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Rolling news for Irish family historians

Irish Genealogy News: December 2024

A new collection - Delivering the Mail: How the Post Office Worked - has joined The Digital Repository of Ireland. It is a small collection of just over 50 images that capture some of the developments in the service over the past 120 years. If you have ancestors who worked for the Post Office, it may be of interest. It's free to access here.

The Ulster Historical Foundation has published The Townland Atlas of Ulster by Andrew Kane, an essential reference guide aimed at both newcomer and serious researchers exploring their family's ancestry in the province of Ulster. Its 510 pages include copious maps and shows precise locations and where to look for related records. This material has never previously been published for the entire nine-county province.

By using the maps and index, family and local historians can easily grasp the essentials of their ancestors’ lives – where they worked, paid their rent, went to church and market, etc.

Hardcover book weighs 3,000g/6.6lb. ISBN 978191399369. List Price £64.99.

Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives added the following material in November to its free database, all of it gathered and uploaded by volunteers for the benefit of other researchers:

CAVAN - Headstones at St. Matthew's New Cemetery, Drumvaddy

DONEGAL - Church Records

• 2nd Donegal Presbyterian (Killymard) Marriages, 1845-1921
• Donegal Town Methodist Marriages, 1864-1922
• Inver CoI Marriages, 1845-1921
• Kilaghtee Methodist Marriages 1863-1921
• Mountcharles Marriages, 1845-1921
• Raneany West Presbyterian Marriages, 1845-1897
• Rossnowlagh (Drumholm) CoI Marriages, 1845-1921

KERRY - Headstones at St Mary's, Tarbert (partial coverage)

LIMERICK - Headstones at Templeathea Part 2, Athea (Completed)

WEXFORD - Headstones at Ballyoughter RC (aka Sacred Heart Graveyard).

The Registry of Deeds Index Project is managed by volunteers and free to access online. Following this month's update the total number of names in the project database stands at 611,365, extracted from 62,964 memorials of deeds. Find out more (and maybe consider joining the volunteer team) on the Project's facebook page or website.

Preservation Week at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland will run from Monday 2 December to Friday 6 December inclusive. Original records will not be accessible during Preservation Week, and the Reading Room will be closed to the public. The Search Room will remain open to the public during this week, including access to self-service church microfilms.

The National Archives of Ireland will be closed to the public for its annual media preview from Monday 2nd to Friday 5th December inclusive. Normal access to the Reading Room will return on Monday 8th December.

Irish Genealogy News: November 2024

General Register Office Research Room in Dublin has suspended its walk-in service until further notice. An email service for search requests and digital copies of register entries is available from GROresearchroom@welfare.ie. Details. 

PRONI: This year's final late opening at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland will be on Thursday 28 November. Late Opening is from 5pm to 8pm. Late opening dates for 2025 will be announced in due course.

RootsIreland.ie is offering a 25% discount on annual subscriptions to new and existing customers. See details on Toolkit's Special Offers page.

Ancestry has added some 58,000 records dating from 1824 to 1989 from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The collection may be useful for researchers from Ireland and the UK whose ancestors may have had maritime connections.

The BritishNewspaperArchive.co.uk has advised that it is taking a pause in adding new newspaper content to its database. This is due to key maintenance work - the installation of new storage servers, the replacement of old ones, and improvements to the site's Optical Character Recognition tools. The weekly addition of new pages and titles will return as soon as possible.

FindMyPast has added records to three of its existing British Military collections:   

• Prisoners of War 1715-1945 (200,000+)
• British Armed Forces, First World War Soldiers' Medical Records (20,460)
• British Women's Royal Navy Ratings' Service Registers, 1918-19 (6,000)

TheGenealogist has released a new British Military Collection, featuring half a million records dating from the mid-16th to mid-20th centuries. These could be useful to Irish genealogists as the British Army (in particular) provided occupation, travel and adventure to huge numbers of men from Ireland over these periods.

