IrishGenealogyNews

Monday, 24 October 2022

Irish genealogy, history and heritage events, 24 Oct. to 6 Nov.

Tuesday 25 October: Islandmagee DNA Project Update, with Anne Johnston. Online. Hosted by North of Ireland Family History Society, Belfast Branch. 7:30pm–9pm BST. Free. All welcome. Non-members wishing to attend should e-mail the branch secretary at Belfast@nifhs.org and they will be sent the link.

Tuesday 25 October: A pictorial tour of Antrim and Down through the eyes of Lord Mark Kerr, by Anne Casement. An in-person and online meeting hosted North of Ireland Family History Society, Causeway C&G Branch. Free. 8pm–9:30pm. Venue: Sandel Centre, Knocklynn Road, Coleraine, Co. LondonDerry. All welcome. Details.

Tuesday 25 October: How the ESB brought electricity to West Clare, with Brian McMahonan. An in-person event hosted by the Kilrush and District Historical Society. Presentation follows the Society's AGM. AGM 7:30pm. Talk 8pm. Venue: Teach Ceoil in Kilrush. All welcome. Free to members. Non-members €5 on the door.

Tuesday 25 October: The Murder of Michael Collins, an audio-visual and performance event with Paddy Cullivan. In-person. Venue: The Dublin Liberties Distillery 33 Mill Street, Dublin 8. 8pm to 10pm. Tickets €15, includes complimentary glass whiskey.

Tuesday 25 October: The Irish Civil War: the British Perspective, an online lecture by Professor Heather Jones. Part of the Civil War in Ireland: New Perspectives' series, a collaboration between the National Library of Ireland and the Atlas of the Irish Revolution editorial team, University of Cork. 7pm to 8pm. Free. Need to register.

Tuesday 25 October: The 1922 Constitution Committee: a dramatic theatrical re-enactment of the proceedings, performed in the Constitution Suite of the Shelbourne Hotel where the committee met over a period of six weeks. Hosts: National Archives of Ireland and the Courts Service of Ireland. The free online event will be live-streamed on the Courts Service's YouTube channel from 7:30pm (need to register) and the recording will be freely available some time afterwards on both the Courts and the Archives YouTube channels. Details.

Wednesday 26 October: Researching and Writing The Mount Washington Transit Tunnel Disaster - Using Public Records to Resolve a Family Mystery , an in-person event with Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt. Hosts: The Ulster Historical Foundation (UHF) and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Venue: PRONI, 2 Titanic Boulevard, Titanic Quarter, Belfast BT3 9HQ. 1pm to 2pm. Need to register. Details.

Thursday, 27 October: DNA Connections, with Martin McDowell. A hybrid meeting hosted by North of Ireland Family History Society, Ballymena Branch. 7:15pm–8:45pm BST. In-person venue: Michelin Arts Workshop, Braid Arts Centre, 1-29 Bridge Street, Ballymena BT43 5EJ. All welcome. Details.

Thursday 27 October: Resources for the Revolutionary Period held by Wexford County Archives, with Barry Lacey. A free, in-person event hosted by Wexford County Council. Venue: Bunclody Library, Millwood, Carrigduff, Bunclody, Co. Wexford. All welcome. 7pm to 8pm. Details and booking.

Monday 31 October: Bank holiday in the Republic of Ireland only. (Business as usual in Northern Ireland)

Tuesday 1 November: Sex, Sectarianism(?) and the City: A Queer History for Belfast, 1890-1968, a hybrid event with Dr Tom Hulme of QUB. Host: Irish Historical Society. Venue: Boston College Ireland, 43 Saint Stephen's Green, Dublin 2. Online via zoom. 7pm. Free. All welcome. Registration and details at Eventbrite.

Tuesday 1 November: The Irish Civil War and Northern Ireland, an online lecture with Dr Adrian Grant. Host: National Library of Ireland. 7pm to 8pm. Free. All welcome. Need to book.

Wednesday 2 November: Irish Speaking Soldiers from East Belfast in the First World War, a talk with Dr Carmel Duggan, to coincide with the launch of a new exhibition. In-person event. Venue: Linen Hall Library, 17 Donegall Square North, Belfast. 2pm–3pm. Free but need to book. Details.

Wednesday 2 November: William Pirrie - Home Ruler, Liberal and Titanic builder, with Mark Doherty. An in-person event from the City Cemetery Series. Venue: Áras Uí Chonghaile; The James Connolly Visitor Centre, 374-376 Falls Road, Belfast. 7pm to 8.15pm. All welcome. Free. Booking advised.

Thursday 3 November: 'Oh! Jammie what have you done?': Traumatic assaults on women and imaginative resistance in mid-twentieth century Irish folklore, with Dr Christina Brophy. An online talk hosted by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in conjunction with The Ulster Society of Irish Historical Studies. 7pm to 8pm. Free. All welcome. Need to register.

