Monday 29 April 2013

Labour relations in Belfast: a series of events

Belfast City Council is to host a series of events to mark the rise of the trades union movement a century ago.

Announcing the programme, Councillor Maire Hendron, Chair of the council`s Good Relations Steering Group, commented: “The period between 1912 and 1922 witnessed some dramatic changes in this part of the world, and it is only right that, a century later, we recognise and remember the importance of that decade of key historical moments, and explore some of the significant events in detail.

“The role of the labour movement, and in particular the rise of the trades unions, in that period cannot be under-estimated, especially as they brought together men and women from all social, economic, political and religious backgrounds to fight for a common goal.”

To mark the centenary, a series of events is being held at the City Hall, as follows:

Tuesday 7 May: The story of the Belfast Dockers' Strike and subsequent 1913 Dubin Lockout, told in words and music with folk singers Jane Cassidy and Maurice Leyden, as well as some special guests.

Wednesday 15 May: The role of women in the labour movement, with Therese Moriarty.

Tuesday 21 May: Supping at the `bitter gourd`: struggles of the Belfast Labour Movement 1906 -1932, with John Gray, author of `City in Revolt – James Larkin and the Belfast Dock Strike`.

Thursday 30 May: The Dublin Lockout of 1913 - A Very British Conflict, with Padraig Yeates.

Thursday 6 June: Migration and the Making of a City, with Professor Stephen Royle and Agnieszka Martynowicz exploring the theme from the famine of the 1840s through the rise of the shipbuilding, engineering and linen industries in the latter 18th century, to the impact of the expansion of the European Union.

All these events start at 7.15pm (except Padraig Yeates, which is at 12.15pm) and are free of charge. Tickets can be obtained from the Belfast Welcome Centre in Donegall Place (telephone 9024 6609). More details.

Next Hedge School: Too many histories?

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of History Ireland magazine, a special Hedge School debate will be held on 16 May to discuss the question: Has Ireland ‘too many histories’?

The roller-coaster generation has witnessed the end of the Troubles in the North, the rise of the Celtic Tiger… and its catastrophic collapse. How has scholarship of the ‘revolutionary decade’ — the Home Rule crisis, First World War, 1916 Rising, War of Independence, Civil War and Partition — evolved over that period? What insights has the burgeoning of women’s history brought to the debate? Given that we have two jurisdictions on this island, should we have one history or two?

History Ireland magazine editor, Tommy Graham will be acting ringmaster at the roundtable discussion and will be joined by some of the island's foremost historians – Prof. Joe Lee, Prof. Diarmaid Ferriter, Mary Cullen and Éamon Phoenix – to discuss these issues.

The theme is explained by the organisers, as follows:

When Alfred Cope, a former British assistant undersecretary in Dublin Castle, was approached in the 1940s to give a statement to the Bureau of Military History (BMH) he refused, saying ‘Ireland has too many histories: she deserves a rest’.

Date: Thursday 16 May
Venue: RCPI, 6 Kildare Street, Dublin 2.
Time: 7pm.
Cost: Free

Note: Seats will be allocated on a first-come basis, but you can reserve a seat by email.

This event is organised in association with the Irish Association for Cultural, Social & Economic Relations (marking their 75th anniversary) and is supported by the Reconciliation Fund of the Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

This week's Irish genealogy/history events

Monday 29 April: Pioneers and Protesters - Exploring Irishwomen's History, with Dr. Myrtle Hill. Host: Stewartstown & District Local History Group. Venue: Crieve Centre, Stewartstown. Time: 8pm (after AGM). All welcome to the talk.

Wednesday 1 May to 31 May: Newtownards: A Pictorial History, an exhibition by Ards Historical Society. Venue: Newtownards Library, Queens Hall, Regent Street, Newtownards, Co Down BT23 4AB. Open during normal library hours. Free.

Wednesday 1 May to Wednesday 29 May: Digging the Monto – tenement archaeology and the 1913 Dublin Lockout, a photographic exhibition by Dr Thomas Kador in association with Terry Fagan and Martin Coffey. Charleville Library, North Strand, Dublin 1. Monday to Saturday: 10am–1pm and 2pm–5pm. Free.

Wednesday 1 May: The Irish Co-operative Movement and the development of the Nation State, 1889–1932, with Patrick Doyle. Venue: IWHC, Irish Town Way, Cheetham Hill, Manchester M8 0AE. 7:30pm. £3 Details: 0161 205 4007. Irish World Heritage ‏@IWHCmanchester 19m

Friday 3 May: Family History for beginners online. Castlewellan Library, 3 Upper Square
Castlewellan, Co Down BT31 9DA. 11am–12:30pm. Free. Bookings: 028 4377 8433.

Friday 3 May: The Fighting Irish Conference: For Flag and Country – The Emigrant Irish in Military Service. Venue: Gleeson's, The Square, Roscommon. Details.

Friday 3 May: Family History for Beginners Online. Castlewellan Library, 3 Upper Square, Castlewellan, Co Down. 11:00am–12:30pm. Free but booking essential. Tel: 028 4377 8433.

Friday 3 May to Sunday 12 May: 2013 National Famine Commemoration programme gets underway, centred on Kilrush in Co Clare. Dozens of events – walks, film screenings, readings, performance, dance, song, markets, demonstrations and exhibitions, plus lectures. See full progamme.

Friday 3 May: The role Australia played in the Irish Famine, with Tom Power. Part of the 2013 National Famine Commemorations programme. 7pm. Carrigaholt Parish Hall, Co Clare.

Leitrim's Killegar Estate records open to researchers

Killegar estate records are now available to researchers at Leitrim County Library in Ballinamore.

The collection holds the papers of the Morgan and Godley families who have owned Killegar House, Carrigallan, since 1734 when Richard Morgan of Dublin bought the land. The late John, 3rd Lord Kilbracken, who died in 2006, was the seventh generation in the line from Richard.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Heritage Council and Leitrim County Council, the papers have been professionally archived into an accessible archive with a database research facility. They contain important items including rent books and other documents relating to the tenants and management of the lands, as well as well as an insight into a landed family and its properties.

For further information, contact Leitrim County Library, Ballinamore on +353 (0)71-9645582 or email.

Friday 26 April 2013

New training project for Offaly genealogy research

A new training project will be launched next month for those who want to kick-start their genealogy research in Co Offaly.

The 'Offaly Genealogy, Historical Placenames and Mapping' course will use a combination of lectures and computer-based training in a series of four Tuesday evening lectures starting on 7 May. The programme, which will be presented by Offaly Historical Society, runs as follows:

7 May: Introduction to Irish genealogy
14 May: Genealogy sources of Co Offaly
21 May: Offaly land ownership, land records & evictions
28 May: Historical place names, map reading and territorial divisions.

