AmericanAncestors adds parish registers, 1869-1900, for Irish RC community in Marlborough, MA

The New England Historic Genealogical Society's website, AmericanAncestors.org, has updated its searchable database of parish records from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

In this update, ten new volumes covering 1854 to 1900 from the Immaculate Conception in Marlborough, Massachusetts have been added.

This church largely served Marlborough's community of immigrant Irish Roman Catholics, although there may be some French Canadian Catholics included in the earlier records.

The ten new volumes are linked below. I was able to view images with my free Guest Account.

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms, 1854-1861

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms, 1861-1869

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms, 1861-1869 Index

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms, 1869-1896

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms, 1875-1886

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms, 1897-1900

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Baptisms and Marriages, 1854-1869

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Confirmations, 1897-1900

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Marriages, 1854-1869

Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) Marriages, 1869-1896

Cork Genealogical Society Conference, 24 March 2018

Cork Genealogical Society (CGS) will hold its bi-annual Family History Conference on Saturday 24 March at the Silverspring's Clayton Hotel in Tivoli, Cork, which is less than 3km from the city centre.

The event's theme is Bridging the Past & Future, and four well-known Irish genealogists have been lined up to present talks, as below:

• Where are we? And how did we get here? An overview of online research resources, with John Grenham MAGI.
• Tracing your Irish roots and finding family using DNA, with genetic genealogist Margaret Jordan MAGI.  
• The Chief Secretary's Office Registered Papers (CSORP), with Nicola Morris MAGI.
• Cork's School Collection in the National Folklore Collection, with Jill Williams FIGRS

Tea/coffee refreshments and a light lunch are included in the conference cost of €25pp. You can purchase your ticket via the Society's website using PayPal. Click the CGS logo above and scroll down..

NLI's RC parish registers collection offline due to fault

The National Library of Ireland has confirmed that its Roman Catholic Parish Registers collection is currently offline due to a technical problem. This may or may not be the same problem that was causing intermittent loss of access earlier in the week, which seemed to have been corrected.

The techies are working on it and hope to restore access soon.

I'll update here, as and when.

Update, 7pm: Site is back up and running, but it carries a message saying: 'Please note: that due to maintenance a small number of registers are currently unavailable.' 

Update, 12 January: See advance warning of site being offline on Monday 15 January.

Registry of Deeds Index Project: first update of 2018

Nick Reddan FIGRS, founder and manager of the Registry of Deeds Index Project, has uploaded the first update of the year to the free, online, volunteer-led database. It now holds 262,178 entries from 29,134 memorials of deeds.

He has also provided Irish Genealogy News with a review of recent developments to the site.

"Now at a new url, the site has a different look and feel, and search facilities have been expanded making the data more accessible," he says. "In addition, the secondary index transcriptions have many more entries — the townland index transcriptions number nearly 45,000 and the grantor index just over 17,000 — making them ever more valuable resources. It’s worth noting that even inexperienced transcribers will find it easy to add to these online resources.

"This past year has seen other important changes, too, starting with FamilySearch.org uploading some of the microfilms of the grantors and townland indexes for public access. The numbers of films available has grown to the extent that almost all are now available instantly. Since mid-December it is necessary to have a FamilySearch account in order to view films online but this is not a big issue as the accounts are free. (If you previosuly ordered physical microfilms using FamilySearch.org you can continue to use the same account.)

"To take advantage of the instant availability of the images through FamilySearch, many Index entries now link directly to the digital image. At the very least, there will be a link to the beginning of the relevant film.

"The Index Project site also holds many useful guides; they have been created with direct links to the virtual films they describe.

From every page of the Index Project site
you can link to FamilySearch's virtual
microfilms by typing the volume number
(and image number) you want to view.

"Another development is the inclusion of a link to FamilySearch's Registry of Deeds virtual microfilms catalogue at the bottom of every page on the Index Project site; if you know the number of the memorial volume you are interested to view, simply enter it (and the page number, if known), and click enter. Alternatively, you can use this link – https://irishdeedsindex.net/search/link_get.php?my_vol=1 – and change the volume number accordingly ie vol=200.

"To continue growing this useful online resource, which is free to all researchers, please consider contributing some index entries to the project.
You can enter them using the form at https://irishdeedsindex.net/search/make_abstract.php."

Many thanks to Nick for his useful update on this important site.

Irish genealogy and history events, 8-21 January

Monday 8 January: NLI Reading Room and Manuscript Room closed. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. On-going Monday closures to facilitate extensive redevelopment of the premises. All other services/exhibitons/cafe, incl. Genealogy Advisory Service operating as normal.

