Updates from Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives have uploaded the following files to their free website in the last two weeks.

Derry/Londonderry Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1840-1841 Royal Irish Constabulary

Donegal Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1840-41 Royal Irish Constabulary

Dublin Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Mount Jerome, Dublin Dublin - Part 38

Fermanagh Genealogy Archives - Education
Boys admitted into Charitable Charter School 1787-1933
List of National Schools in 1862

Limerick Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1840 & 1841 Royal Irish Constabulary

Monaghan Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Monaghan Town, Coolshannagh, St. Patrick's (CoI), Parts 1 & 2

Offaly (Kings) Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
Kings 1840 & 1841 Royal Irish Constabulary

Wexford Genealogy Archives - Cemeteries
Duncannon Fort Burials

Irish Genealogy Toolkit is the Research Help partner of IGP Archives.

March diary of exhibitions, lectures and other events

All month: Irish History Month (UK based) A month-long celebration of language, music, theatre and fun. Details.

Friday 2 March: Irish Migration in Wales. A roundable discussion with principal speakers Dr Paul O'Leary, Dept of History & Welsh History at Aberswystwyth University, and Bronwen Walter, professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University. Beaches Hotel, Prestatyn. 2:00-6:00pm. Details.

Saturday 3 March and Sunday 4 March: Irish War of Independence Exhibition and Lecture, with the Irish Volunteer Commemmorative Organisation. 10:00am to 6:00pm,Best Western Perys Hotel (formerly Glentworth Hotel), Glentworth Street, Limerick City. Lecture with Tom Toomey, author of The War of Independence in Limerick 1912-1921. Entry €5pp or €10 per family. Enquiries to info@irishvolunteers.org.

Wednesday 7 March: Family history for beginners online, with Elizabeth Consiglia/Irene Costley. Newtownards Library. 10:30 to 12noon, and 2:00-3:30pm. Free. newtownards.library@librariesni.org.uk.

Wednesday 7 March: Answering the Sick Call: Medical dispensaries and doctors in 19th-century Ireland, with Dr Catherine Cox, National Library, Kildare Street, Dublin. 7:00-8.30pm.

Saturday 10 March: Researching Your Irish Ancestors in New York City, 10:00am Westchester County Genealogical Society, Dobbs Ferry, NY

Saturday 10 March to 30 April: Titanic Belfast Connections Exhibition. Free. Linen Hall Library, Belfast.

Sunday 11 March: National Library of Ireland – Open Day. Carry out some genealogy research, look behind the scenes, discuss the workings of the Library with staff, take in the Yeats exhibition, explore Particles of the Past and drop into Cafe Joly for refreshments. 1:00pm to 5:00pm. All welcome. No booking.

Sunday 11 March: If maps could speak - the history of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland, with Richard Kirulan. Kildare Archaeological Society. 3pm. Kilcullen Heritage Centre. €5 including tea.

Tuesday 13 March: Some Sources for Family History Research in the City Archives, with John Grenham. Genealogical Society of Ireland. Dun Laoghaire College of FE, Cumberland Street. 8pm.

Wednesday 14 March: The Gaelic World. Gordon McCoy of the ULTACH Trust traces the history and contemporary state of Gaelic languages from their beginnings in Ireland to their development in the Isle of Man, Scotland and Canada. 7.30pm. Free. Lisburn City Libary. lisburncity.library@librariesni.org.uk.

Thursday 15 March: At the Crossroads - Newry from earliest times to present, with Tony Canavan. Newry City Library. Free. Booking required. 028 3026 4683.

Saturday 17 March: Cemetery and Headstone Research in Ireland. 11:00am Bethpage Public Library, New York.

Thursday 22 March: The Presbyterian Churches – a documentary record, with Valerie Adams. Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland. Belmont Prebyterian Church, Belfast. 8:00pm (preceded by Society's AGM at 7.15pm).

