RootsIreland adds 13,500 Catholic records from Co. Tipperary

RootsIreland.ie has uploaded an additional 13,500 records of Roman Catholic baptisms and marriages to its South Tipperary database. They are:

• Baptisms: 11,000+ records spanning 1814-1900 (with gaps).
• Marriages: 2,500 records spanning 1814-1900.
  

All have been transcribed by genealogists at the Brú Ború Heritage Centre in Cashel from locally-held registers for the parish of Ballingarry.

Transcriptions dated up to 1880/81 include a link to the register images held by the National Library of Ireland.

Click the logo above to view the full menu of records searchable in the RootsIreland.ie database.

Note, 31 January: This blogpost has been updated with details of the newly-transcribed baptism records which were not included in the original update notification.

English, Scottish and Welsh genealogy: 3-week summary of updates

Below is a summary of new and updated family history record collections for England, Scotland and Wales released by the major genealogy databases over the last three weeks (see previous summary, 7 January).

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help family historians whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

By default, it will also be useful to anyone carrying out research in those three nations, regardless of the origin of their ancestors.

The figures in parenthesis in the New Collections section are the numbers of records/images in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parenthesis in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made this figure available. Where two figures are given, the first is the number of additions, the second is the new total.

Please note that I don't usually include updates of fewer than 1,000 records.

NEW COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK, Portraits and Photographs, 1547-2018 (156,645 images)

BritishNewspaperArchive, shared with FindMyPast (total 47,292,474 pages)

• New titles in main collection ($£€)

	Romsey Register And General News Gazette	Skegness News
	Langport & Somerton Herald	Yorkshire Factory Times
	Aldershot News	Magnet (London)
	Skyrack Courier	Hoddesdon and Broxbourne Mercury
	Liverpool Merc. Gazette & Myers's Wkly Advtr	Finchley Press

FindMyPast

• Police Gazette 1921

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

Ancestry

• UK and Ireland, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960 (new total 16,201,620)
• UK and Ireland, Find a Grave Index, 1300s-Current (new total 13,696,805)
• England & Scotland, Select Cemetery Registers, 1800-2016 (new total 3,606,769)

FamilySearch

• England, Middlesex Parish Registers, 1539-1988 (228,246 added)
• England, Northumberland Non-Conformist Church records, 1613-1920 (14,753 added)
• England, Lincolnshire, Marriage Bonds & Allegations, 1574-1885 (3,545 added)

FindMyPast

• Berkshire Baptisms(nearly 1million transcriptions added)
• Berkshire Burials (new total 1,456,503 transcriptions)
• Berkshire Marriages and Banns (new total 956,431 transcriptions)

FreeBMD

• Civil BMDs, England & Wales: (3,686,691 added. New total: 286,836,234 distinct records)

General Register Office

• Births and Deaths in 2020 – Indexes for England and Wales

TheGenealogist

• Landowner and occupier property tax records, 1910, from IR58 for Camden and surrounding London areas. (72,000 records)
  Includes Albany, Belsize, Camden Town, Chalk Farm, Euston, Grays Inn Road, Highgate East, Highgate West, Kilburn, Priory & Adelaide (Hampstead), St Andrew East and West, St Giles East/North/South, Saffron Hill, Somers Town, and Tottenham Court Road.

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National Archives of Ireland's Reading Room returns to full capacity

Over the weekend, the Irish government has removed most Covid-related public health measures that have impacted libraries and archives over the last two years, and a steady, phased return to workplaces started yesterday.

With the relaxing of social distancing rules, the National Archives of Ireland's Reading Room in Bishop Street, Dublin 8, will return to full seating capacity from next Monday, 31 January. Mask wearing by researchers and staff will remain compulsory, for the time being.

The online appointment booking system will also remain in place. It will offer four weeks’ availability on a rolling basis, with new dates added every Friday around 9am.

Currently opening times are: Monday to Friday 10am-5pm, but closed for lunch 1pm-2pm when researchers are required to vacate the Reading Room.

To complete a booking you need to have or have applied for a Readers’ Ticket.

Irish genealogy, history & heritage events, 24 January to 9 February

While online talks continue to be offered by most organisations and event hosts, a few in-person events are beginning to re-appear in my listings. In the list below, you'll find all in-person events clearly indicated and the location highlighted in bold.

JANUARY

Monday 24 January: Morristown Lattin: the estate & its tenants in the 18th century, with Dr Emma Lyons. An online lecture hosted by Offaly History as the first of its 2022 Spring programme. All welcome. Free. 7:30pm via Zoom. Email info@offalyhistroy.com for the link.