Monday 8 January: Practical workshop, presented by branch members. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Newtownabbey Branch. Venue: Drama Theatre, Glengormley High School, 134 Ballyclare Road, Newtownabbey, BT36 5HP. 7–9pm.

Monday 8 January: My experience with familly history, with George Busby. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Killyleagh Branch.Venue: Masonic Hall, 50 High Street, Killyleagh, Co Down, BT30 9QF 8pm. Free. All welcome.

Monday 8 January: Celebrating Irish nurses and Irish women in nursing in the UK; part of the Illuminate Herstory Light Festival – Ireland’s annual new global light festival. Host: Irish Diaspora Foundation and Irish World Heritage Centre. Venue: Irish World Heritage Centre, 1 Irish Town Way, Manchester M8 0AE, UK. 6:30pm–8pm. Free but need to register. Find out more.

Tuesday 9 January: Pre-1800s records, with Dr William Roulston. North of Ireland Family History Society, Lisburn Branch. Venue: The Bridge Community Centre, 50 Railway Street, Lisburn, BT28 1XP. 7:30pm. Free. All welcome.

Tuesday 9 January: Newspapers, with Georgina Scally MAGI. Host: Genealogical Society of Ireland. Venue: Dun Laoghaire Further Education Institute, Cumberland St, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. 8pm. All welcome. €3.

Wednesday 10 January: Land Wars in Ireland 1876-1909, an 8-week course starts with Brian Casey. Host: UCC Lifelong Learning. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Fee: €195. 10:30am to 1pm on Wednesdays. Details.

Wednesday 10 January: Using family and local history resources online, a practical workshop. Host and venue: Public Reocrd Office of Northern Ireland, Titanic Boulevard, Belfast. 11am to 1pm. Free. Booking is full, but you can join the waiting list in case there's a cancellation.

Thursday 11 January: Opening delayed until 11am at National Library of Ireland's sites in Dublin to facilitate a staff meeting.

Thursday 11 January: Despicable jackals, gallant submariners, and Waterford in the WW1 U-boat campaign, with Julian Walton. Host: Dunhill History Lectures, Series XII, 2018. Venue: Dunhill Multi-Education Centre (opposite GAA grounds), Dunhill, Co Waterford. 8pm. Admission €5, includes light refreshments. All welcome.

Saturday 13 January: The Stewart, Mountjoy and Blessington Family Connections, with Frank Collins. Host: NIFHS Tyrone Branch. Venue: Seminar Room, First Floor, Omagh Library, Dublin Road, Omagh, BT78 1HL. 10am to noon. All welcome.

Saturday 13 January: Tour of the Jacob's Factory exhibition. Host and venue: Dublin City Hall, Dame Street, Dublin 2. Exhibition developed by Dublin City Archives. Free. 1pm to 1:45pm. Need to register.

Monday 15 Jan: NLI Reading Room and Manuscript Room closed. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. On-going Monday closures are to facilitate extensive redevelopment of the premises. All other services/exhibitons/cafe, including Genealogy Advisory Service operating as normal. Details.

Monday 15 Jan: The Clontarf Atlas (Irish Historic Towns Atlas series from RIA), with Professor Colm Lennon. Host: Clontarf Historical Society Venue: Resource Centre, St John the Baptist Church, Clontarf Road, Dublin 3. Plus AGM. All welcome. Members free / non-members €5. 7:30pm.

Monday 15 Jan: Newspapers, books and eBay for genealogy, with Michael McKeag. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Foyle branch. Venue: Lecture Room of Derry City’s Central Library, 35 Foyle Street, Londonderry, BT48 6AL. Cancelled due to bad weather.

Monday 15 Jan: Queen Victoria’s Gene, with Jenning Cumming. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Larne branch. Larne Bowling & Lawn Tennis Club, 112-120 Glenarm Road, Larne, BT40 1DZ. Free. 7:30pm.

Monday 15 Jan: The Rise & Fall of Lord Dunkellin (1827-1867), with John Joe Conwell. Host: Birr Historical Society. Venue: County Arms Hotel, Birr, Co Offaly. 8pm. All welcome.

Tuesday 16 January: The Quakers of County Tipperary, 1655–1924, with Dr Michael Ahern. Host: Tipperary People & Places Lecture Series. Venue: Tipperary Studies, The Source, Cathedral Street, Thurles, Co Tipperary. 7:30pm. Admission free. Tea served. All welcome. Details.

Tuesday 16 January: Disturbing Remains: Death in the Great Famine, with Dr Breandán Mac Suibhne. Host: Irish Historical Society. Venue: Centre for Irish Programmes, Boston College, 43 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2. Free. 7.00pm. All welcome.

