Tuesday 16 April 2024

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.

Monday 15 April 2024

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.


Friday 12 April 2024

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AI and ChatGPT, will help release previously forgotten or 'lost' stories from within the vast repositories of historical documents and manuscripts now being made available digitally by institutions in Ireland and around the world.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

Thursday 11 April 2024

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

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

FindMyPast

MyHeritage

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

FamilySearch

FindMyPast

FreeBMD

Some of the above content contains affiliate links. This means I 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 contribute to keeping Irish Genealogy News online. See Advertising Disclosure tab above.

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.

Tuesday 9 April 2024

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


Monday 8 April 2024

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.

Friday 5 April 2024

Ancestry adds First Edition map of Ireland, 1856 to 1862

Ancestry has a First Edition map of Ireland dating from 1856-1862. It's digitised at a seriously high definition so it's wonderfully clear to view, and as a result, I've lost most of today moving my mouse around the south west Cork area (my father's childhood home) and gawping at some of the land features I've not spotted in previous online and hard copy maps. Ah, my best kind of Friday!

Even if you're not quite the map-head that I have to confess to being, do take a look at this map. It's easy to move around and zoom in to the individual pages of the maps once they've downloaded, and the index to places on the search page is (for Cork and Waterford, at least) excellent, allowing you to land on the correct map page. From there you can zoom in and use your mouse to locate the places of interest at some speed.

(If, instead, you try to boogie with your mouse around the island without using the index, you won't have as much fun. This mode is slow to shift from page to page (from west to east and vice versa) and I never did find the means to 'travel' north to south or south to north.)

Wednesday 3 April 2024

National Library of Ireland: Saturday openings in April

The National Library of Ireland's Main, Microfilm and Manuscripts Reading Rooms, plus the Readers' Ticket Office will be open on the following Saturdays during the month ahead:

– 13 April
– 27 April

These areas of the library are all housed in Dublin's Kildare Street. Saturday opening is from 9:30am to 1pm.

Please note that the Family History Room is not open to the public on Saturdays.

For detailed opening hours, see the NLI website.

Tuesday 2 April 2024

New at Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives - March summary

Below is a summary of the newly added material to Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives (IGPArchive). As always, the files join a significant and free database of genealogy records and photos, all donated by researchers in the hope they might help other family historians. If you have any transcriptions of records or have taken headstone photos while exploring a graveyard, please consider sharing them with the IGPArchive. You'll find details here.

Monument plaque at St Mary's Graveyard,
Grangemockler, County Tipperary, to members of the
Coughlan family of Ballaugh. Photo courtesy
of Joanne Jacobsen Davin and Ireland Genealogy
Projects Archive. Click image for enlarged image.

CARLOW Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Rathoe Cemetery, Tullow

CAVAN Genealogy Archives - Miscellaneous
St Anne's RC Bailieborough
St Mary's RC Shercock

CLARE Genealogy Archives - Miscellaneous
Larkins Pub Ledger

DONEGAL Genealogy Archives - Civil Marriages
Ballyshannon Registry Office, Marriages 1845-1920

KERRY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Springmount Graveyard, Duagh

KILDARE Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Confey Graveyard Pt 12, Leixlip

TIPPERARY Genealogy Archives - Headstones
St Mary's Graveyard Pt 1 & 2, Grangemockler

TYRONE Genealogy Archives - Church Records
Droit, Lr Bodoney, Presbyterian Marriages, 1845-1921
1st Ardstraw Presbyterian Marriages, 1845-1921

WEXFORD Genealogy Archives - Headstones
Ballymore Old Graveyard