Thursday 3 November: Policing in Ireland 1922, with Jim Herligy. An in-person talk. Host: Cork City Libraries. Venue: Mayfield Library, Old Youghal Road, Montenotte, Cork City. Free. 3pm. All welcome.

Friday 4 November: Amritsar 1919. The event that rocked an empire, an in-person talk with Michael Whelan. Venue: St. Patrick's Gateway Centre, Patrick Street, Waterford City. Tickets €6.19. Details.

Saturday 5 November: Amalgamating Your DNA Match Lists, an online zoom class with Martin McDowell. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society. 2pm. Cost: £10. Book your place while tickets last.

Friday, 21 October 2022

Carysfort College Registers, 1883-1922, now digitised online

Now online at UCD's Digital Library and at the Digital Repository of Ireland is an essential collection for genealogists with female teachers in their family history: the Registers of Carysfort College, 1883–1922.

Carysfort College (aka Our Lady of Mercy College, Carysfort) was a College of Education in Dublin founded and run by the Sisters of Mercy from its foundation in 1877 until its closure in 1988.

It was set up as a training college for Catholic girls who wished to become primary school teachers and its Diploma in Primary School Education was recognised by the Irish Government's Department of Education. The Diploma course was originally a two year course, lengthened to three years in the 1970s.

The online collection consists of three registers:

Register of 1421 students admitted 1883-1896 with additional 21 extern students 1892-1907
Register of 1391 students admitted 1897-1910
Register of 1557 students admitted 1911-1922 (This register continues to 1925; post end-1922 entries have been redacted online.)

In addition to the basic personal details – age, residence, marital status etc – of each student are examination results and information about their early career

Each register can be downloaded as a single pdf, free of charge from the links above. An additional name index in Excel format can also be downloaded and searched for direction to the respective entry for each trainee.

Tuesday, 18 October 2022

The Church of Ireland Registers Digitisation Project: a mini update

A press release issued last week from the Representative Church Body (RCB) Library provides the nearest we've seen to a progress report about the Church of Ireland Parish Registers Digitization Project in four years. You can read it here.

Some contect and background... The RCB Library is the custodian of the surviving historical parish registers of the Church of Ireland, the vast majority of which have been accessible only to researchers visiting the Library, which is based in Churchtown, Dublin 14. After decades of thumbing by zealous genealogists and historians, some of these have become very fragile, making their digitisation increasingly urgent.

In September 2018, the Library confirmed (see IGN blogpost) that state funding had been secured to start such a project and this would be carried out in-house and would result in the digital registers being freely available online, possibly on genealogy.ie (a free, state funded and managed database).

No timescale was given and no progress updates have since been provided to the public. I did, however, come across a report* from the RCB Library which outlined some of the behind-the-scenes steps taken in 2018-2019. These included the procurement and installation of a Lizard Book Scanner, the satisfactory completion of a 4-month pilot scanning programme that resulted in about 250 volumes of scanned registers, and the development and customisation of transcription software. It concluded that indexing of the data was expected to begin in 2020.

And then Covid-19 struck.

More than two years later, a visit from Catherine Martin, TD, Minister of the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, the source of the funding for the Digitisation Project, finally took place at the Library (it had originally been scheduled for early 2020), hence last week's press release.

It gives us an up-to-date idea of how things are going and where they're headed, but the subject of timescale is still not mentioned and the 'end game' of researcher access to the digitised collection is rather ambiguously described in this statement: "Once digitized, the records can be made available on screen for viewing in the Library while the longer–term goal is to share them for the worldwide audience on the internet."

I've always understood that the project was specifically intended to result in free online access. Use of the phrase 'longer-term goal' suggests there is a separate shorter-term goal which has to be achieved first. I hope this isn't the case.

*The RCB Library's Report to the Church of Ireland's General Synod", published 2020. See pdf.

Monday, 17 October 2022

Wait continues for replacement 'GRONI terminals' at PRONI

For at least a couple of months, researchers visiting the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) have been unable to use its Public Search Room's four dedicated 'GRONI' terminals.

The latter are connected directly to the database of the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) and allow family historians to search and view birth, marriage and death records registered as recently as yesterday, unlike researchers using the Internet whose searches over public cyberspace are subject to 100-75-50-year restrictions.

I haven't been able to discover why the existing GRONI terminals are out of service, but replacement machines have been on order for some time.

The latest advice is that the new equipment won't be available until November at the earliest, and more probably December. Whether than includes installation, we will have to wait and see.

In other PRONI news, pre-pandemic opening hours have been re-instated as of today, bar late nights on Thursdays. Hours are now 9:00am–4:45pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and 10am–4:45pm on Thursdays. Details.