Funded by Offaly Local Development Company and supported by the Ireland XO initiative, the project will be delivered free of charge to delegates (donations won't go amiss!) and will be held at St Joseph's Hall, Acorn Centre, School Lane, Edenderry, Co Offaly from 8-10:30pm each week.

Places are limited. To register, email or text your details to (085) 1925466.

Methodist attitudes to the poor: lecture

The Methodist Historical Society of Ireland is to host a public lecture in Dublin on Thursday 16 May.

Methodist attitudes to the poor in late-Georgian Ireland, will be presented by Ciarán McCabe at 7:30pm. Admission is free, but booking is essential – by Wednesday 1 May – by email.

Venue: Litton Hall, Wesley House, Leeson Park, Dublin 4.

The Irish and the Hispanic Monarchy: exhibition

An exhibition has opened in Valladolid, Spain, to explore Irish connections with the Hispanic monarchy during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

The Irish and the Hispanic Monarchy (1529-1800) – Connections in space and time
, contains fifty-one original documents and deals with Hispano-Irish relations and the relationship of the thousands of Irish immigrants with the Spanish monarchy throughout its dominions during the Hapsburg and Bourbon periods.

It covers both the traditional historiography of Spanish intervention in Ireland and the Wild Geese but also deals with new and lesser known areas such as in the field of gender and social history as well as Irish involvement in the Spanish Indies. Some of this material has not been previously available to the public or to researchers.

The exhibition also contains a section dedicated to Red Hugh O’Donnell, who was buried in Valladolid.

It will run until the end of June 2013 at the Archivo General de Simancas. For more information, click the image above.

Thursday 25 April 2013

RootsIreland adds 50,000 graveyard inscriptions

RootsIreland.ie has uploaded an additional 50,000 gravestone transcriptions from counties Tyrone and Fermanagh to its searchable database.

The company's announcement says that a total of nearly 270 cemeteries have now been surveyed, accounting for nearly all burial places in the two counties, and they include graveyards consecrated by religious groups as well as those in the care of the municipal authorities.

I've looked round the site trying to find a list of the graveyards concerned but couldn't find one.


Tuesday 23 April 2013

Exploring Irish Identity - a free online course

A new online course called Exploring Irish Identity has been designed and created by Hibernia College in association with The Gathering.

Known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), the course will present a broad overview of how history, geography and culture have interacted to create divergent, and sometimes contradictory, ideas of what it means to be Irish. It is the first MOOC on the theme of Irish identity and was launched last week by Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

In a series of weekly themes, it will explore Irish history, literature and poetry, theatre and film, language, art, sport and landscape, and includes contributions from prominent Irish academics and cultural icons. The course will be free of charge to anyone, anywhere, with an Internet connection, and starts on Monday 27 May 2013.

You can watch an introductory video and register for more information at HiberniaCollege.

Monday 22 April 2013

A busy week of lectures and events ahead

There are plenty of genealogy and history lectures and discussions taking place this week across the island.

Tuesday 23 April: Family History for beginners, with Tom Gribben. Banbridge Library, 23 Scarva Road, Banbridge BT32 3AD. Free. Booking advised. Tel: 028 4062 3973.

Tuesday 23 April: Limerick and the American Civil War, with Damian Shields. Limerick City Library's History Lecture series. 8pm. Free. Refreshments will be served. All Welcome.

Wednesday 24 April: Councils and Corporations – Local Government in Belfast, with Ian Montgomery of PRONI. Venue: Linenhall Library, Belfast. 1pm. Free.

Wednesday 24 April: Casualties of the 1916 Rising, with special reference to County Louth, with Ray Bateson. Host: Annagassan and District Historical Society. Venue: The Loft History Hall (above Slan’s Pub) in Annagassan, Co Louth. 8pm. Places limited so be early. Entrance fee €5, includes tea/coffee after the lecture. All welcome.

Thursday 25 April: 'That Field Of Glory': Historical And Antiquarian Perspectives On The Battle Of Clontarf, with Prof. Colm Lennon. RSAI, Helen Roe theatre, 63 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 at 7.30pm.

Thursday 25 April: Sources for studying the Ulster Plantation, with Dr William Roulston. Derry City Council’s Heritage and Museum Service Spring Lecture Series. Venue: Tower Museum, Union Hall Place, Derry BT48 6LU. Time: 12.30pm. Free. Book on 028 7137 2411 or email.

Thursday 25 April: The Famine in the Dingle Peninsula, with Dr Kieran Foley. Host: Dingle Historical Society. Venue: Dingle Library, Co Kerry. 7.30pm.

Thursday 25 April: The Irish Historic Towns Atlas, a resource for Ulster Studies Dr Jacinta Prunty. Host: Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies. 7:30pm. Venue: G01, 16 University Square, Queen's University Belfast.

Thursday 25 April: Young & Mackenzie – Networks and connections of patronage in the creation of Belfast’s built environment, c.1850-1940, with Dr Paul Harron. PRONI, Belfast. 1pm. Free, but booking advised on +44 (0)2890 534800

Saturday 27 April: Recent developments in Irish genealogy, with Sean Murphy. National Library of Ireland, Kildare Street, Dublin 2. 11am. Free, but donation requested for the Cystic Fibrosis Hopesource Foundation. Fully booked.

Saturday 27 April: The round towers of Ireland, with Brian Lalor. Hosts: Cloyne Literary & Historical Society and the Friends of Cloyne Cathedral. Venue: Cloyne Cathedral, Co Cork. 8pm. Fee at door €5.

Saturday 27 April: HistoryIreland Hedge School. Topic: Strumpet City (Dublin One City One Book). Dublin City Library, Pearse Street, Dublin 2. 3.45pm. Free.

Sunday 28 April: Guided tour of Bully's Acre graveyard, with Paul O'Brien in the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, Dublin. 2pm. Free. Booking essential as places limited. Telephone +353 (0)87-6759934 or email.

Friday 19 April 2013

Improved search on new Glasnevin website

Glasnevin Trust has given its website a thorough makeover and improved its online searchable database of more than 1.2million burial records.

The Trust cares for five Dublin graveyards – Glasnevin, Dardistown, Goldenbridge, Palmerstown and Newlands Cross – as well as two crematorium and the award-winning Glasnevin Museum. In addition to the kind of details you'd expect about arranging burials at these cemeteries, the website carries the events schedule for Glasnevin and allows access to its huge database.

