First Irish Ancestry Summer School at NUI Galway

The National University of Ireland, Galway, has announced its first Irish Ancestry Summer School. It will take place bookings from Sunday 30 June – 5 July 2019. Details https://bit.ly/2fjlpWx.

NUI Galway’s Irish Ancestry Summer School will explore the origins of people in Ireland from earliest times and trace the development of society to the present day. Participants on the Summer School will also be taught how to research their own family history and will be offered the opportunity to take a DNA test to find out about their origins.

This five-day course will include fieldtrips to various sites of archaeological, historical and genealogical importance in the West of Ireland. It will include lectures on ancient DNA studies, prehistoric demographics, early tribal groupings, later medieval clan history, post-medieval lifeways, history and genealogy. Where possible, all lectures will place a special emphasis on the West of Ireland. They will be presented by some of Ireland’s leading scholars who are based at NUI Galway.

Participants will also have access to the James Hardiman Library's collections, including historical newspapers, Irish local studies books and periodicals, maps and 19th-century government publications. In addition, the library holds over 350 unique archival collections, including landed estate papers, photographic collections and theatre and literary archives.

The programme is capped at 45 participants, and places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Details, fees,

For further information please contact Dr. Kieran O'Conor, School of Geography and Archaeology, NUI Galway by email: kieran.d.oconor@nuigalway.ie or telephone: +353 (091) 493820.

Archdiocese of Boston RC registers: NEHGS additions

The New England Historical Genealogical Society's AmericanAncestors.org has continued to expand its online collection of Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston registers, 1789-1900. Additions uploaded from 28 March to 30 April are set out below.

Indexed database

The latest 25 parish volumes to be fully imaged, indexed and available to search have added some 58,700 records and more than 359,789 names to the database. In some cases, the records are not only from registers of Baptism (B) and Marriage (M) but also of First Communion (F) and/or Confirmation (C).

The dates shown are the total span for the Baptism and Marriage registers; Marriages sometimes start a little later than the Baptisms records, while other registers usually start later in the timespan and run for shorter periods.

• St. Mary Star of the Sea (Beverly) 1871-1900 BMC
• Most Precious Blood (Hyde Park) 1870-1900 BMC
• St. Joseph (Pepperell) 1885-1900 BM
• St. James (Salem) 1851-1900 BM
• St. Augustine (Andover) 1862-1900  BMCF

To search and view this database, you need to be an NEHGS member (Individual-level and above)

Unindexed Image-only database

Images of the volumes for the parishes named below have been uploaded to the Browse database. They include registers of Baptism (B), Marriage (M) and, in some cases, First Communion (F) and/or Confirmation (C).In the case of St Patrick, Brockton, there is even a Marriage Promises register (P), dating from 1889-1896.

• St. John the Evangelist (Canton): 1859-1900
• St. Edward (Brockton): 1897-1900 BMC
• St. Joseph (Amesbury): 1867-1900 BCF
• St. Mary of the Annunciation (Cambridge): 1867-1900 BMC
• St. Patrick (Brockton): 1856-1900 BMPC
• St. Agnes (Arlington): 1873-1900 BM
• Sacred Heart (Brockton) 1891-1900 BMC

You don't need a subscription to view these images, only a Guest Account.

To navigate the Masschusetts RC Boston collection, watch this how-to video.

€1 million funding for Gaelic culture research project

Maynooth academic Professor Patricia Palmer has been awarded a grant of €1 million by the Irish Research Council to create an online resource that will explore a period which she believes is largely neglected in the study of Irish history.

Her project is called the Macmorris project. The name stands for Mapping Actors and Contexts: Modelling Research in Renaissance Ireland in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, and it sets out to recover the complexity of Ireland’s transformative years between Henry VIII’s assumption of the kingship of Ireland in 1541 to the Flight of the Earls.

The aim is to create the first annotated and interactive digital map of all cultural players — from poets, patrons and pamphleteers, to translators, travel-writers and administrators — of this rich period in Irish history.

Prof Palmer hopes the map will counter the narrative that it was a doomed society.

“Irish society was anything but a society in freefall, heading inexorably towards defeat,” she says. Rather, it was a remarkably vibrant place, where several cultural traditions and languages flourished, sometimes in dialogue, sometimes clashing. The English newcomers, agents of the conquest, funnelled the energies of the English Renaissance into what was a surprisingly bookish conquest: this was a conflict where words mattered as much as swords.

“Gaelic culture is vibrant; the English vernacular of the Pale is lively and colourful; agents of the Tudor conquest like Edmund Spenser bring the energies — often dark energies — of the English Renaissance to Ireland; and contact with mainland Europe is routine.

