Any connections to WW2 Nurses from Ireland? New resource online

In partnership with the Royal College of Nursing NI, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has today launched a ground-breaking Biographical Dictionary of Nurses from Ireland, which describes the lives of those nurses who served on the home front and in various theatres of war around the globe during WW2.

       Click to view online or download

The 325-page online publication full name The Biographical Dictionary of Nurses from Ireland in Service on the Home Front and on Allied Battle Fronts during the Second World War, 1939-1945, is edited by Seán Graffin and provides a comprehensive (but incomplete*) list of those nurses born on the island of Ireland who served. It is available via PRONI's website and is free to view online or to download.

It is well-illustrated and laid out, with a handy Timeline of the war itself and a good listing or Primary Sources, newspapers & journals, websites and a bibliography. There is also a listing of abbreviations used in the nursing profession.

The partnership project began in 2020 following the commemorations to mark the 75th anniversaries of Victory in Europe (VE) Day and Victory in Japan (VJ) Day, in order to identify those who had served in that war.

As names were gathered, it became evident that many nurses, mostly women, from across Ireland applied to train in British hospitals and when qualified applied to enlist to support the war effort.

* Research is continuing.

Fifteen Dublin City databases taken offline for redevelopment

The popular databases.dublincity.ie site which hosted fifteen free-to-access collections (see list below) was taken offline on 4 March 2024. According to a subsequent tweet, this action was taken by Dublin City Council, which manages the site, as "a precautionary measure due to cyber security concerns". I assumed this was a newly identified technical issue that would be quickly corrected. And then I forgot about it. Apologies.

Unfortunately, it looks as though there is no speedy fix in sight.

The reason the material was removed is that the site needs to be redeveloped to meet the EU's Web Accessibility Directive of 2016.

Web accessibility allows everyone, including people with disabilities, to perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Internet. So what was that about the cyber security concerns?

DCL&A, Pearse Street, Dublin 2

In an undated statement released on the Council's online news pages, the organisation apologises for the inconvenience and adds: "Until such a time as the site can be redeveloped in accordance with the EU’s Web accessibility Directive, material previously accessed online must be accessed instead via the Dublin City Library & Archive (DCLA) Reading Room, 139-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2. Where possible, we will add links to digital catalogues and listings as soon as possible. Please contact cityarchives@dublincity.ie to make an appointment to view materials."

The phrase "Until such a time as the site can be redeveloped" sounds ominous, doesn't it?

But so does the increasingly frequently heard 'make an appointment'. Isn't it quite the fashion statement since Covid. Previously open throughout normal office working hours, the DCLA Reading Room is another of those repositories to have switched to appointment-only access. Appointments have to be booked in advance and are usually available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Here's the full list of databases affected:

~ Ancient freemen of Dublin (1461 to 1491, and 1564 to 1774)
~ Cemetery Burial Registers (Clontarf, Drimnagh, and Finglas)
~ Community Memory
~ Dublin City Electoral Lists 1908 to 1915
~ Dublin Directory 1647-1708
~ Dublin Guild Merchant Roll
~ Dublin Graveyards Directory
~ Medieval Manuscripts of Dublin
~ Parish Registers
~ The Dublin Fire Brigade Ambulance Log book, Easter 1916
~ The John V O'Connor Papers, 1692-2015
~ The Index to Dublin City Council Minutes 1881-1987
~ The Monica Roberts Collection

Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors, 1600-1800 - special saving

Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors: The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600–1800 is on special offer until the end of this month.

Written by the highly regarded Dr William Roulston and published by the Ulster Historical Foundation, the 640-page paperback is an essential reference book for any genealogist or historian looking for reliable guidance to sources of material from this period.

This is a second edition of the book. It includes a lot of additional material on church records and landed estate papers, as well as new chapters looking at records relating to law and order, emigration, business and occupations, diaries and journals, and clubs and societies.

Among the appendices is a parish-by-parish breakdown of the sources available in the nine counties of Ulster, a listing of surviving pre-1800 church records); a detailed description of around 350 collections of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century landed estate papers; and a listing of more than 500 towns and villages in Ulster with parish locations.