The new-look site is much more attractive than its predecessor and information about the records it holds has been slightly extended.

But it's the search facility that has been most extensively updated. There is now an Advanced Search function that allows you to narrow down your search dramatically. If you are searching for an ancestor with a common name such as John Doyle, you can now filter your search to include only those John Doyles in specific age brackets, or marital statuses, or with a certain address. You could even limit results with his occupation.

Sounds great, doesn't it? And I'm sure it will be after some teething problems are ironed out.

The main problem seems to me to be that the date of death (DOD) filter has to be applied to all searches. You can't just search for your John Doyle, widowed, coach-builder aged 31-60, without narrowing down the DOB search to a set date, plus or minus three years. Since 'my' John Doyle is missing after the 1911 census when he was 38, I would have to make seven searches to cover the 60-odd years he could potentially have lived after that date.

Obviously the DOD search filter is valuable if you have a good or rough idea when your ancestor died, but if you have no clue, it would be better to leave it as an optional field rather than a mandatory one.

A second criticism is that the Advanced Search facility is not immediately offered. Only when you've done a standard search on the genealogy page does the advanced option present itself.

There is a short-cut that you might like to take note of: From the home page, double-click the (blue) Genealogy option in the top horizontal menu. Be sure to double-click. From there you can select the Advanced Search option. This still doesn't offer all the search filters (the next page does), but it presents some useful options such as searching by surname alone – use the wildcard facility for the first name – and you can choose the DOB to be plus or minus one year or three. You can also add an address.

Obviously the new site has to settle, and I dare say there's a lot of tinkering going on behind the interface, so some of these issues may be resolved in due course.

In the meantime, the new site and its search engine, is much improved and we already know that the information provided by Glasnevin's Trust can be wonderfully fulsome. Feedback from users is requested and can be sent via the new site.

(With thanks to Stuart McGee and Gráinne Finn)

Mid-April updates from IGP Archives

The following files have been added to the ever-growing Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives in the first half of April. If you haven't checked out the free online archive recently, you really should do so. The steady rounds of updates are building into an incredibly useful resource.

Dublin Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Cruagh Cemetery, Rockbrook, Co. Dublin
Deansgrange Cemetery: St. Itas Section, pt1 (additions) and St. Nessan's Part 7

Fermanagh Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Galloon, St Comgall (CoI) Headstones Pts 1 & 2
Sallaghy (CoI) Cemetery

Kerry Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1857 Irish Constabulary men

Kildare Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1857 Irish Constabulary men

Kilkenny Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1857 Irish Constabulary men

Leitrim Genealogy Archives
Military & Constabulary – 1857 Irish Constabulary men
Headstones – Fahy Cemetery (partial)

Limerick Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1857 Irish Constabulary men

Offaly (Kings) Genealogy Archives - Military & Constabulary
1857 Irish Constabulary men

Tipperary Genealogy Archives
Cemetery – Church of the Holy Trinity, Fethard - Memorials
Headstones – Ballysheehan Medieval Church & Cemetery and Fethard, Holy Trinity Church & Cemetery

Wexford Genealogy Archives - Photos
Kiltennel Church, Gorey

Thursday 18 April 2013

Anzac Special: free military records 22-26 April

To commemorate, Anzac Day, FindMyPast.com.au is offering free access to 3.6 million Military records between 22-26 April 2013.

The comprehensive collection includes records from Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Ireland and the United States and there's also a batch of brand new records, as follows:

Australasian Imperial Expeditionary Forces Roll of Honour
This is an index to the roll of honour of the soldiers and sailors of Australian Imperial Expeditionary Forces. These men and women sadly died on service between 4 August 1914 and 30 June 1919. For each entry you will find useful information such as the service number, name, rank, cause and date of death and more.

New South Wales Roll of Honour
A comprehensive list of the names of service personnel extracted from honour rolls in schools, public halls, clubs and village war memorials across New South Wales. This is valuable resource and could help you find your ancestors name being honoured somewhere in New South Wales.

New Zealand War Medal Roll
This index lists returns of Officers and Men of the Colonial Forces who made applications for the New Zealand War Medal for services before 1866. All of the claims contained are acknowledged by the War Medal Commissioners.

New Zealand Boer War Servicemen
Exactly what it says on the tin: a list of New Zealand servicemen who took part in the Boer Wars.

In addition, you can read heroic stories, photos, diary entries, poems, words of appreciation and articles by military experts in the new Anzac Memory Bank that I mentioned on this blog a few days ago. This online commemorative contains heroic stories, photos and diary entries submitted by family historians, along with expert information about the Australian and New Zealand involvement in conflicts around the globe.

Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, held on the anniversary of the Gallipoli landing on 25 April each year. It is a day to honour those that sacrificed their lives, those that came home and all the families affected by wars all around the world.

Make a note in your diary: the free access offer will start on Monday 22 April.




Wednesday 17 April 2013

When's your surname?

Here's news of an unusual and continually updating exhibition that's going out under The Gathering banner.

The Cliffs of Moher Visitor Experience is celebrating The Gathering with an exhibition about the 160 most numerous surnames to appear in the 1901 census for County Clare.

Each week one of the top 40 family names is featured. The surnames Murphy, McInerney, O'Brien, Cleary, Hogan and Ryan have already been featured and this week is the turn of Collins. Next week it'll be O'Dea that gets star-billing.

If you turn up at the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre and your surname matches the current featured surname, you'll receive a complimentary commemorative certificate and a goodie bag. You'll also be included in a prize draw at the end of the year and could win an exclusive trip to County Clare including hotel accommodation, activities and attractions.

To see the calendar of surnames that are to be commemorated each week up to 9 December 2013, click the image above.

You might also be interested to see Clare Library's Frequency of Surnames 1901 chart.

Ancestry marriage records are free until Sunday


Get ready to throw the confetti!

Ancestry is offering free access to marriage records from today until Sunday 21st April.

Only the dot com version of Ancestry seems to be giving this promotion any active treatment, but search results via dotcom include returns for Ireland and the UK. (They also occasionally include a death or birth record, but don't tell anyone!). It will end at midnight US Eastern Time. You can access the search page directly by clicking the image above.

While the Ancestry.ie/co.uk version doesn't seem to be making any noise about this promotion, you can still get free access to the marriage records. I've just run a few searches from this search page and then narrowed down the categories on the next page to Marriage & Divorce, and found the full range of marriage records (bonds, allegations, licences etc) returned in the search results and with full access to images.

Irish Famine Tribunal this weekend in New York City

Top international judges will this weekend be part of a tribunal hosted by Fordham Law School in New York City to examine the responsibility of the British Government for the tragic consequences of the Irish Famine, An Gorta Mór, 1845-1852.

