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.

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Special offers on a selection of books from Four Courts Press

Dublin-based Four Courts Press, one of Ireland's top academic publishers, has special offers on fifteen of its titles. As you'd expect from this independent and history-focussed publisher, some of the discounts have been applied to books likely to be of interest to genealogists. You can view them here. I don't know how long the reduced prices will hold.

On special offer for just €9.95 – a bargain!

I'm going to pick out one particular title that I consider to be essential for any family historian, professional or not, who may have a space (or can create one) on their reference shelves.

It's Jim Herlihy's The Irish Revenue Police: A short history and genealogical guide to the 'Poteen Hussars', which I bought when it was launched back in 2018.

Its 260 pages have created a compact and well-researched guide to the IRP from the 1830s, through The Famine, and on to 1857 when it was disbanded. In addition to providing its history, purpose and development (the force was formed to work with Customs and Excise to prohibit illegal distillation), the book explains how to find information on individual officers and highlights several relatively unfamiliar collections and resources.

It also includes a good number of illustrations and rounds out with nothing less than a complete list of every officer who served in the IRP's ranks.

Catalogue Price: €24.95      ISBN: 978-1-84682-702-0

NLI to host 8-week online Irish genealogy beginners' course

The National Library of Ireland will be running an eight-week Beginners Genealogy Research course starting this Wednesday, 10 April.

The course is aimed at researchers who are new to Irish family history and to those who have a little experience but feel they need an in-depth foundation to progress their research.

Professional genealogist and historian Sean Murphy MA will once again be the tutor for this course and all classes will be held on Zoom on Wednesdays from 2pm–4:15pm, Dublin time (9am–11:15am EDT in USA & Canada).

The course fee is €100.

Places are limited in number and there are only a couple of them still available as of this morning, so if you feel this may be the right course for you, contact Brid O'Sullivan at bosullivan@nli.ie as soon as possible for more details and to book.