Celebrate the Registry of Deeds Index Project's major milestone

A few days ago, the main names index of the Registry of Deeds Index Project broke through the half-a-million-entries mark. It's taken 15 years for the Project to reach this exciting point, with 501,166 entries transcribed from more than 52,239 memorials of deeds by a band of generous volunteers and researchers.

Their donations of their free time enable other family historians around the world to search the index free of charge.

The number of names held in some 17,000 mighty tomes on the shelves at Dublin's Registry of Deeds is thought to run to several million, so the volunteer project still has plenty of work ahead!

It is already providing access to these records a lot more easily than it used to, and the growth of the main index over recent years has sped up enormously since 2017 when FamilySearch.org released online page-by-page images of the memorial volumes it microfilmed back in the 1960s. Using these images, accessible to anyone, anywhere, with an internet connection, has allowed more volunteers to come forward.

To celebrate this month's major milestone the Index Project team has arranged for four experts on the Registry of Deeds to offer their experience of using the Registry and its priceless archive.

The event will consist of four 20-minute presentations, each followed by a question and answer session. The presenters will be:

• Nick Reddan – project webmaster
• Rosaind McCutcheon – the project's greatest contributor
• David Rencher – Chief Genealogical Officer, FamilySearch
• Steven C. Smyrl – Chairman Irish Genealogical Research Society

Each of these experts is a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS).

This will be a great opportunity to learn about using the Registry of Deeds and ask questions about the collection and its value to Irish family history.

The event will be held online and is free to attend. Its timing has been chosen to allow the widest possible audience from Irish genealogists around the globe. See Start Times below.

Registration is via Eventbrite, here. Tickets are limited in number, so be sure to book your place in good time.

Start Times:

• Ireland and UK – 21:00 on Wednesday 21 September 2022
• New Zealand – 08:00 on Thursday 22 September 2022
• Eastern Australia – 06:00 on Thursday 22 September 2022
• Halifax, Canada – 17:00 on Wednesday 21 September 2022
• Vancouver, Canada – 13:00 on Wednesday 21 September 2022
• Winnipeg, Canada – 15:00 on Wednesday 21 September 2022
• New York, USA – 16:00 on Wednesday 21 September 2022
• Salt Lake City, USA – 14:00 on Wednesday 21 September 2022

Four more Irish titles join the online BritishNewspaperArchive

Four new Irish historical newspapers have made their debut in the online BritishNewspaperArchive (BNA) over the last week.

Their addition has helped push the BNA (the British Library's online newspaper collection) through the 57 million pages milestone.

The new titles are:

• Irish Christian Advocate – 1885-1896
• The Weekly Examiner (Belfast) – 1870-92
• Kerry Reporter – 1883–1920
• Dublin Evening Herald 1846 – 1846-1853

The dates shown are the periods each holding is expected to cover when complete.

The titles are also fully searchable within the FindMyPast database to those with a PRO subscription.

The total number of historical Irish papers now held in the BNA is 254 (174 Republic of Ireland / 80 Northern Ireland).

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Irish genealogy, history and heritage events, 12-25 September

Sorry for the unannounced summer break in events listings. I was overwhelmed with other matters and had to set priorities for how to best use my desk time. My weekly events listing is easily the most time-consuming regular post on IrishGenealogyNews; contrary to most people's assumptions, fewer than 5% of the entries in my listings are actually notified to me by the hosts. With Irish genealogy's quiestest period of the year coinciding with a personally fraught time, it made sense to temporarily drop the weekly listing. Fingers crossed, the regular schedule can now return. Here we go:

Monday 12 September: Olympic and Aquitania: Eyeing Up the Competition – Cunard’s "White Star Liner, an in-person lecture with Mark Chirnside. Hosts: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Belfast Titanic Society. Venue: PRONI Lecture Theatre, 2 Titanic Boulevard, Titanic Quarter, Belfast BT3 9HQ. 7pm to 8pm. All welcome. Free but need to register. Details.

Tuesday 13 September: Stories from Old Blaris Burying Ground, an in-person event with Elizabeth Scott. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Lisburn Branch. Venue: Bridge Community Centre 50 Railway Street, Lisburn, County Down BT28 1XP. 7:30pm–9pm BST. All welcome.