Tuesday 16 January: From 2RN to RTÉ, with Harry Bradshaw, and (short talk) The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, with Pádraig Laffan. Host: Foxrock Local History Club. Venue: Foxrock Pastoral Centre (at rear of Foxrock Church), Dublin 18. 8pm. All welcome. Members free/non-members €5.

Wednesday 17 January: The Tavener Family, with Tom Mason. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, North Armagh branch. Venue: Bleary Community Centre, 1 Deans Road, Bleary, Craigavon, Co Armagh, BT66 7AS.

Wednesday 17 January: Tudor Marshals of Leinster, with Diarmuid Wheeler. Host: Carlow Historical & Archaeological Society. Venue: Leighlinbridge Parish Centre, Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow. Admission is free and all welcome. 8pm. 

Wednesday 17 January: The Corless Family, with Anna Bruzzi. Also AGM. Host: Western Family History Association. Venue: Parish Centre, Lackagh, Co Galway. 8pm. All welcome.

Wednesday 17 January: Philip Barron, Man of Mystery, with Áine Uí Fhoghlú. Venue: Clubhouse, Dungarvan Harbour Sailing Club, Davitt's Quay, Dungarvan, Co Waterford. 8pm. All welcome. €5 admission. Details.

Thursday 18 January: London's Derrie: The background to the building and financing of the early Londonderry plantation, with Professor James Stevens Curl. Host: Ulster Historical Foundation. Venue: The Corn Exchange Building, 31 Gordon Street, Belfast BT1 2LG. 12:15pm to 2pm. Free to Guild members. £5 to non-members. Need to register. Details.

Thursday 18 January: From war to wine, from shipping to sport: Irish-French links over 300 years, with Kieran Walsh. Host: Dunhill History Lectures, Series XII, 2018. Venue: Dunhill Multi-Education Centre (opposite GAA grounds), Dunhill, Co Waterford. 8pm. Admission €5, includes light refreshments. All welcome.

Thursday 18 January: Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (1877–1946)– suffragette and nationalist, wife of martyred radical activist Francis and co-founder of Irish women's Franchise League, with Dr. Margaret Ward. First of the Rebel Irish Women lecture series. Host and venue: GPO Witness History Visitor Centre, O'Connell Street, Dublin 1. Free. 5:40pm sharp. Booking is essential to guarantee your space.

Saturday 20 January: Investigating Offaly's casualties of the Great War, with Stephen Callaghn. Host: Western Front Association. Venue: Museum of Decorative Arts and History, Collins Barracks, Benburb's Street, Dublin 7. 2:30pm. All welcome. €3.

NEHGS opens up AmericanAncestors.org for free search

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is opening up its online database of more than 1.4million records for free until Wednesday 10 January.

The website – AmericanAncestors.org – contains some of the most important online databases for researching American ancestry, with records covering 18 countries, including Ireland and Britain. Among them are census, tax and voter lists; court, land and probate records; journals and periodicals; military records; genealogies, biographies, heraldry, and local histories; immigration records; and vital records. Many databases include original content created by the experts and scholars at NEHGS, and all are open for eight days of free research to anyone who registers as a Guest Member.

Guest Membership is free, and easy to set up, with no financial questions. Just click the image above, follow the link to the registration page and get started.

New course explores Ireland's Land Wars, 1876-1909

A new course from UCD Adult Education – The Land Wars in Ireland 1876–1909 – will be starting on Wednesday 10 January at the National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2.

Led by Dr Brian Casey, the eight-week course explores the background and various stages of the Land Wars from 1876 to 1909. In addition, it examines the role that local activists as well as people like Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell played in the mobilization of the countryside to demand peasant proprietorship and the end of landlordism in Ireland.

Each session will be held on Wednesdays, from 10:30am to 1pm. The course fee is €195.

You can find out more about the course at the NLI website. Bookings should be made through UCD Adult Education (01 716 7123).

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives: last 2017 update

There's just no stopping the volunteers at Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives. Despite the festive holiday, they still managed to upload the following files to the free website during the last two weeks of 2017.

Headstone to Mordacai Jones* in St James
Walled graveyard, Athboy, Co. Meath.
Photo by Kev Murray.
Transcribed by Valerie Ackroyd.
Click for larger image.

CAVAN Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Killeshandra (CoI) Graveyard

DUBLIN Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Saggart Cemetery, Dublin County, Part 2 (partial)

MEATH Genealogy Archives - Headstones
St James Walled - Text file added
St James Old - Text file added

SLIGO Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Sligo Cemetery: New Pt, Section A4 (Surnames M)

WEXFORD Genealogy Archives - Newspaper
Workhouse Entries - Assorted Dates (Updated)

* While transcribing the headstones photos for St. James Walled Cemetery, Athboy, Co Meath, volunteer Valerie Ackroyd discovered a murder story connected to Mordecai Jones.

