FindMyPast adds 420,000 New York RC transcriptions

More than 420,000 records have been added to FindMyPast's New York Roman Catholic Sacramental Registers collection today. This upload means there are now over 3.3million records in the collection, which is part of the company's Catholic Heritage Archive.

New York Roman Catholic Baptisms
Some 329,000 transcriptions of baptism records from nearly 60 parishes across the diocese have been added in this latest tranche of uploads. They span 1787 to 1916, and bring the total number of records to more than 2.2million from 182 parishes (a list of parishes is provided).

The amount of detail listed in each transcript varies, but most include a combination of date and place of birth, date and place of baptism, name of parents and first language.

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New York Roman Catholic Parish Marriages
Over 95,000 register transcriptions from 65 New York Catholic parishes have been added to this record set. They span the years 1819 to 1916 and may reveal the names, birth years, occupations, residences and parents' names of both the bride and groom as well as the date and location of their marriage.

The update means this collection now holds more than 1.1million records from 184 parishes.

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New York Roman Catholic Parish Congregational Records
This is a small collection consisting of just 527 transcriptions covering the parishes of SS Joseph & Thomas in Richmond County (1910), St Columba in Orange County (1895–1915) and St Peter in Ulster County (1860).

FindMyPast describes these records : Congregational registers incorporate sacramental records other than those pertaining to baptisms, marriages, and burials, such as communicants (those who received Holy Communion), confirmations (those who received Holy Confirmation), sick calls (those who received the Anointing of the Sick), and first confessions (those who received Holy Reconciliation). You will also find records of people who converted to Catholicism as well as those who chose to rent specific seats from their local chapel. Another register type you will discover is status animarum, Latin for 'status of the souls'. These records noted the names and addresses of all the Catholics in the area."

I'm baffled. I've looked at a random 15+ of these transcripts and none of them provides anything like this detail. For example, in the St Columba register: Name Margaret Higgins; Year 1897: Location: Chester; Register: Baptisms. Every transcription I've viewed says 'Baptisms'. Maybe they were all conversions... Can't we be told this?

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Ireland's earliest surviving register is 400 years old

Four hundred years ago this month, on 7 February to give the exact date, the first records of christenings and marriages were written into Ireland's earliest surviving church register.

The volume, from the parish of St John the Evangelist in Dublin, continued from 1619 to 1658, and gives a fascinating glimpse into the life of this inner-city parish.

Held by the Representative Church Body Library in Churchtown, Dublin 14, the register is in immaculate condition and is the focus of the Library's Archive of the Month online exhibition, which you can view here.

Government commits £1m to London Irish Centre

The Irish Government has committed £1m towards the redevelopment of the London Irish Centre as part of the Global Ireland 2025 initiative.

The London Irish Centre is at Camden Square, NW1.
Click/tap image to visit its website.

The London Irish Centre opened in 1955 to meet the needs of newly arrived Irish emigrants and became a significant social and cultural venue for the Irish community in London. The plan is to develop the building to become a world class facility.

Announcing the funding, Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Josepha Madigan said: “The current facility has a great heart and plays a hugely important role for Irish diaspora in London as well as the new audiences it attracts for its strong and diverse arts programme.

"The new building will accommodate 21^st century needs and reflect the national self-confidence Ireland possesses and our shared desire that we be ambitious in promoting the interests of Ireland on the world stage. This investment is indicative of our belief that is critical for us to maintain and build on our strong cultural relations with Britain.”

The London Irish Centre also provides help, support and care to the Irish community in London, particular to its most vulnerable members, and has a thriving library. The new building will allow the centre to continue this work. It will be a flagship Irish cultural centre, alongside the Irish Arts Center, New York and Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, which present a year round programme of Irish artists.

Global Ireland sets out a number of key actions across culture, heritage, business and tourism sectors to be undertaken in order to increase the impact of Ireland’s global footprint. It recognises the strength of Ireland’s culture and creativity as a unique power which allows Ireland to connect globally.

Irish and British records coming soon to Ancestry

Ancestry UK has provided a summary of the new collections and updates to existing record-sets we can expect to join the database in February.

Of particular interest to Irish genealogists will be the following:

• More than 2million entries in a Dublin street directory (year not revealed) will join Ancestry's collection of Irish Directories (1500-1920) in mid-February.
• Around the same time, some 5,500 Poor Law records covering settlement and removals for the unions of Bethnal Green, Hackney, Poplar, Shoreditch, and Stepney, will join the London Poor Law, Selected Removal and Settlement Records, 1698-1930 collection in mid-February. Many poor immigrants from Ireland (and other countries) settled in these areas of London's East End.
• More than 1.5million summaries of nearly all probate cases in England and Wales for 1967–1972 will fill the current gap in the England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1995 collection. This update should arrive in late February.
  
• The final February update is a whopper and will see more than 5.2million records added to the WW1 Pension Ledgers & Index Cards, 1914-1923 collection. Sourced from the Western Front Association, the records provide details of 'other ranks' military and military-related personnel who filed for a pension after WW1, or, if killed, details of their widow/other dependents or next of kin. (The images are available only on Fold3, Ancestry's military database, but Ancestry's indexed data is reasonably informative.)
  
