Leinster Express joins Irish Newspaper Archives

The Irish Newspaper Archive has added the Leinster Express, 1831–1949, to its database.

The weekly title will be of particular interest to those with ancestors from County Laois (Queen's County). It was first published in 1831 in Maryborough (now Portlaoise), and is still going strong.

More editions are expected to be added shortly.

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives: latest updates

Spain family memorial,
Cloghprior, Co Tipperary

The latest additions to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives – all submitted by volunteers – are listed below.

ARMAGH, Genealogy Archives – Headstones
St. Mark's, Armagh City

DONEGAL, Genealogy Archives – Headstones
St Mary's Church Headstones, Cockhill, (Partial)

FERMANAGH, Genealogy Archives – Church Records
Lisnaskea, Baptisms from Holy Trinity C.of I. 1804-1899

TIPPERARY, Genealogy Archives – Headstones
Cloghprior Graveyard

WICKLOW, Genealogy Archives – Headstones
Askanagap Graveyard: Church and Memorials

Irish genealogy & history events 18–27 November

Tuesday 18 November: Trapped by the Border: Northern Nationalists and Southern unionists 1910-1925, with Dr Eamon Phoenix. Part of the Lisburn Museum Lecture Series: Ireland during the Great War. Venue: Lisburn Museum, Market Square, Lisburn, BT28 1AG. 7pm. Free but must be booked in advance – tickets available from museum reception or, for more information call 028 9266 3377.

Tuesday 18 November: The Viking Origins of Limerick City, with John Elliott. Venue: Granary Library, Michael Street, Limerick. Free. 8pm.

Tuesday 18 November: Galway Women and World War One, with Mary Clancy. Host: Galway's Great Read, Galway Libraries. Venue: Ballinasloe Library, Fairgreen, Ballinasloe, Co. Galway. 6pm. Free.

Wednesday 19 November: Galway Women and World War One, with Mary Clancy. Host: Galway's Great Read, Galway Libraries. Venue: Clifden Library, Main Street, Clifden, Co. Galway. 6pm. Free.

Tuesday 18 November: Irish Research: the ins and outs, with Lisa Dougherty. Venue: Irish American Heritage Museum, 370 Broadway, Albany, New York 12207. 6:30pm–7:30pm. Free. Need to register.

Wednesday 19 November: Book launch: Strokestown and the Great Irish Famine by Ciarán Reilly. To be launched by former Minster and TD Mary O'Rourke. This important new study (see blogpost from earlier this month) contains more than 150 documents from the Strokestown archive of interest to genealogists. Venue: The Library, Strokestown House, Co Roscommon. 8pm. All welcome.

Wednesday 19 November: Robert Tressell, Dubliner: author of ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’, with Bryan MacMahon. (Not genealogy, but included here because it's my all-time favourite book. Ought to be on school curriculum.) Venue: Conference Room, Dublin City Library & Archive, 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. 6:30pm. Free.

Wednesday 19 November: The Ordnance Survey now and in the future, with Colin Bray. Part of the Mapping City, Town and Country lecture series. Venue: Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2. 1-2pm. Free. All welcome. No need to book.

Wednesday 19 November: Tracing your Northern Irish ancestors, with Ian Maxwell. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, North Armagh branch. Venue: Town Hall, Edward Street, Portadown, Co Armagh. 7:30pm.

Wednesday 19 November: Changed Utterly: the birth of independent Ireland, 1912-1922, with Daniel Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to Great Britain, presenting the inaugural Irish Studies Centre Autumn lecture. Reception follows. Venue: Henry Thomas Room, London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB. 6pm–8pm. Free, but need to reserve place.

Wednesday 19 November: The Battle of Clontarf in Irish history and legend, with Colm Lennon. Host: Dún Laoghaire Borough Historical Society. Venue: Kingston Hotel, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. 8pm. Admission €3.50 non-members.

Wednesday 19 November: The Ordnance Survey in Ireland – the early years, with Richard Kirwan. Host: Carlow Historical and Archaeological Society. Venue: Talbot Hotel Carlow. 8:00 pm. Free. All welcome.

Thursday 20 November: Belfast Newspaper Library, with Catherine Morrow. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, North Down & Ards Branch. Venue: 1st Presbyterian Church Hall, Upper Main Street, Bangor. 7:30–9:30pm.

Thursday 20 November: The History of Asgard, from Launch to Gun Running to Conservation, with Pat Murphy. Venue: National Maritime Museum, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. 8pm. €10 tickets at the door.