The Tribunal will consider whether the British role during the Famine amounted to either genocide or a crime against humanity.

Prosecution and defence teams, including law students from Fordham Law School and Dublin City University, will present their cases before the panel of judges.

Joining them will be authors Tim Pat Coogan (“The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy”) and John Kelly (“The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People”), along with historian Dr. Ruan O’Donnell, Head of the Department of History at the University of Limerick.

Some of the questions to be discussed:
  • Were the repeated, devastating failures of the potato crop beyond the power of any government, in the context of the time, to effectively manage?
  • Was Ireland particularly vulnerable to famine and, if so, why?
  • What relief efforts were made?
  • How responsive was the government in London to reports from relief officials in Ireland?
  • How influential were laissez-faire and providentialist ideologies?
  • Did British policy makers take advantage of the Famine to “reform” Irish society?
  • Was it only the British government that stood by while Ireland starved?
  • What part was played by landlords, merchants, big farmers, shopkeepers and, more generally, the Irish middle classes?
The Irish Famine Tribunal will be held at Fordham University Law School, 140 W. 62nd Street, New York City on Saturday 20 April (Registration 9:30am) and Sunday 21 April (Registration 10:30am).

Ancestry adds two new London collections

Ancestry has added a collection of Poor Law Removal and Settlement Records, 1828-1930, for five Poor Law Unions in the East End of London, where a lot of destitute Irish migrants found themselves, especially after the Famine.

The 218,319 records in this database relate to settlement and removals in the unions of Bethnal Green, Hackney, Poplar, Shoreditch, and Stepney. They include examinations and settlement inquiries, registers of settlement, orders of removal, and other documents.

Because responsibility for indigent residents fell to the parish, authorities kept tight control over who had a right to claim the parish as a legal place of settlement. People who could not legally claim the right of settlement could be sent back – 'removed' – to their last legal parish of settlement. Many destitute Irish people were 'removed' back to Ireland under these rules.

Right to settlement could be established by birth, residency for a prescribed period of time, marriage, renting property for at least £10 and paying the poor rate, or completing an apprenticeship, among other ways. Proving one’s right of settlement could include an examination or inquiry, and these often produced valuable documentation; in the case of so many Irish migrants, these papers might hold the only record of where an individual originated in Ireland.

Details included in these records vary widely, depending on the document. An order of removal may contain a name, age, current parish, and parish being removed to. A settlement register may note number of children and marital status. Documents from inquiries and examinations can be even more extensive. You may be able to discover some of the following:
  • name
  • age
  • parish
  • date
  • places and dates of residence (both current and former)
  • spouse and marriage details
  • children’s names, birth dates, and birthplace
  • profession
  • other family members’ names and residences
  • summary of the situation and grounds for settlement or removal
Ancestry advises that some of the cases included in this record set include multiple documents, so recommend that researchers use the arrow keys to browse surrounding pages to ensure you find all the records relating to your ancestor.

This collection comes from the London Metropolitan Archives and has been indexed under Ancestry's World Archive Project (WAP). My understanding was that databases produced under the WAP banner were free to view, but while I can view search results (with limited information) without charge, I'm being refused further exploration without a current subscription/credits. There may be a fault; I'll raise it with Ancestry and update here when I hear back.

___________________________ 

The second record set newly added to Ancestry's London line up is the Overseers' Returns 1863-1894. These documents list parish residents who have claimed the right to vote.

The formal description, from the London Metropolitan Archives, says: "These returns can be considered the ‘raw material’ from which electoral registers were produced…The returns are arranged in annual bundles by polling district. The names of electors are listed alphabetically within each parish giving the place of residence and the address by which the elector has gained his vote. Overseers’ returns are particularly useful for dates for which there are no surviving electoral registers.”

Since the right to vote during these years was hugely restrictive and based on property values, there won't be many Irish in this collection.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Findmypast adds Anzac Memory Bank and records

To mark the fast approaching Anzac Day (25 April), thousands of new Australian and New Zealand military records have been added to all of FindMyPast’s international sites as part of a World Subscription.

The records are:
  • Australasian Imperial Expeditionary Forces Roll of Honour – An index to the roll of honour of the soldiers and sailors of Australian Imperial Expeditionary Forces
  • New South Wales Roll of Honour – A comprehensive list of the names of service personnel extracted from honour rolls in schools, public halls, clubs and village war memorials across NSW
  • New Zealand War Medal Roll – An index of returns of Officers and Men of the Colonial Forces who made applications for the New Zealand War Medal for services before 1866
  • New Zealand Boer War Servicemen – A list of New Zealand servicemen who took part in the Boer Wars.
In addition to these new records, the Anzac Memory Bank has been launched. This is a commemorative archive, co-sponsored with Inside History magazine (a publication to which I subscribe and recommend for anyone interested in Australian/NZ history), which contains heroic stories, exclusive photos, and expert information about Australian and New Zealand involvement in all wars and conflicts around the world.

Users have shared their own personal and family stories, photos and diary entries so that others can learn what it was like to live through these times of turmoil.

Like the new military records listed above, the Anzac Memory Bank will be available on all FindMyPast sites.


Sunday 14 April 2013

SOG Workshops: Speakers' handouts are available

The Society of Genealogists (SOG) launched its spanking new website last week – and jolly good it looks, too.

Among the many recent additions to the site's content is the chance to download 'Speakers' Handouts' from the SOG workshops at this year's WDYTYA?Live.

Many of these handouts will be of value to Irish family historians for their generic advice and guidance on conducting genealogy research, but there also a couple of specific Irish interest. They are 'Irish Family History Online', by Chris Paton, and the 'Registry of Deeds' by Roz McCutcheon FIGRS.

All the handouts can be downloaded here.

Friday 12 April 2013

1916 Conference in Enniscorthy tomorrow

As part of the Decade of Commemorations, a 1916 Conference is to be held in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford tomorrow, Saturday 13 April.

Four lectures will be held, and the programme looks like this:

9:15am   : Registration
9:45am   : Welcome and Conference Opening by Minister Paul Kehoe TD
10:00am : Lost revolution: the Abbey Theatre and Easter 1916, with Dr Fearghal McGarry
11:00am : Coffee break
11:30am : Who were the Enniscorthy Rebels in 1916? with Kieran Costello
12:15pm : Peter Paul Galligan – one of the most dangerous men in the Rebel Movement, with
xxxxxxxxxKevin Galligan
1:00pm   : Lunch break
2:15pm   : The Bureau of Military History and the Easter Rising, with Dr Eve Morrison
3:00pm   : Panel Discussion/Q&A session
4:00pm   : Close of conference.