Tuesday 13 September: Lorrha in the Great War, an online talk by Gerard O’Meara. Hosted by the Genealogical Society of Ireland (GSI). 8pm. All welcome. Non-members can obtain zoom links by emailing Membership@Familyhistory.ie

Tuesday 13 September: George McElroy: Irelands Forgotten First World War Fighter Ace, an online talk by Philip Lecane. Host: Foxrock Local history club. 8pm. Free. All welcome. Non-members can email info@foxrocklocalhistory.ie for zoom details.

Wednesday 14 September: Book Launch: The Prisons Memory Archive: a Case Study in Filmed Memory of Conflict, (Vernon Press 2022). Speakers will include contributors to the book, which contains the memories of those who experienced the prisons of Armagh Gaol and the Maze and Long Kesh during the conflict known as the ‘Troubles’. 2pm to 3pm. In-person venue: PRONI, Belfast. Light refreshments will be provided after the event and attendees can purchase copies of the publication on the day. Online event: The presentations will be live streamed via the PRONI Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/publicrecordofficeni. Details

Wednesday 14 September: Petticoat Pilots: an in-person talk by Michael Traynor about Irish women who were at the cutting edge of the aeronautical revolution in the 1920s an 1930s. Free. All welcome. 6:30pm. Venue: Walkinstown Library, Percy French Road, Dublin 12. Need to book: Tel 01 222 8890 | Email walkinstownlibrary@dublincity.ie.

Wednesday 14 September: The English and Irish domestic football leagues during the Great War, an online lecture with Dr Alexander Jackson, curator at the English National Football Museum. Hosts: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the Antrim and Down branch of the Western Front Association. 7pm to 8pm. All welcome. Free but need to register in advance. Details.

Wednesday 14 September: The architcture, art and history of Collins Barracks, an in-person talk with Gerry White. Host: CorkDFAS and Cork City Libraries. Venue: Cork City Library, Grand Parade, Cork. 7pm to 8pm. Non-members are welcome. No need to book.

Saturday 17 September: Left in the lurch: Irish WW1 ex-Service men and women in post-war Ireland, a seminar to be held at Pearse Street Library, Dublin 2. Host: National Library of Ireland. The in-person event will mark the centenary of the disbandment of Irish regiments of British Army in 1922. Speakers: Dr Patrick McCarthy, Arthur Cagney, Dr Emmanuel Destenay, Tom Burke MBE, and Dr Fionnuala Walsh. 11am – 4.50pm. All welcome. Details Fully Booked.

Wednesday 18 September: Kate O'Brien and her sisters: Archives, Fictions and families, with Dr Gerardine Meaney MRIA. In-person lecture at Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin. Part of the Sisters series of lectures which celebrates sisterhood by exploring the lives and achievements of four families of sisters who made their mark on Irish life. 1pm. Free. All welcome. Booking recommended.

Monday 19 September: Bank Holiday in Northern Ireland to mark the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Monday 19 September: Derry’s Wonderful Opera House, with Ken McCormack. An online and in-person event hosted by North of Ireland Family History Society, Foyle Branch. 7pm to 8:30pm. All welcome. In-person venue: Lecture Room of Derry City’s Central Library, 35 Foyle Street, Londonderry BT48 6AL. Online: Those wishing to attend on zoom should e-mail the branch secretary at causeway@nifhs.org and they will be sent the link.

Monday 19 September: How to do your family research in stages, a presentation by Branch Committee Members. An online and in-person event hosted by the North of Ireland Family History Society, Larne Branch. 7:15pm - 8:45pm BST. Venue: Larne Museum and Arts Centre, 2 Victoria Road, Larne, BT40 1RN. Those wishing to attend, either on-site or on zoom, should e-mail the branch secretary at Larne@nifhs.org and they will be sent the link. Emails need to be received by 12pm on Saturday prior to each meeting.

Tuesday 20 September: Executions and reprisals: the atrocities of the Civil War, an online lecture with Myles Dungan. Part of the Decade of Centenaries programme of South Dublin County. Hosted by Lucan Library. Free. All welcome. Registration required.

Tuesday 20 September: The Big Houses in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown as Religious Institutions, an in-person lecture with Deirdre Rafferty. Host: Foxrock Local History Club. Venue: Parish Pastoral Centre, Foxrock. 8pm. All welcome. Non-members €5 on the door.

