TNA releases first batch of WW1 war diaries

The National Archives in Kew (TNA) has published a collection of WW1 unit war diaries, one of its most popular record sets.

The first batch of the 1,944 diaries reveals the real-time accounts of some of the military divisions among the first wave of British Army troops deployed in France and Flanders: the first three cavalry divisions and the first seven infantry divisions.

War diaries were primarily kept to provide an accurate record of operations for preparing the official history of the war and to collect information that would help make improvements in preparing the army for war. They contain a wealth of information about daily events on the front line and the decisions taken, and cover the entire period of the unit's involvement in the war. Each unit in WW1 was required to keep a diary. However, not all survive.

Although they are not personal diaries, the war diaries often contain references to individuals, and sometimes present personal insights into life and death on the front line. If you have an Irish ancestor who fought for one of the deployed units, you are likely to gain a greater understanding of his war-time experiences through reading these diaries, even if he is not named.

TNA has digitised about 1.5m pages of war diaries so far; this first batch of records to be released represents about one-fifth of the collection. The remainder will be released throughout 2014 as part of TNA's centenary programme First World War 100. The programme's dedicated website, and access to the war diaries, can be found here.

The TNA has also launched a crowdsourcing project – Operation War Diary – which aims to unearth the details from within the diaries, including names, places and events.


UPDATE, 16 March 2014: A second batch of First World War unit war diaries – some 3,987 of them – has been released via TNA's First World War 100 portal.

This batch holds records relating to the last of the Cavalry and numbers 8-33 Infantry Divisions deployed to the Western Front in the First World War. They cover the entire period of the units' involvement in France and Belgium, from their arrival on the front to their departure at the end of the war.

January issue of Irish Lives Remembered published

The January issue of Irish Lives Remembered has been published and is available for free 'on-screen' viewing or download here.

This month's edition has two distinct areas in focus: the Irish in New Jersey, which includes a 'how-to' article by Kilkeeny-born Joe Buggy (who has previously reported for Irish Genealogy News) and a look at relevant emigration records held by PRONI; and Dublin. The Dublin coverage includes a feature about the archive of the Archdiocese of Dublin, which contains much more than Roman Catholic baptism, marriage and burial registers.

There are also features about the North of Ireland Family History Society's transcriptions projects, the Irish in colonial South Australia, the Genealogical Society of Ireland and a study of early motoring clothing in a 1906 photograph.

Ancestry adds bumper package of New York records

Ancestry has added five new collections to its online database. Each of them will be of interest to any genealogy researcher whose Irish ancestors emigrated to New York or moved there after disembarking elsewhere in North America between 1855 and the mid-1900s.

BIRTH, MARRIAGE AND DEATH RECORDS

The first three collections are indexes to birth, marriage and death records. The records are not yet complete, but indexing by volunteers is continuing so additional records will boost these collections in due course.

For information on how to view or obtain copies of the bmds identified in these indexes, or to see the complete list of surviving civil (vital) records, see Department of Records/Municipal Archives.

New York, Birth Index, 1878-1909
This collection, which holds 772,703 records and can be searched here, is not complete. It consists of indexes to births in the five Boroughs of New York City reported to the Health Department prior to 1910, as follows:

• Bronx, 1898 - 1909
• Brooklyn, 1880 - 1909
• Manhattan, 1878 -1909
• Queens, 1898 - 1909
• Richmond, 1898 - 1909

New York, Marriage Indexes 1866-1937
This collection, which holds 5,065,035 records, which can be searched here, is also not complete. It consists of indexes to marriages reported to the Health Department in the five Boroughs of New York City prior to 1938, as follows:

BRIDES

• Bronx, 1898 - 1937
• Brooklyn, 1871 - 1937
• Manhattan, 1866 - 1937
• Queens, 1905 - 1937
• Richmond, 1898 - 1937