Venue     : The Presentation Centre, Nunnery Road, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford.
Cost       : €30 (€100 Councillors/officials)
Bookings: Telephone the National 1798 Rebellion Centre on +353 (0)53 923 7596.

Thursday 11 April 2013

Update on Irish newspaper additions to BNA

The British Newspaper Archives has added some more editions to its Irish newspapers collections, as follows:

Dublin Evening Mail: All editions for 1849 and 1861-1870 are now available (these years previously had incomplete coverage). The 1852 editions have been added, as have those for the second half of 1871.

Belfast Morning News:
A few editions for 1857 have been added, but full coverage for 1859-1971 and for 1881 has now been achieved.

Sligo Champion:
All editions for 1926 have been added to the portfolio of this weekly paper.

There have been no updates to the collections of the BNA's other Irish papers: Cork Examiner, Dublin Evening Mail, Belfast Newsletter and Freeman's Journal.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Crossing Borders conference to be held in September

News of another conference, this one of interest to those with family connections to the borderland counties of Cavan, Monaghan, Fermanagh, Tyrone and Meath.

The main focus of the Peace III-funded conference, which is called Crossing Borders, is the impact of the invisible boundaries and how they have significantly shaped the history and people of the region. The programme will educate and entertain participants both in the lecture theatre and in the field and will highlight the rich shared heritage and culture of whichever side of these borders the delegates or their ancestors consider(ed) home.

The four-day conference is organised by Cavan County Council, Cavan Genealogy and the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies in Omagh, County Tyron. It will be based at the Slieve Russell Hotel, Ballyconnell, Co. Cavan and will take place 12-15 September.

Places are limited so early booking is essential. The conference and its excursions are free (except for one entrance fee) but a deposit of €50 is payable to reserve a place. €35 will be refunded. Delegates must arrange their own accommodation.

All enquiries and bookings to be made to Cavan Genealogy, First Floor, Johnston Central Library, Farnham Street, Cava. Tel +353 49 4361094 or email.



PRONI buys the Londonderry Papers for £665,000

PRONI has spent £665,000 to bring the Londonderry Papers – archives from the estate of Lady Mairi Bury of Mount Stewart – into public ownership

The archive, which includes a range of documents from 1670 to 1950, was already held at PRONI and has enjoyed wide usage by researchers. The purchase means PRONI can now be confident of keeping the archive intact (it contains some 30,000 individual documents, volumes, maps and plans) and properly preserved for future generations.

At the core of the collection are the papers of the Marquesses of Londonderry and their estates in Counties Down, Donegal and Derry. These include a detailed record of title deeds, leases and rentals which provide a valuable source for tenants’ names. The collection also contains considerable political correspondence relating to a range of issues from the 1880s to 1920s, from figures including Edward Carson, James Craig, Sean O’Casey and Winston Churchill.

The records are held under PRONI reference numbers D654, D2846 and D3099. You can access the catalogue here.

Urban Landscape lecture series at PRONI

The Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) will host a series of lunchtime lectures this month on the subject of The Urban Landscape: Civic Pride. Each talk will last about 45 minutes.

Thursday 18 April: Art and the Public Domain, with Dr Amanda Croft.
Contemporary art in Northern Ireland thrives in a wide variety of locations, from large-scale galleries like the MAC and the Ulster Museum to smaller spaces such as the Engine Room and the Mullan Galleries but additional to this is the wealth of artwork in open spaces such as the Cathedral Quarter, the City Hall and the Laganside.

Amanda Croft’s talk will concentrate on the development and the diversity of public art, whether installations, sculpture, murals or statues, in Belfast and its environs and how and why it is where, and what, it is.

Thursday 25 April: Young & Mackenzie – Networks and connections of patronage in the creation of Belfast’s built environment, c.1850-1940, with Dr Paul Harron.
An examination of one of the largest of the 19th-century's archictural and civil engineering firms, Young & Mackenzie, from c.1850 to the 1930s – whose archives are held in PRONI – reveals the extent to which social, societal and business networks and connections were involved in the receipt of design commissions.

This lecture will present material demonstrating how members of Belfast’s wealthy civic elite were joined by social, religious, commercial, civic, cultural and institutional ties, and how this led to this firm’s dominance and monopoly in the architectural field during the Victorian, Edwardian and early 20th century periods. The results of networks of such patronage still speak for themselves in many substantial buildings which exist today and which still give Belfast much of its prevailing visual appearance.

Tuesday 30 April: Clanging Belfast: The Industrial City, with Professor Stephen Royle
Belfast's industrial pomp must have been noisy: riveting at the yards, clatter from linen mills, sirens marking time at the factories. A rumbustious people packed into terraces and alleys would have added their din. Noise fades but the industrial era left other remembrances, from buildings still gracing the city to humdrum details of lives revealed in newspapers, more formal sources from the corporation, the Linen Merchants’ Association and parliamentary and other reports.

Using contemporary materials, this lecture details Belfast from a market town to the titanic/Titanic city with might in textiles, shipbuilding and other industries. The lecture does not ignore the darkness within the clanging city: health problems of mill workers; back street poverty – a ‘charnel house breaking in upon the gaiety and glitter of a bridal’ was one inelegant description – and ‘intestine broils’, sectarian conflicts that blighted Belfast in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth century.

Venue: PRONI lecture theatre
Time: 1pm on the dates shown.
Cost: Free.
Booking: Advised. Tel: 44 (0)2890 534800 or email.

MacCarthys to Gather in the Valley of Hospitality

Click for details
The MacCarthys of Cork cultural Weekend will take place at Dunmanway, Co Cork, from Friday 31 May until Sunday 2 June. This Gathering has been organised by Dunmanway Historical Association with the support of the School of History, University College Cork. It will be held at the Parkway Hotel in Dunmanway.

According to an ancient manuscript, this part of West Cork is known as the 'Valley of Hospitality', 'environed with a ridge of hills, the most pleasant and romantic nature could intend, for sheltering and watering a spot designed to yield all the pleasures and desirable necessaries of life.'

Sounds like the perfect venue, doesn't it?

The programme for this Gathering begins on the Friday evening with the official online launch of the 'Florence MacCarthy Mor Letter Book' on the CELT website (CELT – the Corpus of ELectronic Texts). The next morning sees a four-lecture programme that's sure to be of interest to MacCarthys, but also to those with an interest in the history, industry and archaeology of this beautiful area of County Cork.

