adds more 1850s editions of Dublin Evening Mail

The British Newspaper Archive has added two more years' worth of the Dublin Evening Mail, a title which was published from 1823 to 1962, making it Ireland's longest lasting evening paper.

The new editions span the entire 12-months of both 1856 and 1858.

The full holding for this newspaper, by decade, is now as follows:

• 1824, 1826–1828
  
• 1831 and 1833
  
• 1840–1842, 1849–1850
  
• 1851–1858
  
• 1861 (July onwards)
  
• 1870 (January to April only)

New site explores Derry's Plantation and Penal Laws

A new website – Plantation and Penal Laws in Derry – has been launched to encourage learning and understanding of the history of the city of Derry-Londonderry from the beginning of the Plantation of Ulster through to the implementation of strict Penal Laws against Catholics and Dissenters in the late 17th century.

It's been designed as an educational resource for school students by the Gasyard Heritage Trust and is supported by the Ministerial Advisory Group – (MAG) Ulster-Scots Academy. Never mind the school curriculum, it will provide good context for any family history researcher with connections from the area!

In addition to well-presented history lessons, you'll find details of the records held by the First Derry Presbyterian Church. These archives relate primarily to 19th- and 20th-century baptism, marriage and burial registers but also include extensive Communicant Rolls, Church, Communicant and Session Minutes which provide insight into the members of the church and the daily work of the church during that period.

There are also very extensive lists and links to academic resources for further exploration, and a good look at emigration across the Atlantic. It's an attractive and easy to navigate site. Worth investigating.

(Thanks to the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland for the tip-off.)

All editions of 1914's Church of Ireland Gazette online

All the 1913 and 1914 editions are now online

October's Archive of the Month from the Representative Church Body Library (RCBL) sees the Church of Ireland Gazette for 1914 made available in a fully searchable format online and free.

All 52 editions of the weekly publication can be viewed, and they join those for 1913 which were uploaded last year.

The Gazette, which has always been editorially independent, provides the longest-running public commentary on the Church’s affairs, and as such is a recognised resource for understanding the complexities and nuances of Church of Ireland identity, both north and south, as well as the Church’s contribution to political and cultural life throughout the island. It covers a vast range of topics.

For anyone whose ancestors who were connected with the Church, the paper is essential reading.

But it holds plenty of interest beyond that group, too. As well as providing comment about national events, the Gazette published details of funerals, obituaries, school, church and community activities. It also carried lots of advertising from service and goods providers.

The RCBL in Dublin holds the only complete run of the paper – from the first issue in March 1856 up to the present date. They are bound up in hard copy volumes for each year and remain an invaluable resource, but these hard copies are suffering wear and tear and can be cumbersome for researchers to use.

Now professionally scanned by Informa, they can be searched using keywords or phrases of interest; pages can be searched individually or in the wider context of a particular issue of the newspaper. Both the 1913 and the 1914 editions can be searched at the Informa search engine.

The RCBL's Archive of the Month page provides some highlights from the 1914 editions. It also announces that it is seeking sponsorship for the digitisation of more editions of the Church of Ireland Gazette.

The 1914 project has only been possible with the generous support of an anonymous donor.