GROOMS

• Bronx, 1898 - 1937
• Brooklyn, 1866 - 1937
• Manhattan, 1865 - 1937
• Queens, 1905 - 1937
• Richmond, 1898 - 1937

New York, Death Index, 1862-1948
This collectio, which holds 4,716,858 records and can be searched here is not complete. It consists of indexes to deaths in the five Boroughs of New York City reported to the Health Department prior to 1949, as follows:

• Bronx, 1898 - 1948
• Brooklyn, 1862 - 1948
• Manhattan, 1867 -1948
• Queens, 1898 - 1948
• Richmond, 1898 - 1948

STATE CENSUS RECORDS

State censuses like these are useful because they fall in between federal census years and provide an interim look at a population. The New York censuses covered all the counties that existed at the time except Chemung, Clinton, Hamilton, New York [Manhattan], Putnam, Queens, St. Lawrence, Seneca, Suffolk, and Westchester.

1855 census of New York
This collection, which can be searched here holds 2,740,414 records and provides the following details:

• state, county, and town, township, or city (and ward and district in cities)
• material of which dwelling is built and value
• name
• age, sex, and color (black or mulatto)
• relation to head of family (something not found on federal censuses until 1880)
• county, state, or country of birth
• marital status
• how long a resident in the city or town
• occupation
• whether native or naturalized voters, alien, or colored not taxed
• literacy for those over 21
• whether owner of land
• whether deaf, dumb, or blind

1875 census of New York
This census collection can be searched here. it holds 3,122,735 records and provides the following details:

• state, county, and town, township, or city (and ward and district in cities)
• material of which dwelling is built and value
• name
• age, sex and color (white, black or mulatto)
• relation to head of family (something not found on federal censuses until 1880)
• county, state, or country of birth
• marital status
• occupation and usual place of employment
• former home if in U.S. Service or absent as specified in Article II §3 in the (New York State) Constitution**
• whether native, naturalized voter, or alien
• whether owner of land
• literacy of those over 21
• whether deaf, dumb, or blind

Registry of Deeds Index grows to 127,000 records

Volunteers working to add records to the online Registry of Deeds Index Project have been slogging away over the Christmas and New Year period. Their efforts have lifted this important database to a new high, with 127,001 index records from 15,628 memorials now available here.

They're free to search and view, too.

Every single record is valuable to the project, and more contributors are always very, very welcome.

To see how you can help the project continue to grow, see details of how to submit your transcriptions.

Irish genealogy and history events 13-19 January 2014

Until 22 March: Formation of the Volunteers, an exhibition at Prospect Gallery, Glasnevin Museum featuring a number of artefacts donated by families whose ancestors had been members of the two volunteer traditions. Included is Roger Casement's New Testament, probably given to him by his father. See picture below. Exhibition open 7 days a week. Finglas Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 11. Details.

Monday 13 January: The Workhouse, an illustrated talk with Patsy Durnin. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society Foyle Branch. Venue: Central Library, 35 Foyle Street, Derry-Londonderry BT48 6A. 7pm–9pm.

Monday 13 January: Christmas Past &ndash: Family Traditions, Mementoes & Oral History. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Newtownabbey Branch. Venue: Drama Theatre of Glengormley High School, Ballyclare Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim. 7:00pm–9:15pm. Details.

Monday 13 January:  Pick up a musket! Free weapon demonstrations and a chance to handlge both original and replica 1798 Rebellion weapons. Venue: National 1798 Centre. Enniscorthy, Co Wexford. 2pm. Phone +353 53 923 7596.

Monday 13 January: Christmas Past – Family Traditions, Mementoes & Oral History. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society Newtownabbey Branch. Drama Theatre of Glengormley High School, Ballyclare Road, Newtownabbey, Co Antrim. 7:00pm – 9:15pm.

Monday 13 January: A Clontarf perspective on the Battle of Clontarf, with Dennis McIntyre. Part of the Battle of Clontarf commemoration series of lectures hosted by Clontarf Historical Society and Raheny Heritage Society. Venue: Clasac Theatre, Alfie Byrne Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3. 8:15pm. Members free, non-members €5. Tea and coffee after lecture.Details: Kay Lonergan, +353 1-8338711.