Wednesday 21 September: The history and traditions of Brotherhoods and Friendly Societies in Ireland, an online seminar hosted by Armagh Robinson Library during Northern Ireland Good Relations Week. The event will include talks on the Apprentice Boys of Derry, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Foresters, Freemasonry and the Orange Order. Among those taking part will be Robert Bamford, Provincial Grand Librarian for the Province of Antrim (Freemasonry), Billy Moore, BEM (General Secretary of the Apprentice Boys of Derry and Chairman of The Siege Museum), David Scott (the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland’s Outreach and Services Manager) and Dr Robert Whan, Director of Armagh Robinson Library. 10.30am to 3pm. All welcome. Details. Booking essential. Tickets: £6.

Wednesday 21 September: Celebrate the Registry of Deeds Index Project's milestone as the database races past a half a million entries (all free to search). Online event is free. All welcome. Need to register at eventbrite. Times: Ireland and UK: 9pm on 21st | USA, New York: 4pm on 21st | USA, Salt Lake City: 2pm on 21st | Eastern Australia: 6am on 22 September).

Wednesday 21 to Friday 23 September: National Archives of Ireland's Reading Room and Genealogy Advice Service closed to the public to facilitate an IT upgrade. Reopening Monday 26 September. See NAI home page for any updates/changes.

Friday 23 September: Culture Night. Organised by the Arts Council, in partnership with local authorities and cultural organisations, this is the island's annual cultural feast of late openings and tours, performances, etc. They are delivered nationwide in cities, towns, villages and rural locations, and some are online. Dig in at culturenight.ie.

Friday 23 and Saturday 24 September: Military aspects of the Civil war, a two-day conference hosted by MilitaryArchives.ie in collaboration with the Military History Society of Ireland and supported by the Department of Culture. The event will be live streamed (free, no registration required) with a limited number of in-person €17 tickets also available here (price includes lunch and refreshments. Live stream link, programme and details.

Saturday 24 September: Exploring Christianity through Denominations, a full-day in-person workshop during Northern Ireland Good Relations Week. Host and venue: Armagh Robinson Library, 43 Abbey St, Armagh BT61 7DY. The workshop will consider a range of topics including the history of the denominations found in Ireland, their doctrinal positions, worship and liturgy, leadership and governance, and places of worship. The day includes a guided tour of St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral, which is situated beside the Library. 10am to 5pm. Tickets £12. (Lunch 1pm–2pm not included.) All welcome.Details and booking.

Diary Note: National Archives of Ireland closed 21-23 September

The National Archives of Ireland has advised that its Reading Room will be closed to the public for three days from Wednesday 21 to Friday 23 September.

As a result, the NAI's free walk-in Genealogy Advisory Service will also not be operating.

The closure will facilitate essential upgrading of the NAI's IT systems.

All being well, normal opening hours (Mon-Fri 10am–5pm) and services should resume on Monday 26 September.

Online Irish family history workshop for beginners and refreshers

The Society of Genealogists is to host a half-day session aimed at beginners in Irish family history research on Saturday 10 September.

It will be held (live) online from 10:30am to 1pm (BST) and will be presented by Rosalind McCutcheon and Jill Williams, both of them Fellows of the Irish Genealogical Research Society and highly experienced family historians, who will set you on the right path to understanding Irish records and finding your ancestors from Ireland. Among the research areas they will explore are:

• The context and background of Irish records
• The records you need to get started with your Irish family research, including civil registration, church and census records
• Where to find the records
• How to use the records
• The latest additions to Irish records online.

The fee is £20.00 including VAT (SoG Members £16.00). To find out more and to book your space, see the SoG's website.

Irish emigration to Newfoundland collection, 1765-1835, now online

Taoiseach Micheál Martin TD was in Cork City Hall today to launch The Mannion Collection project. The project has resulted in a dedicated website – www.mannioncollection.ca – holding the digitised version of extensive records held by Dr John Mannion, retired Galway-born Professor of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and his wife and research partner, Maura, reflecting their lifetimes' work on Irish emigration to, and settlement in Newfoundland.

Now available on a free to access online portal for the first time, the collection holds extensive information on the largest single migration from a small confined geographical area – that of Southeast Ireland – to another small confined geographical area in Newfoundland.

The project was jointly funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade and the Provincial Government of Newfoundland & Labrador and contains almost 160,000 records of individuals and families who migrated from South-East Ireland and settled in Newfoundland, primarily in the years 1765 - 1835.

Speaking at today's launch An Taoiseach said: “I was delighted to be asked to officiate at this launch which expresses the spirit of the second sentence of Article 2 of our Constitution, revised as part of the Good Friday Agreement, that now reads: ''... the Irish nation cherishes its special affinity with people of Irish ancestry living abroad who share its cultural identity and heritage.