After lunch, there's a coach tour taking in local castles and the birthplace of Sam Maguire, who gave his name to the famous trophy and is one of Dunmanway's most renowned sons, followed by a fun and relaxed evening of dinner with traditional music. The closing ceremony takes place on the Sunday morning.

The Gathering is open to all – whether MacCarthys or not – and the organisers hope many of those with links to the area will join them. Groups from overseas and from Northern Ireland have already confirmed.

For the full programme and further details, including local accommodation options, contact the Dunmanway Historical Association.





Tuesday 9 April 2013

Clare Roots Conference 2013: Review

As I was unable to attend the Clare Roots Conference this year, Dublin-based genealogist Claire Bradley offered to write a report for Irish Genealogy News. This is her review:

The 2nd Clare Roots Conference took place at the Temple Gate Hotel in Ennis over the weekend. The theme was “Gathering the Scattering” and it featured a number of lectures on the theme of migration and population change, along with some more light-hearted topics. The conference was officially opened by the Mayor of Clare, Cllr Pat Daly. Many speakers made an effort to specifically relate their talk to Co. Clare, which was a nice touch.

The keynote speaker was Michael Gandy, editor of the Society of Genealogists' quarterly publication The Genealogists' Magazine. His first topic was The Irish & British in India on Friday evening. His talk began by stressing that the history of the Irish in India was the history of the British in India, as we had been the same country from 1800 to 1922. His talk covered the Crown army and the East India Company, both of which had large proportions of Irish men in their ranks. For me, his most useful point was that almost everyone in India prior to the advent of steamships was there in some official capacity, so it should be relatively easy to trace them.

Those records are mainly in the British Library and either on FamilySearch or available to order on microfilm via your local LDS Family History Centre. Of course, if your ancestor was in the British Army, his records will be at the National Archives in Kew. There are also cemetery records, and he highlighted the Families in British India Society as a good place to start.

On Saturday morning, the conference got off to an early start with an excellent talk from Fiona Fitzsimons of Eneclann on the availability of Records from 1691 to 1800. She mentioned that for most of this time the established Church of Ireland acted almost like a modern County Council and so had records relating to all religions. The Landed Estate Courts are also an important source, she said, because they detail leases for the life of a certain individual and nearly always go back into the 18th century, if not earlier; when used in conjunction with the Registry of Deeds, they can be very useful.

She also talked about the impact of the three successive conquests, starting with the Tudors, of the 120 years leading up to 1691.  In order to avoid subsequent legal dispute, each conquering group set out to destroy the records of the previous administration. As they were primarily concerned with security, land ownership and tenure, and conformity to the penal laws, records of who owned what became important. The Civil Survey of 1656 and the Down Survey of 1656 are particularly relevant here. Trinity College is digitising the former and the National Archives of Ireland has copies of the latter.

The second speaker of the day was Eileen Ó Dúill with a light-hearted but very useful talk on How to Trace American Cousins. She mentioned that we should start looking for clues in family correspondence, photos and memorial cards. The main entry points for the Irish were, of course, New York, Boston and Philadelphia, but Irish emigrants also travelled through Charleston and Baltimore. She pointed us towards the immigration centres of Castle Garden and, from 1892 onwards, Ellis Island. She also highlighted Stephen Morse’s portal website, which has many useful search options.

Eileen is keen on the idea of quid pro quo genealogy and suggested that if you are searching for ancestors in America, it might be worthwhile joining an organisation like TIARA, where you might strike up a friendship with someone who’ll look up records for you in return for your help with Irish records. She also mentioned the usefulness of Ancestry with its many American databases. Eileen’s talk was by far the most entertaining of the day and she also gave a little after-dinner chat about misconceptions, at the end of the gala dinner that evening, which was really funny.

Peter Higginbotham’s talk on the Workhouse in Ireland could have made his lecture rather grim, but it was well worth the listen. He dealt with the history of workhouses on the island from their inception in 1703 to dissolution in 1922 (1948 for NI). They were funded by local ratepayers in each Poor Law Union and run by a Board of Guardians.

There were some fundamental differences between the set-up in Ireland and the one in England. For example, 'hand-outs' were not given to people in Ireland and there was no law of settlement, so our ancestors could move into an area and request help from the local workhouse (in England, the cost of that help would be billed back to your birth area).

I was interested, too, to hear that, in order to maintain secularity, members of the clergy were not allowed to serve on Boards of Guardians, although Sisters of Mercy were later allowed to nurse within the workhouses.

The main architect of workhouses was George Wilkinson. His various designs were based on the inmate population size; they were cheap, durable and without any unnecessary decoration – right down to having no plaster on the walls and no floorboards. In order to keep the workhouse as an unattractive option, the population was separated, both by gender and age. Inevitably, the workhouses became overcrowded during the Famine, and the authorities were allowed to lease extra buildings, which were often unsuitable for purpose.

Many workhouses went into debt trying to assist where they could; these debts were written off in the 1850s. In the following decade, workhouses began to function as hospitals, dealing with out-patients and dispensing medication and vaccinations, of which there are sometimes records. Peter remarked that with these innovations, Ireland had a better system of caring for the poor than that of the neighbouring island! Despite this, conditions were at best awful and the British Medical Journal’s 1896 survey of them makes for uncomfortable reading. Peter’s talk suffered only a tiny bit from some technical difficulties, but he managed it calmly, with aplomb.

After a lunch break, we were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at Dead Money, Steven and Kit Smyrl’s RTE television series about probate genealogy. Unfortunately, Kit wasn’t able to make the conference so Steven handled the talk on his own, beginning with an overview of what happens when a person dies intestate, and the basics of how Massey and King (their company) deals with a case. A good knowledge of inheritance laws, which differ depending on jurisdiction, is essential. Children born outside marriage are treated differently in some cases, for example. Adoption can also prove an unsurmountable brick wall, especially as records in Ireland were often falsified in the past to give both the mother and child ‘a fresh start'. Steven stressed that they do a lot of tracing forward to find the current descendants, something we often ignore in ancestral research.

Putting on his CIGO hat – Steven is Executive Liaison Officer for the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations – he mentioned that the much anticipated early release of the 1926 census may be further delayed due to issues with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the requirement for amendments in legislation.

For many, Catriona Crowe of the National Archives of Ireland will have been the speaker they most wanted to hear, and she did not disappoint. Her task was to tell us what was coming soon and not so soon in terms of digitised records. Much of the actual detail has already been published on Irish Genealogy News (see here) but Catriona let us know that we can expect a rebuild of the census website to go live within a few weeks with most of the submitted corrections done!

She also addressed the 1926 census issue, and agreed that momentum had slowed down. She urged those present to write to Enda Kenny about the matter, as his department is in charge of the CSO.