Tuesday 14 January: Kingstown—Dún Laoghaire and the 1913 Lockout, with Charles Callan. Host: Genealogical Society of Ireland. Venue: Dún Laoghaire College of Further Education, Cumberland St, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin. 8pm. €3.

Wednesday 15 January: The desperate fight to save the harvest of 1946 and the bad weather of 1946/7, with Pádraig Laffan. Host: Carlow Historical  and Archaeological Society. Venue: Tullow Community Centre. 8.00pm. Details.

Wednesday 15 January: Who Fears to Wear the Red Hand Badge?, an illustrated talk about the Great Dublin Lock-Out of 1913, its local impact and its aftermath, with Francis Devine, Fergus Russell, and representatives of Millmount Research Unit. Host: Old Drogheda Society. Venue: Governor’s House, Millmount, Drogheda. 8 pm. All welcome. Tel: +353(0)41 983 3097.

Wednesday 15 January: Bearing all kinds of witness to war: finding violence in revolutionary Ireland, with Dr Anne Dolan. Host: Centre for Contemporary Irish History. Venue: Neill Hoey Seminar Room, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College, Dublin. 4:00–5:00pm. Free.

Wednesday 15 January: A Sense of Place – through townland names, with Finbarr O'Regan. Western Family History Association. Venue: Lackagh Parish Centre, Lackagh, Co Galway. 8:15pm. Details.

Thursday 16 January: Architecture and the new state; public architecture in Ireland 1914-2014, with John McLaughlin. Free Lunchtime lecture series at Crawford Art Gallery Lecture Theatre. Cork City. 1pm.

Saturday 18 January: Genealogy help and lecture. Help session, with Kathleen McGee at 10am, followed by the Joseph Coen at 11am. Host: Irish Family History Forum (Long Island, New York). Venue: Bethpage Public Library, 47 Powell Avenue, Bethpage, NY, 11714. USA.

Saturday 18 January: Maps and Administrative Divisions, with Frank McHugh, Mervyn Hall and Clive Johnston. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society Fermanagh Branch. 2:15–4:15pm. Details.

Roger Casement's New Testament is one of many surprising
artefacts donated to the Volunteers Exhibition, Glasnevin Museum

RootsIreland adds more Down and Belfast records

Some 16,000 Church of Ireland baptismal records from Co Down together with more than 8,000 Roman Catholic records for Belfast have been added to RootsIreland. The records are from the following churches:

Church of Ireland baptisms
Killinchy 1820-77 (418 records)
Blaris 1661-1720(7709 records)
Magheralin 1783-1870 (6628 records)
Bangor 1803-43 (1050 records)
Ballywalter 1845-75 (125 records)
Ardkeen 1746-1871 (541 records)

Roman Catholic baptisms
St Patrick's Belfast 1924-1931 (3823 records)
St Joseph's Belfast 1900-1921 (3344 records)
St Joseph's Belfast 1921-1933 (1524 records)

RootsIreland say they will be adding more Church of Ireland records soon for the parishes of Antrim, Carrickfergus, Comber, Donaghadee, Down, Drumballyroney and Kilmore.

New free database of Irish soldiers who died in WW1

A new database of Irish soldiers who died in World War One has been launched online today following collaboration between Google and the In Flanders Fields Museum.

Today's launch was made by Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter D Robinson, his deputy Martin McGuinness, and Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade Eamon Gilmore TD, at Google’s European Headquarters in Dublin.

This record set dates back to 1923 when British Field-Marshall Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, published a memorial book listing some 49,000 Irish soldiers who died during the First World War. He had ordered that these records should be made and published when he was Lord Lieutenant and General Governor of Ireland (1919-1922). French donated a copy of the finished records to the Belgian city of Ypres.