Thursday 20 November: How to trace WW1 military records, with John Goodman. Venue: Bunclody Library, Millwood, Carrigduff, Bunclody, Co Wexford. 7pm.

Thursday 20 November: Presbyterian Chaplaincy in the First World War, with Rev Dr Victor Dobbin. Host: Presbyterian History Society of Ireland. Venue: Malone Presbyterian Church, 462 Lisburn Road, Belfast BT9 6GT. 8pm, followed by refreshments. Also exhbition looking at the church during WW1. Free. All welcome.

Saturday 22 November: Poland and Ireland in WW1 – a history conference and exhibition. Four 45-minute lectures, plus lunch (Polish dish). Host: Discover Poland. Venue: Ballroom, Wynn's Hotel, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1. 10am–3:20pm. Free.

Saturday 22 November: Building Welfare: Building a nation? The case of Richmond Asylum, with Dr Pauline Conroy. Host: Stoneybatter & Smithfield People's History Project. Venue: Carmichael Centre, North Brunswick Street, Dublin 7 (next to Richmond Hospital). 4pm. Free, but reserve place by email.

Tuesday 25 November: Dublin at war, 1914-18, a History Ireland ‘Hedge School’ debate. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare St, Dublin 2. Chaired by Tommy Graham, editor of History Ireland. Panelists Padraig Yeates, Brian Hanley, Ann Mathews, and David Fitzpatrick. 7pm. Admission free. No need to book.

Tuesday 25 November: Family history resources at Coleraine Library, with Sarah Carson. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Coleraine Branch. Venue: Guide Hall, Terrace Row, Coleraine, Co Derry-Londonderry. 8.00pm. Lecture followed by light refreshments. All welcome. €3 for non-members.

Tuesday 25 November: Recruitment in the First World War in Kilrush, Co Clare, with Paul O'Brien. Host: Kilrush and District Historical Society. Venue: Teach Ceoil, Grace Street, Kilrush, Co. Clare. 8pm.

Wednesday 26 November: Irish Volunteers and National Volunteers in Meath, October 1914-April 1916, a Decade of Centenaries lecture, with Ruth Illingworth. Hosts: Meath Archaeological & Historical Society. Venue: St Mary's Church of Ireland Hall, Navan. 7.30pm.

Thursday 27 November: What really happened at the Battle of Clontarf, with Professor Seán Duffy. Host: The Friends of the Library – Trinity College Dublin. Venue: Thomas Davis Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin. 7:30pm. Admission €5/Members & Concessions €2.50. All welcome.

Thursday 27 November: A street through time, featuring Market Street, with Johnnie Kennedy. Host: Strabane History Society. Venue: Room 5, Strabane Library, 1 Railway Street, Strabane, Co Tyrone BT82 8EF. 7:30pm

Thursday 27 November: From Mons to Gallipoli – Irish soldiers at war in the first 9 months of WW1, with Lar Joye. Host: Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Venue: 63 Merrion Square South, Dublin 2. 7:30pm. Free.

Thursday 27 November: Graveyard research in North Antrim, with Dorothy Arthur. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Ballymena branch. Venue: Michelin Arts Workshop, Braid Arts Centre 1-29 Bridge Street, Ballymena BT43 5EJ, Co Antrim. 7:15pm.

Saturday 29 November: Dublin in the rare auld rhymes, a night of song, story and recitations. Host: Stoneybatter and Smithfield People's History Project. Venue: The Cobblestone pub, 77 King St North, Dublin 7. Donation to Capuchin Day Centre at the door.  8pm.

FindMyPast: 90% discount on one-month subscription

Offer expired 19 November

November has been a terrific month for back-to-back promotions from FindMyPast. No sooner had a 50% subscription offer ended than we were treated to a four-day weekend of free access to the entire database. Just when you thought the generosity had to stop, here comes another discount!

Until 23:59 (GMT) on 19 November, you can get a month's access to one of the 'local' collections for just €1/£1/$1. That's almost free, in my book!

The local collections are: Ireland, Britain, USA & Canada, and Australia & New Zealand.

All you have to do is choose which package best suits the needs of your continuing research, follow the appropriate link below, and sign up for a month's subscription at the discounted rate.