“This project will address Ireland’s place in the European Renaissance — another neglected area of historical study.“

Following the award, Prof Patricia Palmer was interviewed by the Kildare Focus radio programme about her digital mapping project. You can listen to the 8-minute interview on SoundCloud by clicking the Kildare FM logo above. The interview begins 58 seconds into the recording.

CoI Gazette: Bicycles, Long Coats and Shooting Jackets

The latest offering in the RCB Library’s Archive of the Month slot returns to find “News Behind the News” in the pages of the Church of Ireland Gazette – the Church’s weekly newspaper since 1856.

In this month’s presentation, the historian Dr Miriam Moffitt once again provides her thought-provoking and forensic analysis to reveal how the advent of cycling, which came into its own as a means of transport towards the end of the 19th century, impacted the Church of Ireland directly, with many of its clergy swiftly taking to the bike from the early 1890s onwards.

McBirney & Co. tailoring advertisement for
General Synod 1910, from the Church
of Ireland Gazette, 24 March 1910

Dr Moffitt reveals how Church of Ireland clergy were quick to spot the usefulness of the bike beginning to cycle around their parishes from the early 1890s onwards.

This followed the introduction of the ‘Rover bicycle’ c. 1885, with its equal-sized wheels and robust chain, coupled with John Dunlop’s development of the pneumatic tyre in 1888 giving rapid rise to the use of the bicycle as a means of transport in all walks of life, including the ordained clergy.

The Gazette began to publish advertisements for bicycles and cycling lessons. Bikes soon began to feature regularly in accounts of parish activities and, as early as 1892, the parishioners of Mariners Church in Kingstown even presented one to their rector as a gift, for whom “the bicycle is a heaven-sent machine to him under such circumstances; it costs less than a horse and gets over the ground more quickly”.

Not everyone was completely happy with this trend; a few considered it unseemly that clerics should cycle at all, but many were more concerned about that they should wear. The Gazette of 2nd January 1891, for example, insisted that it was inappropriate for clergy to cycle to church dressed in surplice, stole and hood'.

As the traditional long black coat proved cumbersome on a bike, cycling clergy began to wear short shooting jackets to the dismay of some who claimed they were “coming in ‘as a flood’ and, horror of horrors, they were even worn in colours other than black” (Gazette, 23rd September 1892). The donning of shooting jackets by clergy, would, however, continue. Indeed, while advertisements for distinctively clerical attire continued to appear in the Gazette, their incidence declined by the early 20th century.

The uncovering of this unusual aspect of social history once again confirms the usefulness of the Church of Ireland Gazette (the Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette to 1900) as a resource for historical research over the last 150 years. A combination of central church funds, private sponsorship and support from the Commemorations Unit in the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (for specific aspects of the decade of commemorations period) have to date ensured that all editions of the Gazette between 1856 and 1949 are now freely available for searching at https://esearch.informa.ie/rcb.

This leaves just 54 years of editions (from 1950 to 2004, when the Gazette became available an e-paper) to complete the digitization process and make it a fully and freely searchable resource for a worldwide audience. Prospective sponsors of this final 50-year phase of work are invited to contact the Library, or consider making a donation to the Library Conservation Fund.

Clerical group with bikes, including the new ‘Rover’ to the right, from the collection of
Canon Britain Lougheed (1882–1952), RCB Library Ms 1073.

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives: April updates

The following files have been added to Ireland Genealogy Projects - Archives during April. All were donated and uploaded by volunteers and are presented on the database as a free resource for Irish family historians.

Neale Church ruins and graveyard, Cong,
County Mayo. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Dieter
and IGP Archives.

IRELAND Genealogy Archives: Miscellaneous
Owners of Cars and Cycles -1914

DONEGAL Genealogy Archives - Headstones
St. Eunan's Cathedral (CoI), Letterkenny

DUBLIN Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Mt Jerome Cemetey - Part 217-219

MAYO Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Claremorris, Tulrahan Cemetery
Cong (CoI) Graveyard
Neale Cemetery, Cong
Carracaslte, St James RC Graveyard (Additional)

ROSCOMMON Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Lisacul Cemetery

50th historical Northern Ireland newspaper joins BNA

The Protestant Watchman and Lurgan Gazette has joined the online British Newspaper Archive (BNA) and its sister database, FindMyPast.

It becomes the 50th title from Northern Ireland to join the Irish collection.