Friday 23 March: A Nostalgic Look at the Belfast Shipyards and Titanic. Part of the Take 30 series of digital film presentations. Killyneagh Library. 1.15-1.45pm. Free. Details: killyneagh.library:librariesni.org.uk.

Friday 23 and Saturday 24 March: Conference: Gender and Irish Society in the 19th and 20th centuries. Moore Institute, NUI Galway. Details.

Saturday 24 March: My Ancestor was Irish, a half-day course with Michael Gandy. Society of Genealogists, London. 10:30am-1:30pm. For beginners and refreshers. Details.

Thursday 29 March: Exploring Local History - Urban history. PRONI and OUI Lecture Series. 6.30-8:00pm. PRONI, Belfast. Free, but booking essential at proni@dcalni.gov.uk.

Thursday 29 March: Digitising Early Medieval Ireland, with Dr Nora White, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The Helen Roe Lecture Theatre, 63 Merrion Square, Dublin. 7:30pm. Details.

Saturday 31 March: Tracing Your People, One-Day Family History Conference presented by Cork City and County Archives in association with the Cork Genealogical Society. Ambassador Hotel, Military Hill, Cork. 9:30am -4:30pm. Free. Details: (021) 4505876 or archivist@corkcity.ie. The event is part of the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival 2012.

Disruption at National Archives until May

The National Archives is continuing with a major upgrade of its storage facility in the Four Courts. The storage building is on the site of the former Public Records Office, which was destroyed in 1922, and dates from shortly after that catastrophic event. Nearly 90 years later, it badly needs refurbishment to bring it up to the standards of a modern repository.

While researchers do not visit the storage facility, they are likely to be impacted because many record collections will have to be removed elsewhere for the duration of the improvement works and will be temporarily unavailable to the public.

An index of the records closed until May can be found on the NAI website. The bulk are Crown and Peace Office, Circuit Court and High Court records, but there are others of a different nature so it's as well to check the index before setting out for a day's researching in Bishop Street.

WDYTYA? No place for Smoothies!

WDYTYA? kicked off yesterday morning in the way it always does: with a long queue of visitors stretching from Olympia almost all the way to Hammersmith. And that was just those who'd bought advance tickets!

Friday is traditionally the quietest day of the three-day show but it's still very busy, even if it took half an hour or so for visitors to wend their way over to the Irish section at the back of the hall. Soon enough, the Irish contingent were busy answering questions, offering advice and guidance, and letting folk sample their wares.

Roots Ireland were certainly busy in no time at all, showing off their online databases of (predominantly) baptisms, marriages and burials from parish registers that cover most, but not all, counties of the island. I managed to collar Karel Kiely for a brief chat and she told me that the IFHF-led site is to shortly undergo major changes.

Chief among these is the switch over to what Karel describes as the 'Scotland's People' model ie researchers purchase credits and then choose to spend them on either searches or viewing images: 'This model encourages the researcher to enter all the information they have about their ancestor before they search, she said. 'They are then more likely to discover the record they are looking for, and it should cost them less.

'This major shift is expected to take place by the end of March.'

Before then, the first of the long-promised Wexford records will join the available line-up. Two Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland parishes will be uploaded in about a fortnight and will start to bring in an income that will fund further Wexford transcription projects. 'The reality is that transcribing records costs money,' says Karel. 'That work brings jobs to Irish people. It doesn't go abroad; it stays in Ireland.'

Following the first Wexford records online will be additional records for Monaghan, Galway East, and St Patrick's Belfast (these are already online at the Ulster Historical Foundation's site but with slightly different search features). Quarter of a million gravestone inscriptions from Tyrone and Fermanagh will also become available. This flurry of activity from Roots Ireland should be completed by May, says Karel.

Tourism Ireland sponsored a sizable stand where family historians could pose questions about tracing ancestors and visiting the areas where they once lived. Tourism experts were on hand along with The Clare Heritage Centre, Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the Titanic Story together with genealogist Helen Kelly. John Hancock of Ancestor Network was there, too, and said he'd been pretty much non-stop throughout the day.

