Irish Famine Eviction Project: research help wanted

An interesting study – The Irish Famine Eviction Project – is underway to document evidence of evictions during the Great Irish Famine.

It's being co-ordinated by Dr Ciaran Reilly, author of several books on this period of history, who has created a dedicated website to pin-point the famine eviction sites and to record information and background stories about the people displaced and involved in the evictions.

More than 400 sites have already been identified and their locations fixed on a map, which can be viewed here.

The Project is now reaching out to researchers to ask them to submit any information of evictions, locations and local folklore. This could be additional information relating to an eviction already identified, or details of a new, as-yet-unidentified eviction. Details of how to submit information can be found on the site.

This collaborative phase of the project is being sponsored by Irish Newspaper Archives, in whose online database of historical newspapers many facts and details about evictions can be found. To assist researchers in helping the Irish Famine Eviction Project, INA is offering a 30% discount on its monthly and annual membership subscriptions.

To take up the offer, go to the Irish Newspaper Archives subscription page, choose your preferred package, and, when prompted, use the discount coupon code IFP30. Offer expires 31 October.

(The Irish Famine Eviction Project and Offaly Historical Society will be hosting a morning seminar at Offaly History Centre in Tullamore on Saturday 8 October. Details (Word doc).)

'Ireland: Church, Famine and Immigration' seminar, Queensland, 15 October

The Genealogical Society of Queensland will be holding a full-day seminar – Ireland: Church, Famine and Immigration – on Saturday 15 October at the Queen Alexandra Conference Centre in Coorparoo.

Presentations will be given as follows:

• Irish immigration, with Dr Perry McIntyre
• The Great Irish Famine, with Dr Jennifer Harrison
• Online sites for Irish genealogy, with Helen Smith
• Land, with Bobbie Edes
• The Catholic church in Queensland, with Rev Dr Chris Hanlon
• Social media sites for Irish family history, with Helen Smith
• Q&A session

The day will start at 8:30 am and finish at 3:15pm. Morning tea and lunch will be provided.The fee is $50 for members of the GSQ, and $60 for non-members. Booking is essential.

Details.

The Irish Times joins British Newspaper Archive

The British Newspaper Archive (BNA) has added the Irish Times and the Weekly Irish Times to its online database.

The holding for the Irish Times, Ireland's newspaper of record, will eventually span 1859 to 1985. For now, it includes all of the daily editions published in nine of the years between 1866 and 1886.

Seven years of the Weekly Irish Times are already available. They date from 1876 to 1893. The holding for this paper will eventually span 1876 to 1958. During the last 17 years of its publication, the paper was known as Times Pictorial, Pictorial and Irish Pictorial.

These latest additions bring the number of Irish publications in the BNA to 126. All of them are also available via FindMyPast with an Ireland or World subscription.

Living DNA launches new test with regional breakdown of genetic ancestry

There's a new kid on the DNA block: Living DNA.

It launched last weekend at the NewScientist Live exhibition/show in London and is the first genetic ancestry test to incorporate data from the People of the British Isles (POBI) project.

As such, its test results will give customers 'a breakdown of genetic ancestry within the British Isles and then relate your ancestry to the rest of the world.'

Living DNA's website says that the test will be able to identify 21 regions within the geographical British Isles 'such as Cornwall, Devon, Norfolk or North Wales'. I have checked with the company and been told that Ireland is one of these regions.

Genetic genealogist Debbie Kennett has published a detailed blogpost about the new test, so I'll direct you there for more information and knowledgeable analysis: crwys.co.uk.

If you're keen to learn more, check out the Living DNA website or pop along to the Back To Our Past show in Dublin next month (RDS Industries Hall, 21-23 October), where the Living DNA team will be on hand to discuss and sell its new kits.