This weekly paper, published on a Saturday, brought news and historical notes of a conservative persuasion to Lurgan and the neighbouring district

The initial upload sees editions dating from May 1861 to December 1867 available to search and view.

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Irish genealogy and history events, 29 April to 12 May

Monday 29 April:: NLI Reading Room and Manuscript Room closed all day to facilitate the Library's continuing redevelopment of the premises. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. All other services/exhibitons/cafe, including Genealogy Advisory Service, operate as normal.

Monday 29 April: Huguenots in Beara, with Penny Durell. Host: Beara Historical Society. Venue: Twomey’s Lounge, Bank Place, Castletownbere, Co Cork. 8:30pm.

Tuesday 30 April Henry Joy and Mary Ann McCracken – A Belfast tragedy, with Dr David Hume. Host: NIFHS, Belfast Branch. Venue: C S Lewis Room, Holywood Arches Library, 4-12 Holywood Road, Belfast, BT4 1NT. 7:30pm. Free. All welcome.

Tuesday 30 April: The Caldwell Family of Harmony Hill, with Keith Beattie. Host: NIFHS, Causeway Branch. Venue: The Sandel Centre, Knocklynn Road, Coleraine, BT52 1WT. Follows AGM. 7pm. All welcome. Note changed time and venue!

Tuesday 30 April Saying ‘No’ to Irish Nationalism - Reflections of a Revisionist, with Eoghan Harris. Host: Waterford Treasures. Venue: Garden Room, Medieval Museum, Waterford City. 7:30pm. Tickets €5. Booking is highly recommended. Details.

Wednesday 1 May: Revolution within the Revolution? 1919 and the generation of 1916, with Professor Roy Foster. Host: The Decade of Centenaries: Ireland in 1919 - Spring lecture series. Venue: Irish Cultural Centre, 5 Black's Road, Hammersmith, London W6 9DT. 7–9pm. All welcome. Tickets £5.92, via Eventbrite.

Wednesday 1 May: AGM, Tyrone Branch of the North of Ireland Family History Society. Venue: Local History Section, Omagh Library, 1 Spillars Place, Omagh, BT78 1HL. Free. 7:30pm. Details. POSTPONED.

Thursday 2 May to Saturday 4 May: Invasion 1169, a national conference marking the 850th anniversary of the Anglo-Norman Invasion of Ireland. Featuring an international panel of experts discussing recent research on the impact and significance of this event in late C12th-Ireland. Host: TCD. Venue: Edmund Burke Theatre (Arts Building), Trinity College Dublin. Admission free. All welcome. Registration and details.

Thursday 2 May to Sunday 5 May: Cloughjordan Honours Thomas McDonagh, a weekend of lectures, screenings, dance and music, guided walks, language sessions. Host and venue: Thomas McDonagh Museum, Lower Main Street, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary. Details and programme.

Friday 3 May: 850 Years of Oppression? a History Ireland Hedge School. Part of the Invasion 1169 conference (see above for details and booking). Venue: TCD, Dublin 2. Attendance is free but booking is recommended.

Saturday 4 May: Making the Most of Your Autosomal DNA Results, with Anne Johnston. First of two 2-hour Saturday classes (second one on 11 May). Host: North of Ireland Family History Society. Venue: Honneyman Room, NIFHS Research Centre, Unit C4, Valley Business Centre, 67 Church Road, Newtownabbey, BT36 7LS. 2-4pm, on both dates. Cost: £14 for the 2 sessions, payable at the first class. These courses are open to members and non-members. Further details.

Sunday 5 May: In Pursuit of the Heiress, a day programme of lectures at Dromana House and Gardens. Julian Walton: “The drawbacks and dangers of heiress hunting, with Julian Walton; The decorative life of Marie Antoinette – the glittering road to the guillotine, with Judy Brittain; The Abduction of Mary Pike and that fateful night in Vernon Mount, Cork, with Dr Kieran Groeger; and The Irish ‘Wild Geese: In search of fortune in the Habsburg Empire, with Dr Dagmar O'Riain-Raedel. Host: Dromana House, Lismore, Co Waterford. 10:30am to 4pm. Refreshments, lunch and afternoon tea included. Tickets €70pp or €125 for 2 persons. Enquiries and booking email: info@dromanahouse.com or tel (086)8186305.

Monday 6 May: May Day bank holiday, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland. All repositories closed, except for most exhibitions at National Library of Ireland in Dublin, which are open 12 noon to 5pm. The exception is the Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again exhibition, which is closed.