"Moreover, I thoroughly enjoyed the examples of genealogy and that ‘completion of the circle’ of information which this dataset allows. We are seeing names and details and information here that will go a long way in strengthening relations and cultural ties between our two islands, and that can only be a positive thing.”

The Cork launch was hosted by Waterford based group Ireland-Newfoundland Connections, who since 2005, along with its Canadian counterpart, Newfoundland and Labrador Irish Connections, has operated annual cultural and social gatherings in both places, alternating between South-East Ireland and the Irish heritage areas of Newfoundland, with over 60 communities in Ireland and 40 in Newfoundland and over 1,000 participants taking part so far.

The chairman of Newfoundland-Labrador Irish Connections, Councillor Ralph Tapper, said the value of this record set cannot be underestimated. "These are records from pre-Famine times that simply don’t exist elsewhere and are now available for researchers at home and abroad to fill in the gaps in their family history.”

The digitisation work was carried out by dedicated technical staff at the Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency in St. John’s, the NL Government’s central statistics agency. The project was co-managed and led by the Agency and Memorial University’s Dr Sean Cadigan, with collaboration and support of the NL Irish Connections and Irish Newfoundland Connections groups.

Civil War Bluejackets Project to reveal lives of Irish Civil War sailors

Launching today is the Civil War Bluejackets Project which aims to help tell the stories of sailors in the American Civil War in ways never before possible.

Called the “Civil War Bluejackets” Project because of the distinctive uniform worn by U.S. Civil War sailors, the project hopes to reveal details of the thousands of Irish who departed these shores and ended up helping the U.S. battle the Confederacy on water.

It will also examine the large numbers of others – including thousands of recently enslaved African Americans – who donned the U.S. Navy’s famous bluejacket during the conflict. Additionally, the project team seek to reveal answers to questions about where the US Civil War sailors came from, their background and what they did before they enlisted, how they lived and interacted on board, and what became of some of them in the years after the conflict.

The project is a collaboration between Irish historians Professor David Gleeson and Dr Damian Shiels at Northumbria University; information and data scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Koblenz-Landau; and U.S. partners including the United States Naval Academy. It is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

It is calling for citizen volunteers to help transcribe tens of thousands of Civil War Muster Rolls. These were documents carried on board U.S. ships and capture the personal details of the c.118,000 men who fought on water for the Union between 1861 and 1865. The online Zooniverse platform is being used to share these Rolls, and are asking the public to help in revealing their contents.

Speaking at the launch, Principal Investigator (and Tipperary native) Professor David Gleeson of Northumbria University said: “We are calling on people-power to help us tell the story of common sailors in the Civil War. We estimate that some 20 percent of these men were born in Ireland, many more were the children of Irish emigrants. With the public's help, we aim to create a new freely available database of these men, and use the information generated by citizen scientists to explore the social and military experiences of these ordinary people."

An additional advantage of this approach is that the public's transcriptions will be compared with the original 19th-century handwriting in order to train computers to assist in the reading and deciphering of historic documents. This will create an important tool for those interested in uncovering the past.

To find out more, click the project's logo above or go direct to the Zooniverse Civil War Bluejackets page.

BritishNewspaperArchive adds one million more free papers

The online BritishNewspaperArchive.co.uk (BNA) has added another million pages of historical newspapers to its free-to-view collection. This doubles the free content, which was launched last year.

In this second instalment, 244 titles from across Britain, Ireland and India have joined, spaning four centries of history.

Among the 20,000+ pages added from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are the following titles:

• Cavan Observer 1857-1864
•  Cork Advertising Gazette 1855-1859 
• Current Prices of Grain at Dublin Corn Exchange 1860-1861 
• Drogheda News Letter 1813-1813
• Dublin Shipping and Mercantile Gazette 1871-1871 
• Dublin Weekly Herald 1838-1842 
• Illustrated Advertiser of the Royal Dublin Society 1850-1850 
• Journal of the Chemico-Agricultural Society of Ulster 1849-1854, 1856-1865, 1867 
• Leinster Independent 1871-1872 
• Meath People 1857-1863 
• Missionary Herald of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1855-1855 
• Skibbereen & West Carbery Eagle; or, South Western Advertiser 1861-1870 
• Sligo Observer 1828-1831 
• The Irish Racing Book and Sheet Calendar 1823-1841, 1849-1869 
• United Irishman 1848-1848 
• Waterford Chronicle 1827-1875 
• Waterford News 1848-1869 
• Weekly Gazette, Incumbered Estates Record & National Advertiser (Dublin, Ireland) 1854-1855

The collection will be further expanded to a total of five million free-to-view pages in the Archive over five years.