Three ISBGFH webinars on Irish topics announced

The International Society for British Genealogy and Family History (ISBGFH) has announced its Winter Webinar Series and it includes three Irish topics, as follows:

1 October 2016: In Search of Your Irish Ancestors with Michael Brophy
The webinar begins with the central event in the history of Irish genealogy — the destruction of the Public Records Office in Dublin on 30 June 1922. The unique challenges and realistic expectations for Irish ancestral research will be discussed. Vital records, immigration documentation, and unique resources will be presented. Register.

12 November 2016: DNA Testing for Genealogy with Dr Maurice Gleeson
Dr Gleeson will discuss the different tests available for genealogy and will help us to understand what information we can hope to get from each one. He will also present some of the projects available through FamilyTreeDNA. Register.

10 December 2016: Researching Your Scots-Irish Ancestors, with Fintan Brohy
This webinar will assist you in researching your Irish and Scots-Irish ancestors with roots in the province of Ulster, and help you to discover a variety of historical resources that may link you to your family history. Register.

All webinars take place at 1pm (USA) Eastern Time. They cost $10 for members and $20 for non-members. Payment is made via PayPal at time of registration.

New TV series to explore Ireland's greatest building and engineering achievements

A new TV documentary series, starting this week, will explore and explain how Ireland’s greatest building and engineering achievements came to be, and the impact they had on the development of our towns and cities. These projects employed legions of men, from general labourers to skilled tradesmen such as stonemasons, and the programmes include details about the working conditions and pay our ancestors would have experienced.

‘Building Ireland’, will air at 8.30pm on RTÉ One on Fridays from 30 September, with five more episodes airing in the same time-slot over the following five weeks.

The series is presented by Tim Joyce, a civil engineer from East Galway; Dr. Susan Hegarty, a Cork native and geographer; and award-winning architect Orla Murphy. All three presenters previously worked on the programme's first series, which aired on RTÉ One two years ago.

Among the projects featuring in the second series are:

Spike Island, Co. Cork served as a prime defensive location for the British Empire, as well as functioning as part of the Irish prison system. At its height in 1850, it housed up to 2,500 men. It has opened to the public in recent months, after undergoing a €5.5million upgrade and enhancement project. Leaving the stark prison regime on Spike Island, the residential architecture of Cobh is also examined, as is the influence the prosperous middle class had on the town in the aftermath of the Irish Famine (see pix below). You can view some very short video trailers here.

Kilkenny Castle – Architect Orla Murphy explores the history of Kilkenny Castle, while geographer Dr. Susan Hegarty looks at the layout of Kilkenny as a medieval city and engineer Tim Joyce investigates the great flood of 1763, which caused many bridges in Kilkenny City and county to be swept away. The loss of these bridges led to engineers devising creative and robust solutions to re-unite the city and replace the lost bridges along the Nore, such as Green’s Bridge, whose design is a copy of the Palladian architecture of the Roman bridge at Rimini, but only on the city side.

Spike Island, Cobh - Home to 2,500 prisoners in 1850

Genteel Cobh - How the other half lived

UCD history courses at National Library of Ireland

University College Dublin (UCD) and the National Library of Ireland will be offering a number of history courses as part of the Lifelong Learning programme.

UCD Lifelong Learning courses are part-time specific interest courses that are participative, engaging and facilitated by experts in their field. The courses are open to all and provide a chance to explore a subject without concerns about assessment. The 2016/2017 courses are:

Starting October 2016:

• The American West and the Irish who made it. Tutor: Myles Dungan. Eight weeks from Wednesday 5 October, 10:30am to 1pm. €195. Details and booking.
• Ireland at War 1913-1924. Tutor: Eve Morrison. Eight weeks from Thursday 6 October, 2–4:30pm. €195. Details and booking.