Catriona outlined the NGI’s partnership with the LDS, who will now digitise all items previously microfilmed by them. She also talked about the National Archives of Ireland's partnership with Eneclann/Find My Past, and what records we will see soon. I was excited to hear that the 1858-1920 wills collection is due soon and several other items will be available by the end of the year. In their longer 5-year plan, school roll books are of particular interest.

Michael Gandy returned as the final speaker. The topic was ostensibly Records for Irish Family Research in the UK, but it was a good half an hour into his talk before he addressed these records. The first 30 minutes were spent illustrating (again) that Ireland had been part of Britain, and repeating how we are all the same people, with only ethnicity separating us. Drawing on the content of some of the previous lectures, he stated that we need to ‘get over our poor Ireland attitude’! He also said that, as a country, we needed to get over the Famine and our survivors’ guilt! Perhaps most surprisingly, he suggested that no one in Ireland emigrated in the 1850/1860s due to poverty, an argument I think most would strongly dispute.

Several delegates got up and left during this portion of his talk.

Those that headed for the door missed out on the genuinely useful information that he eventually decided to impart. The records of the army have been well-documented elsewhere but he stressed again the value of these records, where 33% of the army was usually from Ireland. Parliamentary records, reports on the state of Ireland, Royal Commissions, civil service records (including the Post Office) were all discussed.

I felt he didn’t stress enough that it can be difficult to access many of the House of Commons/House of Lords papers without an academic subscription. One very useful point made was that if you searched by place name, rather than your ancestor’s surname, you would throw up records that would relate to them, even if they weren’t specifically named. Placing your family within the context of what was happening to them at a particular time will bring them to life, he said.

Organiser Gerry Kennedy led the audience in some well-deserved thanks and applause for all the speakers and the organising committee. A smaller group stayed to participate in a gala dinner in the evening, which called time on another very successful Clare Roots conference. They plan to host another in 18 months' time. Watch out for it!

Claire Bradley



Monday 8 April 2013

Mid-April events

Great mix of Irish genealogy and history lectures coming up over the next couple of weeks!

Monday 8 April: Songs of Emigration and Immigration, with Professor John A Murphy. Host: Cork AEC Lunchtime Lecture series. Venue: Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork City. 1pm–2pm. Free.

Thursday 11 April: No Irish Need Apply’: the origins and persistence of a prejudice, with Professor Don MacRaild (Northumbria University). Venue: Tyneside Irish History Club, Gallowgate Lounge, Tyneside Irish Centre. 43 Gallowgate, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4SG. Telephone: 0191 261 0384. 7:30pm–9:30pm. Free.

Thursday 11 April: Marine History of Cork - “Innisfallen", with Frank O'Sullivan. Host: Cork AEC Lunchtime Lecture series. Venue: Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place. Cork City. 1–2pm. Free.

Saturday 13 AprilIrish genealogy seminar with Nick Reddan, Jenny Harkness, Linley Hooper and Beryl O'Gorman. Host: The Irish Ancestry Group of the Genealogical Society of Victoria. Venue: Celtic Club, Queen St, Melbourne. Price: $65.00 includes morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch. Bookings via GSV (03)9662 4455.

Saturday 13 April: Tracing Your Ancestors, a one-day workshop hosted by Hibernia Roots. Venue: Crocanoir, Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary. Contact John by tel: (052) 9153117 or 086 8907329, or email.

Monday 15 April. 101st anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Wreath laying ceremony at the Titanic Memorial in the City Hall grounds, Belfast. 12noon. 

Tuesday 16 April: Billy Pitt Had Them Made – The Martello towers of Dublin, with Rob Goodbody. Also, The history of butter in Ireland, with Liam Downey. Foxrock Local History Club, Foxrock Pastoral Centre (behind church), Dublin 18. 8pm. €4. All welcome.

Wednesday 17 April: The Churches' Response To The Conflict In Northern Ireland, with Maria Power, IWHC, Irish Town Way, Cheetham Hill, Manchester M8 0AE. 7:30pm. £3 Details: 0161 205 4007.

Wednesday 17 April: Emigration – The Derry Story, with Brian Lambkin. Venue: Waterside Libary, The Workhouse, 23 Glendermott Road, Derry. 7pm. Free. Details: 028 7134 2963.

Thursday 18 April: Art and the Public Domain, with Dr Amanda Croft. Part of the Urban Landscape – Civic Pride lecture series. Venue: PRONI. Time 1pm. Free, but booking advised: Tel 44 (0)2890 534800.

Saturday 20 April: Using vestry records for family history research, lecture with Dr Maighréad Ní Mhurchadha. Host: Irish Genealogical Research Society Ireland Branch. AGM (members only) at 2:30pm. Lecture (all welcome) 3:15pm. Free. Venue: Dublin City Library & Archive, Pearse Street, Dublin 2.

Saturday 20 April: Catholic Records in the Workhouse, with Brian Plumb. Host: The North West Region of the CFHS. Venue: St Oswald’s Social Club, Padgate Lane, Warrington, WA1 3LB. 2pm. All welcome. Tel: 0161 903 9567 or email.

Saturday 20 April and Sunday 21 April: Irish Famine Tribunal, examining the British role in the Great Hunger. Fordham University Law School, 142 W. 62nd Street, New York City. Saturday at 10am. Sunday at 11am. Details.

Sunday 21 April: Strumpet City Tour of Glasnevin Cemetery, with Shane MacThomáis and Ger O'Leary. Meet at Museum, 1pm. Booking recommended. Details.

Masons to preserve marks for future genealogists

The Masons Livery Company, one of the oldest of London¹s Livery Companies with records dating back to 1356, is to create a register of masons' marks.

Masons' marks date back at least 2,000 years. Throughout history they have been a practical way for masons to identify which pieces of masonry they have produced. In the past, the marks were used both as a way for masons to ensure they were paid for their work and as a quality control.

While the tradition of masons' marks has become lost to modern, thin cladding, a lot of masons still maintain it, creating their own mark and taking it with them throughout their career. They use the mark on traditional masonry sections they are called upon to produce. It is particularly prevalent in conservation and ecclesiastical workshops.

When old masonry is removed for repair and restoration work, masons' marks cut into the stone perhaps hundreds of years ago are exposed. But there is seldom any way of relating the mark to the mason who created it.

By starting to collect masons' marks with details of the individual using them, the Worshipful Company of Masons, as the livery company is known, intends to make it possible for future generations to identify the mason who carried out earlier work.