The Records were published in 1923. They had been compiled by The Committee of the Irish National War Memorial and were beautifully illustrated by Irish artist Harry Clarke. The 49,000 names are listed alphabetically in eight leather bound volumes, stored in a small cabinet. That cabinet is now on permanent display in the In Flanders Fields Museum.

These records are part of a much larger project at Flanders Field Museum called The List of Names. In that list, all fatalities of the Great War who died or were mortally wounded in Belgium are assembled. It is an inclusive list for all nationalities and for both military and civilian dead.

The museum launched the project in 2003. In the course of its research, it discovered that the records for Irish casualties of the First World War were neither fully correct nor complete. Of the 49,000 names, some 30,000 are born in Ireland; approximately 9,000 in England, 1,500 in Scotland and a little more than one thousand in other countries. For 7,400 cases there is no place of birth given.

The history has been corrected and brought online. Over 35,000 of the total number of records simply list France as place of death. It is now known, as a result of the research project, that many probably died in Flanders. In all, some 11,060 out of the 49,000 have now been identified as being killed, commemorated or buried in Belgium.

In July 2012, the Irish ambassador to Belgium, Eamonn MacAodha launched a project with Google to make the records freely available to all. The collaboration with Google ensured that the work could be financed and technically supported.

Log on to In Flanders Fields, type in a name and see the place of birth, rank, regiment, service number, date of death and place of burial/commemoration of each individual solider with that name, where the information is available.

You can search by name or by place of birth. Searching with my surname,Santry, brings up five entries, but only two are soldiers called Santry. The other three are soldiers who came from either Santry in Co Dublin or Santry in Hampshire (the latter being a place I didn't know existed!).

Ancestors from Feakle, Co Clare?

An interesting and unusual resource has been added to the ever-growing collection of Clare County Library: Prisoners in Irish Jails from Feakle, 1866-1923.

The data is provided 'on page', and is easy to scan through to look for names. In date order, it lists all prisoners who recorded Feakle as their place of residence, no matter which prison they were held in.

The material, which is free to view here, has been donated to Clare County Library by Tom McDowell.

Irish genealogy news catch up

Pressure of work (the 'real job') has meant I've got a bit behind this week. Here's a quick run through of news:

FIBIS adds records for Bombay 1884
Arrival and departure notices for Bombay 1884 have been extracted from the Times of India newspapers and uploaded to the Families in British India Society (FIBIS) database. The FIBIS collection should not be overlooked by Irish genealogy researchers as significant numbers of Irishmen went to India as soldiers in the 19th century. This latest update contains 4,672 arrivals and 3,890 departures. It joins similar indexes for 1880 to 1883. Details.

Ancestry adds England & Wales Prerogative Wills
A major collection of probate records has been published by Ancestry. Spanning five centuries, the England and Wales Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) Wills collection showcases original images of wills dating from 1384– 1858. The PCC approved will probates with asset value of more than £5, equivalent to £526 today. They would have been written primarily by the middle and upper classes and many will have had land or connections in Ireland as well as in England & Wales. The documents contain information about properties, family members, occupations and standards of living.

Placenames of Northern Ireland
A new database is available to those searching details of land in Northern Ireland. It includes historical administrative names of counties, baronies, districts, parishes, townlands etc, amd names of rivers, lakes, mountains and other physical details in the six counties. The data was compiled by the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project from maps and other sources, and continues to grow as new names are coined, and as unrecorded traditional names are discovered. Find out more here.

More Irish newspapers added to FindMyPast
All editions of the Dublin Evening Mail for the year 1841 have been added to the FindMyPast collection of newspapers, which now has coverage for this publication for 1849, 1850, 1852, 1854 and 1855; all issues 1861 to 1870, plus those for June to December 1871.

10-week course for beginners in Belfast
The Ulster Historical Foundation is running a 10-week family history course starting on Tuesday 4 February. It's aimed primarily at beginners, but those who have already started their research will gain from it, too. The classes will be held in the Central Building, Stranmillis University College, Belfast BT9 5DY, 7:00 to 9:00pm. Cost is £55, with a concession rate of £45. Details.