Starting January/March 2017:

• Sport and Society in Ireland. Tutor: Paul Rouse. Eight weeks from Wednesday 11 January. 10:30am to 1pm. €195. Details and booking.
• Republicanism and Irish Life 1922-2005. Tutor: Eve Morrison. Eight weeks from Thursday 26 January, 2–4:30pm. €195. Details and booking.
• The Great Irish Famine 1845-1852. Tutor: Brian Casey. Eight weeks from Wednesday 8 March. 10:30am to 1pm. €195. Details and booking.

Each course is held at the National Library of Ireland in Kildare Street, Dublin 2.

Fifth Waterford title joins British Newspaper Archive

The British Newspaper Archive has added another Irish title: The Waterford Standard. This paper was published from 1863 to 1882 as The Standard and Waterford Conservative Gazette before changing its name.

More than 2,500 editions published between 1897 and 1950 are now available to search in the online database.

Waterford is particularly well represented in the BNA database. Five titles – Waterford Chronicle, Waterford Mail, Waterford Mirror and Tramore Visitor, Waterford News and now The Waterford Standard – provide excellent coverage for the county between 1824 and the 1950s.

This latest addition is one of 124 Irish publications in the British Newspaper Archive. These titles are also available via FindMyPast with an Ireland or World subscription.

AGI and ASGRA in historic first joint meeting

L-R: ASGRA Chairman Janet Bishop and
AGI President Máire Mac Conghail

Having formed an alliance earlier in the year, Accredited Genealogists Ireland (AGI) and the Association of Scottish Genelaogists and Researchers in Archives (ASGRA) held their first joint meeting last week at a special two-day professional development event hosted in Belfast, where AGI (then APGI) was founded in 1986.

The two organisations have been providing accreditation for professional genealogists for three decades, and have joined forces to promote the benefits of such accreditation for both competent genealogists and those seeking to engage competent and trustworthy researchers.

At the beginning of the two-day event AGI President Máire Mac Conghail, and ASGRA Chairman Janet Bishop outlined the history and evolution of their respective organisations and welcomed the alliance.

In August, an internal newsletter for AGI and ASGRA members (compiled by Kirsteen Mulhern (ASGRA), Michael Walsh MAGI, and John Grenham MAGI) was launched, and AGI will attend the 28th Annual Conference of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies, which ASGRA is hosting at North Queensferry, Fife, next April.

AGI and ASGRA have similarities. For example, both have programmes to help those in transition towards a career in genealogical research. However, there are differences of approach between the two organisations. The alliance recognises these differences and does not seek to impose uniformity. The organisations are equal and are supportive of one another.

Cork and Offaly folklore materials complete online Schools' Collection

Folklore and local history material from Counties Cork and Offaly has been uploaded to the National Folklore Collection's free website, Duchas.ie and completes the online Schools' Collection.

In this latest and final instalment, the material was prepared by children attending more than 450 schools in County Cork and 90 schools in County Offaly.

The Collection as a whole consists of more than half a million pages of handwritten stories and reports gathered and written by some 50,000 primary school pupils across the 26 counties between 1937 and 1939.

The site can currently be searched by place, by person and by topic, and it has material from almost every parish in Ireland.

A special feature of the site is Meitheal Dúchas.ie, a crowdsourced transcription initiative. At the beginning of 2015, the public was invited to help Dúchas.ie by transcribing the text of the Irish-language stories in the Schools’ Collection. Since the start of this year, every story in the collection, both Irish and English, is available for transcription and a dedicated community of transcribers eagerly undertake this work. To date the voluntary transcribers of the Meitheal have transcribed over 35,000 pages, making Meitheal Dúchas.ie one of the most successful crowdsourcing projects of its kind in the world.

Launching the final upload and marking the successful completion of the Schools' Collection project, Seán Kyne, TD, Minister of State for Gaeltacht Affairs, said: ‘I am delighted to launch the two final counties of the Schools’ Folklore Collection. This wonderful resource is now available to the public in its entirety. It is of great importance not only as a primary source for the academic researcher but also as a treasure trove for everyone around the world who has an interest in Ireland.’