In the meantime you can view a list of the titles added last year here, and a list of today's additions here.

To mark the continued growth of the free collection, a 20% discount is also being offered on subscriptions to the BNA's full, pay-to-view collection, which now includes more than 56.5million pages of historical newspapers from Britain and its former colonies and the island of Ireland. Click the image above to find out more.

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

25% savings on annual subscriptions to RootsIreland.ie

RootsIreland.ie is offering a 25% discount on annual subscriptions to its database of 23million+ multi-denominational church records, civil records, census substitutes, headstones and much more.

The site is an essential source for Irish genealogists, particularly for its church records collection which is more extensive than any other website provides.

The discount will expire at 11:59pm (Dublin time) on Saturday 17 September. Click the image to find out more.

Three-week summary of new & updated genealogy US collections

Below is a summary of US family history collections released or updated by the major genealogy databases in the last three weeks or so. (Previous summary list published 15 August, see blogpost).

My regular summaries are designed to help family historians whose Irish ancestors emigrated, temporarily or permanently, to the United States.

By default, they should also be useful to anyone carrying out research in the US, regardless of the origin of their ancestors.

The figures in parenthesis in the New Collections section are the numbers of records or images in each new record set, if provided by the database.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parenthesis in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update, if a number has been clearly noted by the supplier, and/or the revised total. I rarely include updates of fewer than 1,000 records.

NEW COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• Washington, U.S., Masters and Owners of Vessels Oaths, 1916-1967 (48,830)
• U.S., Southern Baptist Church Records, 1750-1899 (124,594)

MyHeritage

• New York Castle Garden Immigrants New York Castle Garden Immigrants (11,483,119)
• Delaware, Probate Records (68,017)
• Iowa, Birth Records (326,187)

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

AmericanAncestors

• Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1920:
  St Mary, Georgetown (6,000+ names

Ancestry

• U.S., Find a Grave Index, 1600s-Current (168,814,684)
• 1810 United States Federal Census (832,889)
• Arkansas, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1907-1968 (4,026)
• Alabama, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1888-1991 (190,969)
• Arizona, U.S., State Court Naturalization Records, 1869-1993
• California, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1843-1999
• Connecticut, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1790-1996
• Delaware, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1796-1959
• Florida, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1847-1995 (1,545,907)
• Illinois, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1856-1991
  
• Iowa, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1856-1937
• Kansas, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1865-1984
• Kentucky, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1906-1991 (129,706)
• Louisiana, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1836-2001
• Massachusetts, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798-1950 (4,858,631)
• Nebraska, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1835-1987 (63,049)
• Nevada, U.S., Naturalization Petitions, 1956-1991 (37,656)
• New Mexico, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1881-1983 (33,446)
• New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794-1943(9,174,219)
• New York, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1882-1944
• Tennessee, U.S., Naturalization Records, 1888-1992 (141,333)
• Oregon, U.S., Naturalization Records 1865-1991
• Ohio, U.S., Naturalization Petition and Record Books, 1888-1946 
• Pennsylvania, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1795-1931
  
• USA Newspapers.com Marriage Index, 1800s-current
• USA School Yearbooks, 1900-2016
• Vermont, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1790-1954
• Virginia, U.S., Federal Naturalization Records, 1901-1938 
• Washington, U.S., Petitions for Naturalization, 1860-1991
• Washington DC, USA Military Naturalization Petitions, 1918-1924
• 1950 United States Federal Census
• Mississippi, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1780-1982

FamilySearch

• California, County Marriages, 1850-1952 (1,957,788)
• Florida, Divorce, 1927-1950 (263,782)
• Florida Deaths, 1877-1939 (480,993)
• llinois, Monroe County, Deed Records, 1816-1900 (102,916)
• Massachusetts Marriages, 1695-1910, 1921-1924 (1,464,148)
• New York, Birth Indexes outside of New York City, 1881-1942 (640,875)
• Oregon, Douglas County Records, 1850-1983 (browse images)
• Virginia, Vital Records, 1715-1901 (242,664)
• FindAGrave (900,448)
• United States 1950 Census (1,847,635)

MyHeritage

• 1950 United States Federal Census (new total 16,733,748)

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.