Same story on PRONI's stand, where staff were helping researchers to appreciate the wide range of records they have available at their state-of-the-art Belfast offices.

The Certificate of Irish Heritage were also at the show, fresh from delivering Lord Seb Coe with his ancestral certificate just a couple of days earlier. The Certificate scheme is Government-backed and launched last October.

'WDYTYA? Live is the first exhibition we've attended,' said product manager Karl Elliston. 'And what a response!'

'People are very interested in learning more about their Irish ancestry, and we've been listening to their stories.

'The reaction to the Certificate has been very positive, and we're looking forward to the next couple of days!'

I caught up with Steven Smyrl, chairman of the Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS), between his stints on the Ask The Experts bench and the Association of Professional Genealogists of Ireland stand. He said the IGRS stand was fielding a lot of questions that show people are doing a lot of research on the Internet, but were cutting corners in the process.

'It's amazing how many people haven't done even the basic research in England. For example, if they've come across a Patrick Kennedy recorded in the 1901 English census as 'born in Ireland', they haven't thought to obtain his marriage certificate to find out the name and occupation of his father. But if they're looking for a Patrick Kennedy in Ireland whose father was Richard and a carpenter, they've got a lot more chance of finding out more about him.'

Steven said the IGRS, which is enjoying something of a revival following its 75th anniversary in 2011 and has seen a surge in membership numbers this year, is in a unique position to offer advice on how to carry out research properly. 'It has a more academic approach to genealogical research and its experts here on the stand can help guide and steer those who are not so experienced in how to get results.'

I also called in on the Find My Past stand, centrally placed under Olympia's glass roof and suffering/enjoying the greenhouse effect of unseasonably warm February weather.

With banks of computers lined up for visitors to search for free, it was rather like trying to get served on a Friday night in a busy bar so I left Ross, from the .ie arm of FMP, to it after a quick hello. Love the green 'Irish Expert' sash, Ross!

The National Archives of Ireland trio – Aideen Ireland, Catriona Crowe and Paul Gorry – hardly came up for air all day, and had the added problem during the afternoon of having to fight against the sound levels from the neighbouring lecture halls.

At Paul's own lecture on online Irish records in the morning, the sound equipment was not working at optimum levels and the organisers had replaced it by lunchtime with one that was booming out. As if that weren't enough to contend with, every time the nearby CRUSH outlet mixed up a Smoothie, the sound of the mixing machine sent the sound equipment into crackling mode!

Hope they solve that problem for the remaining two days, both for those attending the lectures, and the long-suffering NAI team.

Nothing petty about FMP's latest huge collection

FindMyPast Ireland has released 1.2million records from the Irish Petty Sessions Order Books.

They've never been online before, and mark the first tranche of a huge collection of records dating from 1850-1910. The remaining 15million records will be released during the year.

This first batch is particularly useful for areas of the country that are known to have sparse family history records: Donegal and the five counties of Connaught, but there is also sizable coverage for each of Cavan, Cork, Kilkenny, Monaghan, Offaly, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath and Wicklow.

Petty Sessions Courts were the forerunner of today's District Courts. They covered the bulk of legal cases, including all types of fairly minor crimes and civil offences, and were presided over by the local Justice of the Peace (JP).

JPs heard a vast variety of cases, with drunkenness the most regular cause for an offender being brought before the Bench. The top five offences tried were:

• Drunkenness – 33%
  
• Revenue/tax offences – 21%
  
• Assault – 16%
  
• Local acts of nuisance – 5%
  
• Destruction of property – 4%

The records are full of minor incidents such as the 1908 assault in Cloonakilla that resulted in 'malicious injury to a bicycle' belonging to Pat Curley (see illustration above), or the 1910 case of Michael Downey who was charged at Athlone with being drunk in charge of an ass and cart. Wonderful stuff. Real life is played out in these records.