Tuesday 25 January: Family History through Old Newspapers, with Dr David Hume 7:30pm-9pm. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Causeway Coast and Glens Branch. 7:30pm-9pm. Free. All welcome. Send email to Causeway@nifhs.org for link. Details.

Tuesday 25 January: Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, an online class for intermediate researchers, with John Beatty. Host: Allen County Public Library, Indiana, USA. 2:30pm –3:30pm EST. Free and all welcome. Need to register.

Tuesday 25 January: Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after the Holocaust, an online talk with Elise Bath, marking Holocaust Memorial Day. Host: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. 2-3pm. Free. All welcome. Booking essential. Details.

Tuesday 25 January: The life and times and musical influences of John Kelly, the noted traditional musician from West Clare, with his grandaughter, Aoife Kelly. Host: Kilrush and District Historical Society. 8pm. Online. All welcome. Free, but donations always welcome. Details and link.

Wednesday 26 January: Getting Started Workshop - Using Online Resources. A free online workshop designed to help beginner researchers identify, locate and explore the collections held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. 12:30pm. Need to register. (This regular event is usually over-subscribed, so book early.)

Wednesday 26 January: The Buildings of Georgian of Cork City and County, 1714-1830, with Frank Keohane. Host: Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. 7:30pm. Online. All welcome. Register here or email info@corkhist.ie for zoom link.

Thursday 27 January: Launch of Belfast Workhouse Indexes, a collection with downloadable files that was recently added to PRONI's ecatalogue. Host: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. 1pm. Free. All welcome. Details and registration.

Thursday 27 January: Researching your Roman Catholic ancestors, an online talk with Joan Sharkey MAGI. Host: National Archives of Ireland's evening lecture series 2022. 6pm. All welcome. Book your free ticket here.

Thursday 27 January: Possessing Ireland: George Petrie and the Translation of Landscape, with Dr Elizabeth Tilley. Hosts: Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Annual Lecture) and National Library of Ireland. 7pm. Free. All welcome. Need to book. Details.

Friday 28 January: WB Yeats: Folklore and Fairy Tales, with Ruth Concannon. An online talk to mark the 150th anniversary of the poet's death. Host: National Library of Ireland. 2pm. Free. Need to book. Details. Fully booked.

Friday 28 January: The experience of Waterford loyalists in the revolutionary decade 1912-1923, with Dr Pat McCarthy. Host: Waterford Archaeological and Historical Society. An in-person event to be held at St Patrick's Gateway Centre, Patrick St, Waterford City. 6pm. Free. All welcome. Seats allocated on a 'first come' basis. Details.

Monday, 31 January: The traditions and folklore associated with St Brigid's Day (1 Feb), with artish/folklorist Michael Fortune. Host: National Library of Ireland. An online presentation. Free. Starts 7pm. Need to book.

FEBRUARY

Tuesday 1 February: Glasnevin Cemetery – Women’s Tour, as part of Brigit 2022, Dublin City Celebrating Women programme. A special in-person tour of some of the influential women are buried in the nation's necropolis. Free. Starts 10:30am. Host: Glasnevin Cemetery, Finglas Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 11. Booking required. Details.

Tuesday 1 February: Ireland 1922: Women in independence, partition and civil war, an online discussion with Fionnuala Walsh, Lindsey Earner-Byrne and Mary McAuliffe. Chaired by Darragh Gannon. Hosts: Royal Irish Academy and Department of Foreign Affairs.. 6pm to 7pm. No booking required. Free. All welcome. Details.

Tuesday 1 February: Smart Women, French Letters and Fast Commission – the second wave of Irish Feminism, Catriona Crowe in conversation with Suzanne Lynch. Host: Embassy of Ireland, Belgium, marking St Brigid's Day. 6pm in Belgium. 5pm Irish time. Online. Free but need to register.

Wednesday 2 February: Antrim - the Irish Revolution, 1912-23, with Dr Brian Feeney, author of a newly published book of the same name. The online talk will explore how the Ulster Crisis, Great War and Irish Revolution in Antrim shaped the political, economic and social aspects of people’s lives from 1912 to 1923. Host: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). Free. All welcome. 7pm to 8pm. Booking required. Registration closes one hour before the event and an invite link will be sent to everyone registered one hour before the beginning of the event.

Wednesday 2 February: Getting Started with Irish Genealogy Research, an online workshop with Miles Davenport. Host: Irish Cultural Center and McClellan Library, Phoenix, USA. 11am to 1pm. Cost: Members: $15 | Non-Members: $20. Find out more, here.