C19th editions join online Church of Ireland Gazette

What a great start to the new Irish family history year!

The Church of Ireland's record repository, Representative Church Body Library (RCBL), has announced that all 19th-century editions of the Church of Ireland Gazette have been added to the online archive of the weekly newspaper.

This upload means a full archive of editions published from 1856 to 1923 is now freely accessible.

The RCBL holds the only complete hard-copy run of this newspaper, and through incremental digitization has gradually endeavoured to share its rich content with a wider audience.

Last April it confirmed funding had been allocated for the older copies to be digitised in time for the 150-year anniversary (in 2019) of the Church of Ireland's dis-establishment as the island's state church.

Now all editions for the 70-year period between March 1856, when the paper first appeared, up to and including the end of the Revolutionary period in December 1923 are shared for all.

The has been managed by the RCB Library in collaboration with the Editor and Board of The Church of Ireland Gazette.

Genealogists don't need to have Church of Ireland ancestors to find the Gazette valuable to their research. As well as exploring the major national and international issues of the day, the paper also carried localised church and social news, which would have been of relevance to all local communities whatever their beliefs.

To mark this significant enhancement of the newspaper's online database, this January's RCBL Archive of the Month provides insight to the relationship between the Church's laity and clergy, as revealed through Gazette articles.

Irish genealogy and history events, 2-14 January

Few societies/institutions have confirmed their 2018 events yet. I'll update the list below as I receive details.

Tuesday 2 January: Research Centre of the North of Ireland Family History Society closed. Normal Tuesday afternoon openings (2–8pm) will resume on 9 January 2018. Details.

Sunday 7 January: Irish research: Female Connections – the best roads to research success, with Kevin Cassidy. Host: Lincoln-Lancaster County Genealogical Society. Venue: Walt Branch Library, 6701 S 14th St, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. 2pm–4pm. Free. All welcome. Details.

Monday 8 January: NLI Reading Room and Manuscript Room closed. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. On-going Monday closures are to facilitate extensive redevelopment of the premises. All other services/exhibitons/cafe, including Genealogy Advisory Service operating as normal. Details.

Monday 8 January: Practical workshop, presented by branch members. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Newtownabbey Branch. Venue: Drama Theatre, Glengormley High School, 134 Ballyclare Road, Newtownabbey, BT36 5HP. 7–9pm.

Monday 8 January: My experience with familly history, with George Busby. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Killyleagh Branch.Venue: Masonic Hall, 50 High Street, Killyleagh, Co Down, BT30 9QF 8pm. Free. All welcome.

Monday 8 January: Celebrating Irish nurses and Irish women in nursing in the UK; part of the Illuminate Herstory Light Festival – Ireland’s annual new global light festival. Host: Irish Diaspora Foundation and Irish World Heritage Centre. Venue: Irish World Heritage Centre, 1 Irish Town Way, Manchester M8 0AE, UK. 6:30pm–8pm. Free but need to register. Find out more.

Tuesday 9 January: Pre-1800s records, with Dr William Roulston. North of Ireland Family History Society, Lisburn Branch. Venue: The Bridge Community Centre, 50 Railway Street, Lisburn, BT28 1XP. 7:30pm. Free. All welcome.

Tuesday 9 January: Newspapers, with Georgina Scally MAGI. Host: Genealogical Society of Ireland. Venue: Dun Laoghaire Further Education Institute, Cumberland St, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin. 8pm. All welcome. €3.

Wednesday 10 January: Land Wars in Ireland 1876-1909, an 8-week course with Brian Casey. Host: UCC Lifelong Learning. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Fee: €195. 10:30am to 1pm on Wednesdays. Details.

Wednesday 10 January: Using family and local history resources online, a practical workshop. Host and venue: Public Reocrd Office of Northern Ireland, Titanic Boulevard, Belfast. 11am to 1pm. Free. Booking is full, but you can join the waiting list in case there's a cancellation.

Thursday 11 January: Despicable jackals, gallant submariners, and Waterford in the WW1 U-boat campaign, with Julian Walton. Host: Dunhill History Lectures, Series XII, 2018. Venue: Dunhill Multi-Education Centre (opposite GAA grounds), Dunhill, Co Waterford. 8pm. Admission €5, includes light refreshments. All welcome.

Saturday 13 January: The Stewart, Mountjoy and Blessington Family Connections, with Frank Collins. Host: NIFHS Tyrone Branch. Venue: Seminar Room, First Floor, Omagh Library, Dublin Road, Omagh, BT78 1HL. 10am to noon. All welcome.