Irish genealogy, history and heritage events, 17 - 30 October

Monday 17 October: The Pirate Queen, with Janice Witherspoon. An in-person and online event hosted by the North of Ireland Family History Society, Larne branch. Venue: Larne Museum and Arts Centre, 2 Victoria Road, Larne, BT40 1RN. 7:15pm. All welcome. Details.

Tuesday 18 October: Early Irish maps at The National Archives. Rose Mitchell and Lucia Pereira Pardo give the 2022 D A Chart Seminar on Maps. An online event hosted by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. 7pm to 8:15pm. All welcome. Free but need to register. Details

Tuesday 18 October: The old and new symbols of the Irish Free State, with Cathy Scuffil. Part of the Decade of Centenaries programme from South Dublin County. Hosted online by Palmerstown Digital Hub. 7pm to 8pm. Free. Details and booking.

Tuesday 18 October: War of Words: censorship, propaganda and civil war, an online lecture with Dr Donal Ó Drisceoil. Part of the Civil War in Ireland: New Perspectives' series, a collaboration between the National Library of Ireland and the Atlas of the Irish Revolution editorial team, University of Cork. 7pm to 8pm. Free. Need to register.

Tuesday 18 October: The Irish Transport and General Trades Union in Tipperary, with special reference to the Lewis brothers of Nenagh, with Francis Devine. An in-person event and part of the Tipperary People and Places Lecture series no.16. Host: Tipperary Studies, the local history dept. of Tipperary County Librairies. 7pm. Free. Venue: Gallery of the Source Library, Thurles. Tea and coffeee served. All welcome. Details.

Thursday 20 October: Resources for the Revolutionary Period held by Wexford County Archives, with Barry Lacey. A free, in-person event hosted by Wexford County Council. Venue: Gorey Library, Civic Square, The Avenue, Gorey, Co. Wexford. All welcome. 7:30pm to 8:30pm. Details and booking.

Friday 21 October: Ireland 1922, Year Zero, an Anatomy of Independence, an in-person lecture with Mícheál Ó Fathartaigh. Host: NTU History and Heritage Events. Venue: Newton Building (Nottingham Trent University) Goldsmith Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU. Free. Details.

Saturday 22 October: Meath History Workshop, a full-day conference presenting new research on the Revolution and its aftermath in County Meath and reflecting on how the county has commemorated the seminal events of the period. Host: Meath County Council's Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 Programme. 9:30am to 4pm. All welcome. Light lunch included. Free but you need to book your place by Tuesday 18 October. Details and line-up.

Tuesday 25 October: How the ESB brought electricity to West Clare, an in-person event hosted by the Kilrush and District Historical Society. Follows the Society's AGM. Venue: Teach Ceoil in Kilrush.

Wednesday 26 October: Researching and Writing The Mount Washington Transit Tunnel Disaster - Using Public Records to Resolve a Family Mystery , an in-person event with Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt. Hosts: The Ulster Historical Foundation (UHF) and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Venue: PRONI, 2 Titanic Boulevard, Titanic Quarter, Belfast BT3 9HQ. 1pm to 2pm. Need to register. Details.

Friday, 14 October 2022

Ancestry adds College of Physicians of Ireland Registers, 1667-1920

Were there any doctors in the house of your Irish ancestors? If so, Ancestry's latest new Irish collection – the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland registers, 1667–1920 – may help you discover them.

The RCPI Heritage Centre in Dublin

The Royal College, which was founded in 1654, is an educational institution and a professional society, and the registers have been sourced from the RCPI Heritage Centre on Dublin's Kildare Street. The 15,621 records include the names of the society's members and dates related to their licensing and membership.

Some may also include a physician's place of residence and date of death.

While they do not include other genealogical information, they do help place your ancestors at a particular time.

These are the registers now indexed and linked to images, or simply available to browse, on Ancestry:

Register of the King and Queen Colleges of Physicians of Ireland, 1667-1871
Roll of Fellows, Officers and Licentiates 1829-1865
Roll of Licentiates, 1695-1833
Roll of Licentiates in Medicine and Midwifery 1866-1920
Roll of Licentiates in Sanitary Science, 1883-1920
Roll of Licentiates under the Conjoint Scheme 1886, 1887-1920
Roll of Officers, 1836-1842
Roll of Members, 1879-1920
Roll of Officers and Fellows, 1693-1760; 1724-1825; 1771-1835; 1866-1920

Ancestry has produced a a short video about the collection along with some tips on how to get the best from it.

Thursday, 13 October 2022

RootsIreland adds 12,049 church records from Antrim and Down

RootsIreland.ie has announced the addition of more than 12,000 new baptism and marriage records from churches in Counties Antrim and Down to its database.