Wednesday 2 February: Mapping Death: Burial in the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval Ireland, with Dr Elizabeth O'Brien. An online lecture hosted by Rathmichael Historical Society. 8pm. Free. All welcome. Details and link.

Monday, 7 February: H & J Martin, the Builders, with Joanne Martin talking about her Martin family. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Killyleagh Branch. 8pm - 9:30pm GMT. Free. All welcome. To join the online meeting, send email to Killyleagh@nifhs.org.

Tuesday 8 February: DNA – Life, Death, Disease & Genealogy, with Professor Anthony Bjourson. An online lecture. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Foyle Branch. 7pm - 8:30pm GMT. All welcome. Free. To join the meeting, send email to Foyle@nifhs.org. Details.

Tuesday 8 February: Belfast and the Slave Trade, with Clifton House. Host: North of Ireland Family History Society, Lisburn Branch. 8pm - 9:30pm GMT. Free. All welcome. To join the online meeting, send email to Lisburn@nifhs.org.

Tuesday 8 February: Newfoundland and Labrador: A mosaic founder population of an Irish and British diaspora from 300 years ago, an online lecture by Dr Edmund Gilbert. Host: Genealogical Society of Ireland. 8pm. Non-members can email (to Membership@familyhistory.ie) for link.

Wednesday 9 February: Oral history – an introductory workshop with Dr Tomás Mac Conmara who will discuss the value of oral history and the key skills required. Free. 7pm to 8:30pm. Online. To book a place email heritage@westmeathcoco.ie.

Maintenance may impact GRONI's online systems this weekend

The General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) has advised that essential maintenance may knock out some of its online systems this weekend.

The work may affect customers wanting to use the record search facilities or place online orders for certificates between 7am on Saturday 22 January until 6am on Sunday 23 January.

Irish adoptees given right of access to birth certificates and more

After far too many years of campaigning by adopted people for the right to know their full birth and early childhood details, Ireland has introduced new laws giving adoptees automatic access to their birth records for the first time. The Birth Information and Tracing Bill was launched last week by Children's Minister Roderic O'Gorman and came exactly one year after the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes report was published.

The new legislation provides for the release of the person's birth certificate, information about their birth, early life and care, and medical background. These details, which will be unredacted, will be provided even if the mother or genetic relatives object.

Early life information will include the release of baptismal certificates and copies of entries in the parish baptism register.

The latter, as all Irish genealogists know, often provide names and other details of family and friends.

A comprehensive statutory tracing service will now be set up for anyone who wishes to make contact, or share or seek information about their birth and early life. This will establish a Contact Preference Register to allow people to “register their preference for contact with family, as well as a mechanism to lodge communications and contemporary medical information which can be shared with family members.”

This register will supersede the existing national Adoption Contact Preference Register; all current entries will be transferred to the new version.

Funding of €4million has been allocated to the Child and Family Agency, Tusla, and the Adoption Authority of Ireland, which together will need to recruit upwards of 30 additional staff to provide the new services.

When the legislation has passed all the formalities, a three-month-long public awareness campaign will advertise the new rights in Ireland, Britain, the USA and Australia. Adopted people and their mothers will be encouraged to register their preferences on whether or not they want contact. At the end of that campaign, the new service should be ready to launch. It is hoped it will be up and running this year.

For more information, see the Government's detailed Press Release and accompanying pdfs.

APCL's Periodical Source Index (PERSI) to return home soon

Last week, the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Indiana presented a workshop and Q&A session to announce a major development affecting their PERiodical Source Index, better known as PERSI. The database has been accessible on several online sites over the years and is currently hosted as a free collection at FindMyPast, but it is finally going home, and will soon be accessible via the ACPL website.

    PERSI is the creation of the Allen County Public Library

I wasn't able to attend the workshop myself, but Library staff have told me that a recording will be live on YouTube in a matter of days (link here).

Meanwhile, ACPL staff continue to rejig and clean up the website before PERSI's homecoming launch. When all is ready, a direct link to the PERSI page will be placed on the ACPL Home page and on the Free Databases page.

If you would like to check out the new PERSI before the behind-the-scenes work is finalised, you can do so at https://www.genealogycenter.info/persi/, or click the image right.

PERSI is the largest subject index to genealogy and local history periodical articles in the world.

Its index of nearly three million entries offers articles, how-to guides, genealogies, biographies, family stories, cemetery and church records, deeds, local histories, maps, obituaries and much more. All have appeared in family, social and local history periodicals published by societies around the world. These publications cover the area or subject specific to that society, and often go into considerable details, some of which may contain information about your ancestral family, the places or communities in which they lived or other relevant subjects.