• The only imminent new record-set with likely relevance to Irish family historians is the London Poor Law Hospital Registers collection, which holds nearly 300,000 records of the elderly and chronically ill receiving some relief in infirmaries attached to workhouses. The registers note name, age, gender, dates of admission, discharge and/or death. This collection should arrive in the database in mid-February. It did. See 14 February blogpost.
  

In addition, the Bexley Electoral Registers (1734-1965) collection will be updated with half a million records, and a new British Alien Internees (WW2) collection will join the database.

There will also be a period of free access to Irish and UK collections in the middle of the month. I'll bring you details when they're confirmed.

More East Galway records join RootsIreland.ie

The East Galway Family History Society's database of transcriptions at RootsIreland.ie has been updated with the addition of the following Roman Catholic and Civil records:

• Cappatagle & Kilreekil RC baptisms, 1766–1915
• Woodford RC baptisms, 1909–1917
• Civil records updated and extended
• Roman Catholic marriages extended to 1917 

This is the second significant upload of records to the East Galway database in five weeks. For a full list of sources for Galway (East), please click the logo.

30% discount on all British Newspaper Archive subs

As you must surely have heard by now (see my blogpost, if you haven't), the online British Newspaper Archive has recently sailed past the 30-million-pages milestone.

To celebrate, there's a very welcome 30% off any subscription package to the database, which holds 167 historical Irish titles in addition to its huge holding of English, Welsh and Scottish publications. A subscription provides unlimited access to the entire online library.

Here's how the discount works in monetary terms:

• 1-month subscription: reduced from £12.95 to £9.07
• 3-month subscription: reduced from £25.90 to £18.13
• 12-month subscription: reduced from £79.95 to £55.97

The offer will end at 11:59pm GMT on Wednesday 13 February.

To take advantage of the discount, click/tap the image; the promotion code will have been applied when you reach the Subscribe page.

Please note that after the initial subscription period, your subscription will be automatically renewed at the regular price unless you un-tick the 'auto-renew my subscription box' in the My Account section of the site. Terms & Conditions apply.

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MSPC's 2019 release will be the Brigade Activity Series

The Military Archives has announced that the Brigade Activity Series will be the 2019 tranche of records released from the Military Service (1916-1923) Pensions Collection.

The records, which archivists have been working on for some time, were created by the Brigade Activity Committees set up around the country to assist the Referee and Advisory Committee in the verification of claims, so are sure to be very illuminating.

To mark the launch, and as a clear indicator of the importance of this collection, a public symposium is being organised and a new publication will be released. Minister Paul Kehoe, TD, will launch the Brigade Activity files on Saturday 23 February. The event will be free and open to the public but the registration process will be strict.

UPDATE, 4 February: The event is now fully booked.

More progress on NAI's census corrections project

The National Archives of Ireland has advised that a further batch of census corrections have been applied to both the 1901 and 1911 censuses on their free Genealogy website.

John Grenham MAGI is carrying out the project to check and approve what was a huge backlog of user-submitted corrections. At his last progress report at the end of September he calculated he was about 64% of the way through. I imagine he'll confirm current state of play in due course.

These corrections are being applied exclusively to the NAI's online census database.

West Cork men wanted for War of Independence series

Click to view full flyer

Award-winning documentary production company Abú Media is looking to recruit a dozen men from the West Cork area to take part in a living history project to commemorate the War of Independence.

The project will result in a major new TV series – The Brigade – on RTÉ1.

The twelve recruits will reform a Flying Column from 1920. They will be trained by ex-Irish Army officers for a week in a boot camp, and then take part in reconstructions of key battles from the War of Independence.

They will be expected to drill, learn to shoot, and live as if 'on the run', so while this will be exciting opportunity for many, it won't be a cosy doddle!

An open recruitment day will be held at Clonakilty GAA grounds on Saturday 9 February from 10am. Filming will take place from 13–20 February.

If you fancy stepping into the shoes of an ancestor, or simply want to find out more, email the following to Abú Media:

• Personal details: name, address, age, occupation, contact information.
• Motivation: Say why you want to be part of The Brigade, and whether you have any connection with the old Brigade.
• Photo: A headshot.

GRO (England & Wales) - price of BMD certs to increase

Paper bmd certs, England and Wales

Having recently turned my one-name study research to Santrys who settled in Britain, I have quite a shopping list of birth, marriage and death certificates to place with the UK's General Register Office, so I was happy to stumble upon news of an imminent price increase. It may be helpful for other researchers in a similar position to take note.

On 16 February, the cost of English and Welsh certificates of BMDs will increase as follows:

The price of paper copies – certified/official certificates – will increase from £9.25 to £11. The priority service, which allows delivery on the next working day, will rise from £23.40 to £35.

'Research copies', ie pdf versions issued by email, will rise from £6 to £7. PDF versions are available only for registrations of birth 1837-1918 and death 1837-1957.

As far as I can tell, there are no fee hikes in the pipe for Scottish certificates.