• IRELAND collection
  
• BRITAIN collection
• USA & CANADA collection
  
• AUSTRALIA & NZ collection
  

At the end of the month's membership, your subscription will automatically renew at the standard monthly charge of €9.95/£9.95/$9.95. If you do not wish that to happen, be sure to cancel the subscription (just turn off 'continuous membership' in the My Account section) five days before the 30-day period expires.

PLEASE BE AWARE: You can have only ONE FindMyPast subscription at any one time.
If you already have a subscription... for argument's sake, let's say it's an annual sub to the Ireland collection... and you decide to try out a month's sub to the Britain collection, your Ireland subscription will automatically expire, regardless of how much time it had left to run.

This offer has now expired.

More Irish directories added to FindMyPast database

This week's FindMyPast Friday upload includes eight editions (published in 1835-37, 1839, 1841, 1843–45) of Pettigrew & Oulton’s Dublin Almanack & General Register of Ireland. The collection comprises more than 6,000 records.

First published in 1834, Pettigrew and Oulton’s was the first annual publication to include a street by street directory of Dublin. It also included an alphabetical list of inhabitants, grouped by profession.

Family history still No 1 reason for visiting PRONI

PRONI, Titanic Boulevard, Belfast

Family history research is by far the most popular reason for visiting the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI).

The annual Digest of Statistics for the institution shows that 89% of all first-time visitors to the Titanic Boulevard offices in 2013/14 were seeking genealogical information (the year before it was 77%).

It's a huge proportion, up 21 percentage points since 2009/10, and the highest ever recorded by PRONI. See the pie-chart below for details of the other principal reasons for visits.

From April 2013 to March 2014, some 20,000 visitors walked through the doors into PRONI's modern and bright atrium. Just over a quarter were first-timers. Of these first-time visitors, a small majority (52%) were residents of Northern Ireland while the number of new researchers from the USA more than doubled from 7% in 2012/13 to 15%. New visitors from the rest of the UK were down a little to 12%, while visitors from Australia and New Zealand made up a healthy 7% and researchers from Ireland and Canada made up 6% each.

Three-quarters of all visitors used the Search Room/Reading Room, while the remainder was split equally between those attending an event or as part of a group.

The document production team did well with an average retrieval time of under 15 minutes. Some 96% of all documents were produced within 30 minutes (the target figures is 94%).

PRONI's excellent website, which holds several Northern Irish family history collections, was also incredibly busy. More than 623,000 visits were recorded, along with more than 13millon page views. The Will Calendars collection just pipped the Valuation Revision Books to the top position in the popularity stakes, with 3.7million and 3.6million page downloads respectively. The E-catalogue came in third place, followed by Name Search, Ulster Covenant, Freeholders and Street Directories.

New high-tech equipment allowed more digitisation (17,900 frames) to be carried out by PRONI's preservation team during 2013/14. Of these, more than 10,000 frames from church records were generated and just under 5,400 frames from Griffith's Valuation Revision Books. The remainder were mostly from photographic collections.

In addition, some 32,764 items (almost double in the previous year) were created in the PRONI catalogue and 23,573 items (up from 15,039 the previous year) made accessible to the public via the electronic catalogue (e-CATNI), which is available both at the PRONI building and via the website.

I'd say PRONI's staff (75 full-time equivalent) have good reason to be pleased with their performance.

You can see more by downloading the Digest of Statistics here.


Reasons for visits (first-timers only) to PRONI 2013/14

1916 centenary initiative – Ireland 1916 – launched

Garden of Remembrance, Dublin

A national initiative to mark the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising was launched last night at the GPO in Dublin. It is to be led by the Department of the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, which will develop, coordinate and deliver a programme of activity to honour and remember those who fought and those who died in the 1916 Rising, to reflect on the legacy of that period and to look towards Ireland's future.

A number of formal State events will be held over Easter weekend 2016, including a military ceremony to be led by 1916 relatives on Easter Sunday, 27 March 2016. Other key events will include a special State Reception for relatives on Saturday, 26 March, and a commemoration at Arbour Hill on Sunday 24 April 24, to mark the date of the Rising.

Ireland 2016 is based on five intersecting themes:

• Remember: recalling shared history on the island of Ireland;
• Reconcile: honouring all who have built peace and brought people together;
• Imagine:  releasing the creativity of Irish people, in particular, young people;
• Present: creatively showing the nation's achievements to the world;
• Celebrate:  family, community and friendship and the renewal of a commitment to the Proclamation's ideals of liberty and equality. 