Brian Donovan, Find My Past Ireland's director, said: 'These court records open up a unique window into Irish society in the 19th century. Most families interacted with the law in one way or another, being perpetrators or victims of petty crime, resolving civil disputes, to applying for a dog licence. The records are full of the trauma and tragedy of local life, as family members squabbled, shop keepers recovered debt, and the police imposed order. These records help fulfil our mission to provide more than just names and dates, to get to the stories of our ancestors' lives.'

 More about Irish Petty Sessions Books.

Historic Graves Roadshow planned

A number of local authorities in Dublin, Laois, Kilkenny and Cork have combined to organise an Historic Graveyards Roadshow which will start in March 2012.

Funded by the Department of the Environment and the Local Authorities, this roadshow will combine training in heritage conservation, archaeology, local history and genealogy for community groups and schools in a number of communities.

Communities will learn new techniques for surveying historic graveyards and for publishing their own heritage to a broad audience on the internet, combining headstone photographs with audio and video stories of people and place. Local heritage groups, national schools and secondary schools will be involved in the project.

Thanks to the Historic Graves blog for this info.

Find My Past Ireland releases Ardagh Wills 1690-1857

FindMyPast Ireland has launched a small collection called the Ardagh Wills 1690-1857.

This index of wills will be of special interest to researchers with ancestors from counties Longford and Leitrim, but those with connections in Sligo, Roscommon, Cavan and Westmeath should also give it a look because parts of the Ardagh diocese extended into these areas.

More than 40 civil parishes were included in the diocese. The main towns were:

• Carrick-on-Shannon
  
• Drumshambo
  
• Granard
  
• Mohill
  
• Edgeworthstown
  
• Longford.
  

Before 1858 wills were proved either in the Diocesan Court or in the Prerogative Court. If the deceased held property in only one diocese, his will was proved in the former. This regulation applied to both Roman Catholics and Protestants.

The original bonds were destroyed in the Public Records Office fire in 1922, so only the index survives.

Looking forward

As evidence that the annual hibernation is approaching its end, some interesting events are lining up for spring and early summer. Best get them in your diary before less important things like family days out and holidays get in the way!

Saturday 28 April: Family History Fair, Newry City Library, Co. Down.

Libraries NI is hosting a full-day (10.00am to 4.00pm) genealogy fair offering free advice and guidance from experts and experienced researchers.

Exhibitors include the PSNI Police Museum, the Public Record Office of N. Ireland, the Ulster Historical Foundation, the Federation for Ulster Local Studies, the Somme Heritage Centre, Northern Ireland Screen, ULTACH, Centre for Migration Studies Omagh, as well as local and family history organisations.

There will also be three talks:

11.00 – Whispers of the Past: A selection of archive material from the collections of BBCNI and the Ulster Folk and Transport, with Peter Carson from the Sound archive at the UFTM and Niamh McNamara from the BBCNI Community Archive. Items relating to Newry and surrounding area will be included.

12.30 – Emigration from Carlingford Lough, with Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald, The Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, Ulster-American Folk Park, Omagh.

2.00 – Family History Resources available in PRONI, with Dr A.M. McVeigh, PRONI

Booking is essential as places are limited.

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Saturday 12 May : Irish Genealogical Society of Ireland — London Open Day and AGM.

Following the success of the 75th Anniversary Symposium last October, the IGRS Council is planning a new format for this year's AGM. There will be two talks in the morning, followed by lunch and, at 2pm, the formal business of the AGM.

The talks will be:

• Forensic Genealogy, with Professor Bruce Durie
  
• The Irish in India, 1790-1920, with Peter Bailey.
  

Venue: 34 Chepstow Villas, Bayswater, London W11. (Nearest tube, Notting Hill Gate.)
Cost: For the morning and lunch: £25 members; £30 non-members. AGM: free.
Start time: 10.30 for 11.00am.
Booking: At IGRS website. Seats are limited to 50 so advance booking is recommended.