It is in the nature of traditional stonemasonry that it tends to survive for centuries and the Masons Company Register of Masons' Marks will build into a useful resource for family historians in the decades and centuries ahead.

It also hoped to formalise the adoption of masonry marks by encouraging colleges to ask their students to create a mark on the successful completion of their studies and then submit that mark to the Masons Company for inclusion on the Register. The mark will then become the individual mason's property, protected by copyright.



Sunday 7 April 2013

April issue of Irish Lives Remembered published

Click to read or download
The April issue of Irish Lives Remembered has been published and is now available to view or download (free).

This month's issue genealogy focus is on County Roscommon. Among the fifteen pages dedicated to family history in this area is an overview of research in the county, a feature about the surnames of the Roscommon, and extensive coverage of the holdings of local archives and repositories.

The Morpeth Roll, now free to view on Ancestry, also receives in-depth consideration, and those with Australian/Tasmanian connections will be interested to read the feature about Tasmanian Police Records. There's also scrutiny by photo historian Jayne Shrimpton of a stylish wedding photograph taken in Kilkenny in 1933 and the first of a three-part series on samplers stitched by Irish schoolgirls.

In addition to tales of personal family history research, adverts for courses and tours taking place in this year of the Gathering, and much more, it's another good read from the Irish Lives Remembered team.

Friday 5 April 2013

Anglican Record Project releases trio of registers

Three more transcriptions and indexes of Church of Ireland registers have been released by the Anglican Record Project, as follows:
  • Templeshanbo, Killane Union, Co. Wexford (Ferns): 118 Marriages 1800–1814
  • Fermoy Garrison Church, Co. Cork (Cloyne): 28 Baptisms 1920–22
  • St Peter’s Church, Kilgarvan, Co Kerry (Ardfert & Aghadoe): 238 Baptisms 1811–50; 98 Marriages 1812–1947, some with notations of details such as occupation, widowed status and/or townland; Burials 1819–50, 1878–1960; and an 1834 list of 156 Protestant inhabitants in Kilgarvan and Killaha parishes.
The transcriptions are downloadable in pdf format here. The Anglican Record Project is an ongoing endeavour to make Church of Ireland baptism, marriage and burial registers available in a digital format. It is run by Mark Williams and hosted by the Representative Church Body Library. Find out more about using church records to trace your Irish Protestant ancestors.

Thursday 4 April 2013

FindMyPast adds US & World newspapers

Find My Past has added nearly 120 million pages to its Newspaper holding with a huge upload of US and World publications.

The new US & World newspaper collection includes titles from across the USA and Canada as well as China, Denmark, France, Germany, Jamaica, Japan, Panama, South Africa and the Virgin Islands. Among the historical newspapers are the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a variety of local papers. More newspapers will join the line-up over time.

See a full list of the US & World newspapers here; select "By Publication" from the left-hand filters.

The collection is included in the World subscription package available through each of FindMyPast's international sites: FindMyPast.com, FindMyPast.ie, FindMyPast.com.au, and FindMyPast.co.uk. (The UK site isn't currently confirming that this collection is included in its World package... I'm sure it will be included within a few days.)

The US & World collection joins about 200 British Newspapers (only England, Scotland and Wales, so far) on FindMyPast's database offering.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

This week's history and genealogy events

Tuesday 2 April: Bygone days on the farm, with Fred Faulkner. Host: Ballinascreen Historical Society. Venue: Rath Dubh hall, Moneyneena, Co LondonDerry. 8:00pm. Details.

Tuesday 2 April: Who Feared to Wear the Red Hand Badge!, Songs & Poems of 1913 Lockout, performed with historical commentary by Francis Devine with guest singers. Part of the 'Dublin: One City, One Book Festival'. Venue: The Council Chamber, City Hall, Dame Street, Dublin 2. Time: 1:10-1:50pm. Admission Free.

Tuesday 2 April: St. Brendan’s Mental Hospital, Grangegorman, 1814 – 2013, its history and archives, with Brian Donnelly. Host: Irish Society for Archives. Venue: Dublin City Library & Archive 138-144, Pearse Street, Dublin 2. Wine Reception at 6pm. All welcome. Free. Lecture at 6:30pm.

Wednesday 3 April to Friday 5 April: Clare Roots Conference fringe events, Ennis. Some need to be booked. Details.

Thursday 4 April: The West Kerry Experience during the First World War, with Thomas F. Martin. Dingle Library, Sráid an Dóirín, Dingle, Co Kerry. 7.30pm. Free.

Friday 5 April: Family History for Beginners Online. Castlewellan Library, 3 Upper Square, Castlewellan, Co Down. 11:00am–12:30pm. Free but booking essential. Tel: 028 4377 8433.

Friday 5 April to Saturday 6 April: Clare Roots Conference, Official opening and lecture on the Friday evening; Saturday day-seminar followed by optional Gala Dinner. Temple Gate Hotel, Ennis, Co Clare. Costs, full programme of lectures and bookings here.

Saturday 6 April and Sunday 7 April: Walls 400 – History conference. A line up of experts will be discussing Derry's Walls in a bid to shake up perceptions of this national monument. Talks and workshops. Venue: Verbal Arts Centre by Bishop's Gate, Derry.

Monday 1 April 2013

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives: Recent additions

Click for larger view of watch inscription
Below are details of the most recent additions to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives. Each has been uploaded to the Archives in the second half of March.

Among the updates is a rather marvellous photo of a watch presented to Constable William Kearney in 1864 by Ballymena citizens to mark his departure from the County Antrim town. He joined the constabulary in 1845 and served in many counties of Ireland, both north and south. Click the photo to the right for a better view.

ANTRIM Genealogy Archives
Photos – Constable William Kearney's watch, 1864

CLARE Genealogy Archives
Military & Constabulary – Irish Constables who joined in 1857

CORK Genealogy Archives
Military & Constabulary – Irish Constables who joined in 1857
Cemetery – Kilgullane Churchyard Memorials

DONEGAL Genealogy Archives
Military & Constabulary – Irish Constables who joined in 1857

DOWN Genealogy Archives
Military & Constabulary – Irish Constables who joined in 1857

DUBLIN Genealogy Archives
Military – Irish Constables who joined in 1857
Headstones – Glasnevin Cemetery, part 13
Cemetery – Crumlin, St. Mary's Churchyard Memorials - STRANGE

FERMANAGH Genealogy Archives
Military Records – Irish Constables who joined in 1857
Headstones – Aghadrumsee, St. Mark's Parish, (CoI) and Aghalurcher Cemetery Pts. 1 & 2

GALWAY Genealogy Archives
Military & Constabulary – Irish Constables who joined in 1857