Ireland 2016 will encompass a range of initiatives including:

• Permanent Reminders: €22 million in 2015 for seven flagship capital projects to be developed by Easter 2016
• State Events: national ceremonies, parades and events will take place to remember those who participated in the Rising and will involve the relatives
• Culture Programme: A rich cultural programme will be developed in co-operation with Ireland's National Cultural Institutions, the Arts Council and Culture Ireland
• Young People: A special Education Commemorative Programme will be prepared with the Department of Education and Skills
• Community: The Department of Arts will lead an extensive consultation programme with local government and community groups to facilitate ground-up initiatives across the country
• Diaspora: Through the Embassy network, talks, exhibitions, seminars and cultural events will be held to present Ireland 2016 to the world
• Language: a number of projects are being progressed to reflect the esteem with which the Irish language was held by the 1916 Leaders
• Commemorative Stamps: A special set of commemorative stamps and a series of coins will be issued.

Further details on Ireland 2016 are available on a new website – Ireland.ie – and there's also a downloadable pdf format brochure.

At the formal launch, An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny TD, said: '2016 presents us with a once-in-a-century opportunity to create events of celebration and remembrance that are of value in themselves but that also contribute to a greater sense of who we are, what we want to be as a people, what achievements we aspire to for ourselves and for our children.

'The formal State events of the Easter weekend and the centenary itself are the focal points of our commemoration programme. But we need 2016 to be much more than that. 2016 can be a year when we remember our shared history on these islands, reflect on our achievements and our failings and re-imagine our future.

'Remembrance on its own is insufficient to honour the ideals and achievements of the men and women who proclaimed our Republic. We can best honour the past by reflecting deeply and seriously on the present, by exploring and celebrating our achievements, and by creatively re-imagining how we should aspire to the ideal of the Republic as proclaimed in 1916.'

More free online resources from Clare County Library

Clare County Library has received a flurry of record donations recently, and they've been uploaded to the website for all to enjoy. Here's the list:

• Subscribers to Clare Papal Army, 1860 (4,000+ records), donated by Clare Roots Society
  
• Drumline Graveyard, Newmarket-on-Fergus (107 records), donated by Pat Carrig for OBAIR Newmarket-on-Fergus and Canon Reuben Butler
  
• Fenloe Graveyard, Newmarket-on-Fergus (368 records) donated by Pat Carrig for OBAIR Newmarket-on-Fergus and Canon Reuben Butler
  
• Deer & Coney Islands Headstone Inscriptions (33 records) donated by Clare Roots Society
  

In due course, there may be another interesting addition to the Library's online portfolio. This past weekend, Clare Museum acquired at auction a journal and autograph book that provides a unique insight into life and conditions at Frongoch prisoner of war camp, where an estimated 1,800 Irish participants of the Easter Rising were interned between June and December 1916.

It belonged to IRA Volunteer and a future important politican figure Patrick Brennan, from Meelick, and features accounts and illustrations of life in the North Wales camp and the autographs of many of the camp’s prisoners including Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy.

While it is planned to put this on display in the Museum before Christmas, it is also hoped to create a digital copy that can be uploaded to the Library site for a wider audience.

There's more information about this important acquisition here.

The Birth of Independent Ireland: Lecture in London

The inaugural Irish Studies Centre Autumn Lecture is to be held at the London Metropolitan University on Wednesday 19 November, from 6–8pm.

Daniel Mulhall, Irish Ambassador to Great Britain, will present Changed Utterly: the Birth of Independent Ireland, 1912-1922, and a reception will follow.

The free event is open to the public. You can reserve your place here.

Venue: Henry Thomas Room
London Metropolitan University
166-220
N78DB

Nov/Dec issue of Irish Lives Remembered published

Click to view

The last 2014 edition of the free bi-monthly magazine Irish Lives Remembered has been published and can be viewed or downloaded by clicking the front cover image, right.

This issue's highlighted area of research is Fermanagh in Northern Ireland with features covering the history, attractions and record sources of the county as well as details of the free genealogy service available in Enniskillen and the activities of the local North of Ireland Family History Society.

Irish connections to Conneticut are explored in two articles, the first spotlighting the best resources in the state, the other telling the story of The Irish Regiment – the 9th Connecticut Volunteers through the experiences of two Ireland-born soldiers.

Princess Charlene of Monaco and Seattle's mayor, Ed Murray, are the subjects of two family history features, and there's a very useful feature about emigration to Australia from NorthWest Ireland 1830–1850.