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Weekend 9-10 June: History Festival of Ireland at Lisnavagh House, Co. Carlow.

The stellar line up of the inaugural festival includes Ruth Dudley Edwards, Myles Dungan, Kevin Myers, Diarmaid Ferriter, David Norris, Patrick Geoghegan, Manchán Magan, Catriona Crowe, Maura Duggan, Jeananne Crowley, Robert O’Byrne and Tommy Graham. Turtle Bunbury will be playing host.

There will be presentations by the Federation of Local History Societies of Ireland, the Ulster Federation and the people behind The Gathering Ireland 2013.

The festival is an Éigse 2012 initiative. More details.


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WDYTYA? Live - what's in it for the Irish?

In just four days, the world's largest family history knees up will be underway at Olympia, London.

As you'd expect, WDYTYA? Live features most of the major online databases and general genealogy suppliers – Ancestry, Find My Past, Genes Reunited, Origins, Society of Genealogists, My Heritage – as well as a vast range of resource providers such as archives, libraries, family history societies and specialised institutes and organisations.

There are also a goodly number of exhibitors ready to sell you all manner of genealogical goodies, maps, books, training courses, magazines, software and nostalgia.

This being the show launched on the back of the eponymous TV show, there will also be a few celebrities hanging around. Other negatives are the crowds, the noise and the heat, and the shock of the £22 entrance fee if you haven't bought an advance ticket.

But there's plenty of plus for Irish genealogy researchers. This year the organisers have arranged the Irish exhibitors into a dedicated Irish section (top left of the hall). You'll find the majority of the following exhibitors in that section, but a handful will be on stands in the main run of the hall:

• Association of Professional Genealogists of Ireland (APGI)
• Certificate of Irish Heritage
  
• Eneclann
  
• Find My Past Ireland
  
• Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS)
  
• National Archives of Ireland
  
• North of Ireland Family History Society (NIFHS)
  
• Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
  
• Roots Ireland (IFHF)
  
• Tourism Ireland

All these exhibitors will be on hand to offer guidance and direction to your Irish genealogy research, whatever stage you're at, but there's also a good offering of relevant workshops across the three days. I won't list them all, but here are the stand out ones, for me, on each day:

• Friday, 10.30-11.15am: What's online for Ireland? with Paul Gorry, MAPGI
  
• Saturday, 11.00-11.45am: Irish land and property records, with Helen Kelly, MAPGI
  
• Sunday, 1.00-1.45pm: Early Irish Marriages, with Roz McCutcheon, IGRS.

All the workshops will be held on the first floor Gallery.

If you're going along to the show, it's worthwhile planning your day in advance. You'll find floor plans, a full list of workshops (the Irish-themed ones are identified by a shamrock) and other helpful information on the organiser's website.

Leighlin Administrations 1700-1857 released

FindMyPast Ireland has launched some more death records: The Index to Leighlin Administrations. This collection covers the period from 1700 to 1857 and should prove extremely useful for those researching their Irish family history with ancestors from counties
Carlow, Laois (Queen’s County), Wicklow and Kilkenny.

Prior to 1858, when a person died intestate, their affairs had to be settled by their next of kin or principal creditor in the Diocesan or Prerogative Courts. Before the Bishop granted the administration, the administrator was required to enter into a bond of a specified sum as security that they would justly administer the effects.

The Leighlin Diocese includes the towns of:

• Carlow
  
• Tullow
  
• Abbeyleix
  
• Mountrath
  
• Maryborough
  
• Balitinglass
  
• over 90 civil parishes and smaller towns.

This Index to Leighlin Administrations includes:

• Name and address of the deceased
  
• Year in which the administration was granted
  

The original bonds were destroyed in the Public Record Office fire of 1922, consequently all that survives is the index.