PLEASE NOTE: This book is sold in the UK and Ireland as Researching Ulster Ancestors but is identical in content to the book, Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors. Customers are welcome to purchase either version.

The book is reduced from £19.99 to £12.99.

ISBN 9781909556652

NAI technical issue: Calendars of wills 1858-1982 currently offline

If you're needing to download any of the National Archives of Ireland's Calendars of grants of probate of wills and letters of administration from 1858 to 1982 (held in CS/HC/PO/4), you're out of luck. This won't be a surprise to some researchers. The online links to download pdf copies of the annual calendars, previously available via the the online catalogue, are out of action.

I don't know how long this has been the case. While an NAI member of staff told me this problem has been ongoing for 'a while', he wasn't able to confirm how long 'a while' meant. However, he was able to tell me that the technical team is aware of the problem and will fix it as soon as is possible.

Up to 1917, the calendars in this collection cover the whole of the island of Ireland. From 1918 onwards they cover only the 26 historical counties in the Republic. Those indexes covering the six counties of Northern Ireland since 1918 are in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and are not affected by this NAI techie issue. You can search and view here.

Two new WW1 record sets join Ancestry's Ireland collection

Ancestry has added two World War 1 record collections today that will be of interest to Irish family historians. They are as folllows:

United Kingdom, Red Cross Volunteers During WWI, 1914-1918. The index cards making up this collection provide details of more tha 8,200 people who were born in Ireland and/or resident on the island during WW1 and who volunteered to help the Red Cross in a variety of roles.

Click for enlarged view

They could well bring a smile to their researcher descendents. I mean... who wouldn't want to know that their ancestor had committed two hours of unpaid work a week to the cause and had, over more than two years, created 24 D shirts, 9 vests and 15 pairs of men's D socks (click the image right for enlarged image of Miss Christina Mooney's records), or that they were dedicated to moss picking (it had many medicinal uses), nursing, cleaning and kitchen duties in veteran hospitals and rehabilitation centres, making and mending hospital supplies such as bandages, pyjamas, sheets and uniforms, and so on.

The majority of the volunteers recorded were women and while some were paid, most were not. Commendations, badges, mentions in despatches are noted, and some of the cards give praise for the quality of the individuals produced.

The collection holds a total of 244,156 records covering England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland, World War I Memorial Records, 1914-1918 This collection contains images of the forms (or Memorial Registers) issued after WW1 and completed by the deceased soldiers' families to confirm their name and rank. These details were required for an impressive new memorial, erected in 1927 at The Diamond within Derry City's walls, to commemorate local soldiers who fought and died in the conflict.

There are 1,033 individuals recorded. Details provided on the forms typically include the serviceman's name, birthplace and date of death; his rank; the company or ship he served with; his regiment and regimental numberm abd whether or not he received any military honours.

The original material is held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and has been digitised in pdf format for free download.

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More RC baptisms join RootsIreland's Co. Kerry database

The RootsIreland database has been updated with the addition of 16,762 baptismal records for the Roman Catholic parish of Ballyferriter in County Kerry.

They date from 1807 to 1899, with a gap in the first year.

These join the existing marriage records for the parish, which date from 1808 to 1895.

With this latest update, there are now more than 457,000 baptism and marriage records from 35 RC parishes across Kerry (see the menu of online sources here). Or click the logo above to login, subscribe or find out more about this important database.

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: closures next week

As previously reported, construction work has closed the Reading Room of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast since early March.

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Next week, on Monday 22 April and Tuesday 23 April, the Reading Room will be unavailable until 1pm in order to facilitate the last stages of the building works.

There will be no document production while it is closed. However, the PRONI Search Room and self-service church microfilms will be fully accessible.

Normal working arrangements 'should' be resuming from Wednesday next week.

Let's hear it from the girls! New project to release women's voices

A ground-breaking research project, launched yesterday by Trinity College Dublin's School of Histories and Humanities, aims to discover how our female ancestors – so often overlooked in history – experienced and responded to social upheaval and extreme violence in early modern Ireland.

New digital technologies, including AI and ChatGPT, will help release previously forgotten or 'lost' stories from within the vast repositories of historical documents and manuscripts now being made available digitally by institutions in Ireland and around the world.