New edition of History Ireland magazine in the shops
The first 2014 issue of History Ireland magazine is now in the shops. You can't miss it – just look at the cover photo! It depicts the Slashing Parson of 1798. How can you resist? There are also features about General Tom Thumb, who visited Ireland on a few occasions and was a major celebrity of the mid-19th century; the revolutionary impact, particularly on women, of cycling in 19th century Ireland; the Irish in Japan; the Curragh mutiny of 1912 and its place in the build up to 1916; and a look at Eoin Mac Neill, a founding father of the Irish state but largely neglected by recent scholarship. There's also an article questioning the validity of Youghal's 'Raleigh Quarter' rebranding, while Fiona Fitzsimons gives an overview of the Irish Land Commission's records, and argues for greater public access to them. All this for €7/£6.

Irish Records: Beyond the Obvious
Still some spaces left for next month's workshop at the Society of Genealogists in London, which will be presented by Roz McCutcheon FIGRS and Jill Williams FIGRS. After a brief resume of the usual sources, the course will cover a huge variety of lesser known sources, including those available online. Date: Saturday 8 February. Times: 10:30am to 1:30pm. Cost £20. Bookings.

Tar Abhaile still available to view

Did you miss any episodes of Tar Abhaile (Come Home), the 6-part genealogy series broadcast on TG4 at the end of last year? It received great reviews and included straightforward, good old-fashioned research plus 'reverse genealogy' and a Gathering of Feericks, as local Irish communities and volunteers from Ireland XO welcomed people from across the globe in search of their Irish ancestors. All the episodes are available to view on the TG4 Player worldwide, and they'll stay there until the end of January, if not longer.

Milestones of Medieval Dublin, on video
The lecture series Milestones of Medieval Dublin concluded in December. These free lunchtime lectures, hosted by the Friends of Medieval Dublin and presented at the Wood Quay Venue, Dublin City Council, were videoed and can now be enjoyed by those who couldn't attend. Click the lecture titles below to view the video. Each one is 30-40 minutes long.

• Silken Thomas and the Siege of Dublin, with Steven Ellis
  
• The Coronation of Lambert Simnel, with Sparky Booker
  
• The Black Death, with Gillian Kenny
  
• The Bruce Invasion, with Seymour Phillips
  
• The Construction of Dublin Castle, with Con Manning
  
• Dublin's First Coinage, with Andy Woods
  
• Dublin's First Viking?, with Linzi Simpson

Decade of Centenaries website launches

A website to accompany the Decade of Centenaries commemorations programme – www.decadeofcentenaries.com
– is now live online. This website, along with associated Facebook and Twitter feeds, is being developed by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (AHG) in partnership with HistoryIreland magazine and will feature notice of forthcoming commemorative events related to the many significant centenaries to be commemorated in Ireland and the wider world between now and 2022.

The website features a large volume of unique content including digital versions of past exhibitions – for example the recent Defence Forces exhibition on the Centenary of the Irish Volunteers – as well as material from the HistoryIreland archive that is being made available free of charge online for the first time.

The website will provide a central point of reference with:

• Notices of commemorative initiatives brought forward by Government, local authorities, national cultural institutions, colleges, military and local history associations, ex-service organisations and community groups.
  
• A record of commemorative events undertaken in the ‘Decade of Centenaries’.
  
• A profile of the events that took place in Ireland in 1912-22, in a manner that will provide an impetus for future commemorative events at local and national level.
  
• A ‘portal’ to collate and access relevant background material and source material to explain these events (Century Ireland, History Ireland, NLI, NMI, National Archives, etc)

The ethos of the website is inclusive and respectful of different traditions. The broad categories for inclusion are for official commemorations and community events in Ireland and abroad relating to the political, cultural, or socio-economic history of the period between 1912 and 1922.