They are as follows, with the number of records in each set shown in parenthesis:

Downpatrick, RC Marriages 1909-30 (304)
Downpatrick, RC Baptisms 1909-22 (982)
St Brigid's Belfast, RC Marriages 1891-1930 (814)
St Brigid's Belfast, RC Baptisms 1884-1909 (3,447)
St Patrick's Lisburn, RC Marriages 1918-30 (305)
St Patrick's Lisburn, RC Baptisms 1918-30 (1,134)
St Peter's Belfast, RC Marriages 1899-1930 (4914)
Westbourne, Presbyterian Marriages 1917-1930 (149)

For an up to date list of sources for Antrim and Down and to search these records, go to Co. Antrim sources and Co. Down sources. To login or subscribe to RootsIreland, click the logos above.

Wednesday, 12 October 2022

Discounts on some of Four Courts Press's most popular books

A selection of popular books published by Four Courts Press is currently available with a discount of up to 20%. An end date to the special offer has not been provided, so if one of the titles below grabs your fancy, don't delay in placing your order.

The books are:

The Geraldines and Medieval Ireland, edited by Peter Crooks & Seán Duffy
Irish Media: A critical history, by John Horgan & Roddy Flynn (revised and expanded)
Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and diplomacy, 1919–1939, by Mervyn Driscoll
The History and Heritage of St. James's Hospital, Dublin, by Davis Coakley & Mary Coakley
The Irish Brigade in the Pope's Army, 1860 by Donal Corcoran
The Irish Revenue Police, by Jim Herlihy
The Redmonds and Waterford – A political dynasty 1891–1952, by Pat McCarthy
Winning the Vote for Women, The Irish Citizen newspaper and the suffrage movement in Ireland, by Louise Ryan
Wilhelmina Geddes: Life and Work, by Nicola Gordon Bowe
The Ha'penny Bridge, Dublin, by Michael English
Medieval Irish Buildings, 1100–1600, by Tadhg O’Keeffe
Richard II and the Irish Kings, by Darren McGettigan

Click/tap the logo above to explore the books on special offer.

Tuesday, 11 October 2022

RCBL explores Maps & Plans for Mayo, Galway and Sligo 1753-1873

The RCB Library's Archive of the Month takes another delve into the Diocesan Records of Tuam, Killala and Achonry (D5 & D5A), this time focussing on its extensive collection of maps and plans. The collection, which covers the period from c1613 to 2000, includes a vast arrange of primary sources and unique items that expound the religious fabric of a huge geographical area of the western part of Ireland – specifically all of county Mayo, and much of counties Galway and Sligo, as well as a small portion of county Roscommon.

Click image for enlarged view

The maps and plans have been systematically arranged and a detailed catalogue-list is now available displaying over 80 maps, including some duplicates, showing either parish or district boundaries, and divided into four distinct categories.

While the maps span nearly four centuries, the earliest being a map of Kilmactigue in county Sligo from 1754), the majority date from the 1850s to 1873, a time when land was at the forefront politically and culturally in Ireland. This period represented a period of transition for the Church of Ireland, including its Disestablishment from the state on 1 January 1871.

The Library has digitised the drawing component of the collection because of the rich visual content, making it freely available to a worldwide audience.

Another important factor in prioritising this collection for digitisation was the fragile nature of some of these maps, whether due to age or in many instances the fact that they were drawn on thin tracing paper. The rich descriptive information that can be seen in the detailed catalogue-list has been incorporated into the digitised collection, allowing for the material to be easier to find by researchers and those with an interest in the area.

View the full Archive of the Month presentation here.

New FindMyPast sub includes 1921 Census of England & Wales

FindMyPast has created a new annual-only subscription tier that includes full access to the 1921 Census of England and Wales. Called the Premium subscription, it is, in effect, the 12-month PRO package topped up with this single collection, which was released earlier this year and is exclusively available online via FindMyPast.

Since its release, the digitised census returns have been available on a standalone pay-to-view basis for all customers. PRO subscribers received a 10% discount on each 1921 Census purchase; this discount will continue to be available under the pay to view option now known as micro-payments. Alternatively, PRO subscribers can upgrade to the Premium tier on a pro-rata basis.

Those with other packages can choose to continue to pay for 1921 census records using micropayments or upgrade to the Premium tier. The micropayments facility is also available to non-subscribers.

The price of the new Premium subscription, which runs for 12-months and is payable in advance in one single payment, is:

FindMyPast.ie: €235.99 (equivalent to €19.67 per month)
FindMyPast.co.uk: UK £199.99 (equivalent to £16.67 per month)
FindMyPast.com.au: AUS $349.99 (equivalent to AUS$29.17 per month)
FindMyPast.com: US $239.99 (equivalent to US$19.99 per month)

Use the above links to reach the Subscription pages of each FindMyPast 'territory'. The landing pages shows the cost of each subscription clearly (select your preferred term first), and sets out exactly which record collection types are included.

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