The 10,000+ journals and newsletters held in the database date back to 1800. Most of the articles are from societies based in the USA and Canada, but there are also thousands of entries from Ireland, Australia and the UK.

Bang on 100 days, my certificates.ie order has been fulfilled

  Part of the long-awaited birth certificate

Pass the smelling salts.

This morning the 'full standard' €20 birth certificate I ordered on certificates.ie on 7 October finally arrived in my postbox.

When I placed my order, the website said it would take 10 days to despatch, which I considered fine for a certificate that wasn't (then) urgently required and would save me the hassle of travelling to a local civil registration service office.

What a mistake. Exactly 100 days later, and after experiencing the poorest customer service I have ever encountered, I finally have the document in my mits, and I can be absolutely certain that I won't be using the 'service' again.

As it turns out, no one can use it at the moment. The certificate.ie online 'service' is currently suspended.

Project launched to encourage use of Irish language in Dublin City

A new project to encourage the use of the Irish language in Dublin City has been launched today by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

Some €325,000 of approved funding has been secured for Conradh na Gaeilge to establish and develop the BÁC le Gaeilge project between 2021 and 2024.

The establishment of BÁC le Gaeilge is seen as an opportunity to increase the use of the language in Dublin city where there is a large Irish language community due to a wide range of Irish language establishments being located there.

These include early education services, gaelscoileanna and Gaelcholáistí, Irish language organisations, two radio stations broadcasting in Irish, Na Gaeil Óga GAA club, third level courses in Irish and many other bodies.

Conradh na Gaeilge, in partnership with Dublin City Council, has set out a programme of activities to ensure that the language is heard and seen more around Dublin city.

Its Head Office at 6 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, will be used as a centre for businesses and the public to provide information about the services available in Irish and to encourage them to use those services.

Businesses will be encouraged to use Irish in signage, websites, advertising and menus in cafes and restaurants, and an Irish Language Quarter/Area will be developed.

Niamh O'Kennedy, spokesperson for Murphy's Ice Cream, a local business supporting the initiative, says she believes the launch has come at the perfect time: “We have been seeing a huge increase and interest from both our customers and staff in the Irish language. So much so we are now offering all our staff the opportunity to avail of free Irish language lessons. With support of organisations like Baile Átha Cliath le Gaeilge, we believe the Irish language can be accessible and enjoyable for all.”

The company plan to use more Irish in its retail marketing material both online and in store.

Burning the Big House: free lecture series (online) and exhibition

The Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates (CSHIHE) will host an interesting lecture series this spring exploring the burning of nearly 300 country mansions – long-time symbols of power and oppression – in the last years of Ireland's Revolutionary Era.

The Burning the Big House lecture series is supported by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media as part of the Decade of Centenaries Programme. The free, online lectures will be presented on Thursday evenings (7pm to 8pm), from 24 March to 19 May and are open to all.

You need to register in advance and can make a donation to CSHIHE at the same time, if you so wish.

The first and last lectures will be delivered live, online. All the others will be pre-recorded and aired according to the following schedule:

24 MARCH: Burning the Big House: the story of the country house during the Irish Revolution, 1920-23, with Terence Dooley

31 MARCH: Revolution, agrarianism and the burning of Ballydugan House, Co Galway, 1922, with Ann O’Riordan

7 APRIL: ‘A barbarous mania of incendiarism’: house burnings in Co Louth, 1921-23, with Jean Young

14 APRIL: ‘A smouldering mass of charred stones’: The burning of country houses in Offaly, 1920-1923, with Ciarán Reilly

21 APRIL: Munster’s ‘Campaign of Fire’: Big House burnings in Counties Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford, 1922–23, with Gemma Clark

28 APRIL: ‘Ours must go in time’: the burning of Sir John Keane’s Cappoquin House, Co Waterford, with Glascott Symes

5 MAY: The ruined Irish country house: reality and perception, with Robert O'Byrne

12 MAY: ‘Such troubled times’: the burning of big houses in Northern Ireland 1921-1981, with Olwen Purdue

19 MAY: Ablaze! Fire and the country house: a perspective beyond Ireland, with Christopher Ridgway.

These talks will run in tandem with Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in Revolution, 1920-23, an exhibition curated by Professor Terence Dooley. This will be hosted by the Irish Architectural Archives, 21 March–29 April, and by Maynooth University Library in May.

Book your free tickets, here.

(Terence Dooley's 386-page book, 'Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution', will be published by Yale University in March 2022.)