Tuesday 7 May Irish Seminar, with John Grenham, David E Rencher and Beth Stahr. An all-day pre-conference starting at 8:15am, with five lectures and lunch. Host: National Geneological Society 2019 Family History Conference. Venue: St. Charles Convention Center, One Conference Plaza Center, 63303 St Charles, Missouri, USA. Details and brochure.

Wednesday 8 May: Irish and Peterloo, with Martin Gittins and Michala Hulme. Host & venue: Irish World Heritage Centre, Irish Town Way, Manchester M8, UK. 7–9pm. Free, but need to register.

Wednesday 8 May to Saturday 11 May: Journey of discovery – National Geneological Society 2019 Family History Conference, includes several Irish lectures. Host: NGS and St Louis Genealogical Society. Venue: St. Charles Convention Center, One Conference Plaza Center, 63303 St Charles, Missouri, USA. Programme.

Thursday 9 May: Consequences of War, an afternoon conference with the Western Front Association, Antrim and Down Branch. Venue: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, 2 Titanic Boulevard, Belfast, BT3 9HQ. 2pm to 5pm. All welcome. Details.

Saturday 11 May: The National Library's History & Heritage, a guided tour exploring the National Library's rich architectural history and heritage on this free tour which includes a visit to its Victorian reading room. Host and venue: National Library of Ireland, 7-8 Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Free. 1pm. All welcome. Booking not required.

Saturday 11 May: Irish Genealogical Research Society's Library closed at the Society of Genealogists, London, to facilitate volunteers' and members' attendance at the Open Day.

Saturday 11 May: IGRS Open Day and AGM. Host: Irish Genealogical Research Society. Venue: The Abbey Centre, 34 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BU, UK. 10:15am - 3:30pm. After registration and refreshments, two lectures: Mining for Treasure in the IGRS Collections, with Jill Williams FIGRS, and Freed Felons, Land Hungry Migrants and Imperial Infantry: The Biographical Database of Australia as a Source for Genealogists, with Michael Flynn. Finger buffet lunch included. Cost: £25 members/£30 non-members. All welcome. The AGM (free) follows lunch; all welcome, but only members may vote. Details.

Ulster Examiner joins online British Newspaper Archive

The Ulster Examiner and Northern Star has joined the online British Newspaper Archive (BNA) and its sister database, FindMyPast.

So far, editions available to search and view are those published from 1868, when the title launched as The Ulster Examiner, to 1874, by which time it was known as the Ulster Examiner and Northern Star. The holding will eventually span to 1882, when the paper ceased publication.

This new arrival brings the total number of Irish newspapers in the BNA collection to 174. Of these, just under 50 were published in what is now Northern Ireland.

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(Irish) Registry of Deeds Index Project: Latest update

The latest update to the Registry of Deeds Index Project sees the number of indexed entries rise to 310,805. They have been extracted from 33,891 memorials of deeds.

In addition the Townland Index has grown to 65,666 entries and the Grantor Index to 28,022.

The site is run entirely by volunteers, with contributors mostly accessing the free online virtual microfilms of the memorial volumes via the free FamilySearch website or transcribing from the actual volumes at the Registry of Deeds in Dublin.

The more volunteer contributions, the greater the coverage in the Index, which is free for researchers to access. Can you help grow the Index? If so, please find out more about the Project here.

Family Tree Live opens at Alexandra Palace, London

The doors have opened at the first ever Family Tree Live genealogy extravaganza, which is being held in North London's Alexandra Palace, an amazing building in a beautiful spot surrounded by parkland and fresh air with a terrific view over London. The event has been organised by the publishers of the UK-based Family Tree magazine.

The Irish Genealogical Research Society at Family Tree Live

Family Tree Live offers a lively exhibition area filled with online and offline data providers; genealogy and history publishers; genealogy software, chart and stationery suppliers; heraldry experts; education/course providers; professional genealogist associations; genetic genealogists and dna test suppliers; libraries and museums; and a huge number of themed and local family history societies from across England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, and even China and India!

Researchers with Irish connections should make sure to pop along to the Irish Genealogical Research Society's stand number 158 and/or the North of Ireland Family History Society on stand number F88. You'll receive a friendly welcome and top-notch advice from both.

In addition to the more than 120 exhibitors, Family Tree Live presents a busy programme of lectures and workshop on traditional genealogy and genetic genealogy, and a series of (bookable) one-to-one consultations with experts.

The event continues today until 6pm and will be on again tomorrow from 9:30am to 5pm. There's free parking, not all of it terribly close to the doors, and a free shuttle bus running between Alexandra Palace Station, Wood Green underground station and the venue.

You'll find more visitor information here.

#FamilyTreeLive