VOICES: Life and Death, War and Peace, c.1550-c.1700: Voices of Women in Early Modern Ireland is a €2.5 million five-year European Research Council project and is led by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer.

Among its aims, the project will:

• Uncover the roles women played in Ireland at a time of profound economic, political, and cultural transformation.
• Document women’s experiences of social upheaval, bloody civil war and extreme trauma, especially sexual violence.
• Harness the immense power of AI and knowledge graph technology to represent and give voice to these women.

For more information, see TCD's press release or explore the new dedicated project website at voicesproject.ie.

Two-weeks of English, Scottish & Welsh genealogy record releases

Please find below a two-week summary of newly-released and updated family history collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major genealogy databases. (For the previous list, see 27 March blogpost.)

These regular listings are designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

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

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

NEW COLLECTIONS

Figures in parentheses are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in each new collection.

Ancestry

• UK, Historical Photographs and Prints, 1704-1989
• Blacksmiths and Related Trades Index, 1720-1940 (9,955)
• Battle of Jutland Crew Lists, 1916 (61,495)
• London, England, Stanfords London Maps, 1890 (341)

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

• Lincoln Leader & County Advertiser |  Piercy's Coventry Gazette |  Coventry Graphic |  Foleshill & Bedworth Express |  Matlock Mercury |  Gainsborough Evening News |  Bedworth Times  |  Sleaford Standard |  Daventry & District Weekly Express

FindMyPast

• Warwickshire, Coventry, Vehicle Registrations 1921-1944 (143,824)
• Warwickshire, Coventry, Company Directories and Publications 1908-1966 (22,243 pages)
• Coventry Bomb Damage 1940-41 & Coventry Blitz, German Air Raids 1940-41 (74,615)
• Coventry Workhouse Admission and Discharge Registers, 1853-1946 (70,437)

MyHeritage

• England, Lancashire, Manchester Parish Baptisms, 1571-1907 (2,397,318)
• England, Lancashire, Manchester Parish Marriages, 1570-1940 (1,607,084)
• England, Lancashire, Manchester Parish Burials, 1603-1910 (632,593)
• England, Cornwall Parish Births and Baptisms (968,495)
• England, Cornwall Parish Burials (376,294)
• England, Cornwall Parish Marriages, 1569-1938 (377,612)
• England, Cheshire School Registers, 1796-1909 (722,357)

UPDATED COLLECTIONS

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

Ancestry

• UK & Ireland, Newspapers.com Marriage Index, 1800s-current (41,275 / 8,967,629)
• UK and Ireland, Obituary Index, 2004-Current ( 28,217 / 6,984,995)
• Hampshire, England, Wills and Probates, 1398-1858

FamilySearch

• England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 (45,160,818)
• England Deaths and Burials, 1538-1991 (14,487,850)
• England Marriages, 1538–1973 (11,671,259)

FindMyPast

• Greater Manchester Rate Books, 1820–1940 (384,785 / 14,336,653)
• Greater Manchester Electoral Registers 1820-1940 (1.2 million / 26,351,205)
• Warwickshire Burials 1847-1896 (37,963 from London Rd Cem, Coventry / 2.23 million)

FreeBMD

• Civil birth, marriage, death registrations from 1837 (254,697 / 293,890,022 unique entries)

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Save 25% on Ancestry DNA test kits this weekend (UK only)

Until 11:59pm (GMT+1) on Sunday 14 April, Ancestry UK is offering 25% savings on the company's DNA test kits. The discounts are via Ancestry UK only.

If the link doesn't work for you,
log out of your Ancestry account and try again.

Ancestry DNA is the world's best selling consumer DNA test. With more than 25million people in its DNA database, it is – by some distance – the most useful dna test for genealogists looking to expand their research. That's my opinion, based on my own experience having also tested with MyHeritageDNA, LivingDNA, and FamilyTreeDNA, and from talking to other family historians.

Click the image, left, to take advantage of this offer, which reduces the cost from £79 to £59 plus shipping.

Be sure to check through the terms and conditions before placing your order.

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means Irish Genealogy News may earn a small commission if you buy via these links. This does not affect the price you pay as a consumer, but it does make a contribution to the costs of keeping the blog online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.