Book Launch. The changing face of Offaly towns in the early 1900s: An illustrated history is edited by Michael Byrne with contributions from a number of highly regarded Irish historians. It is the first book to provide a photographic record of the towns and villages in County Offaly (formerly King’s County) in a time of tremendous political, social and economic change. The 368-page hardback can be purchased from Offaly History Centre, Tullamore or online from offalyhistory.com. ISBN 978-1-909822-38-2, €27.99.

The Ulster Historical Foundation has introduced a new online genealogy course aimed at researchers exploring their Irish and Scots-Irish roots. It starts on Sunday 17 November and consists of 21 recorded lectures (28+ hours of content) with downloadable handouts, an interactive digital workshop, three live Q&A sessions and a virtual consultation with one of the UHF's professional genealogists. Details. 

Book Launch: Land reform and legislation in Ireland, 1800-2024, by Terence Dooley, Tony McCarthy & Annie Tindley. Published by Four Courts Press, this 356-page illustrated hardback explores the complex emotional and political story of land reform in Ireland over the past three centuries.

Ancestry DNA test kits for USA-based researchers are at their cheapest so far this year until 27 November. See the Special Offers page on this website.

Irish Genealogy News: October 2024

Updates to the free Ireland Genealogy Projects Archives website during the month include the following additions: Headstones in St.Mary's Cemetery, Bruskey, Co Cavan; Ahavoher Burial Ground, Co. Kerry; Templeathea, Athea, Co Limerick; St. Peters Graveyard, Kilscoran, Co Wexford; and, from Clonleigh in Co. Donegal, Presbyterian Marriage records, 1845-1921 from Ballindrait, and Church of Ireland Marriage records 1845-1920 from Lifford. 

Another teeny weeny collection to join Ancestry this week - Ireland, Women’s Army Auxiliary WWI, 1916-1920 - holds documents relating to 150 Irish women who served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, detailing their names, birth dates, occupations, and contributions during World War I. The servicewomen recorded are primarily from Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, LondonDerry, and Tyrone.

The Military Archives in Dublin has launched this year's second instalment of records from the Military Service Pensions Collection 1916-1923. You'll find a list of of the individuals whose files have been released here and can explore the release in more details at MilitaryArchives.ie.

RootsIreland.ie has uploaded more than 17 thousand records to its County Clare holding. These include nearly 15,000 RC baptism, marriage and death records, just under 1,500 civil birth entries from the Killaloe registration district dating from 1893 to 1925, and a chunk of gravestone inscriptions from six burial grounds. Full details.

Newly added to Ancestry is a tiny but potentially useful collection: Ireland, Paupers in Workhouses Who Were Born in England, Wales or Scotland in 1863.

FindMyPast is offering free access to its entire newspaper collection from 24th to 28th October. Details and links. Expired.

The Registry of Deeds Index Project has updated its database. It now offers some 605,250 index records from 62,392 memorials of deeds. All are freely searchable at http://irishdeedsindex.net/search/index.php. Nearly 19% of these records have direct links to the images held on FamilySearch.

Teaghlach Gaelach: A Celebration of Irish Family History - a Virtual Annual Conference will take place online on the weekend of 26-27 October 2024. Hosted by the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa, it will deliver presentations from six top-notch genealogists, all specialists in Irish genealogy. Details at https://www.bifhsgo.ca/2024-conference.

Ancestry has added a new browse-only collection from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland: Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Freemen Records, 1673-1945.

The National Library of Ireland is to hold another Advanced Sources in Genealogy Course this autumn.  The course will be presented by Sean Murphy MA on Wednesdays from 23 October to 11 December (2.15-4pm Dublin Time). Places are limited. Details.

Tipperary Studies has continued its digitisation of out-of-print editions of the Tipperary Historical Journal. The editions published in  2009, 2010 and 2020 have been added to the free to view online collection. Select by volume or by list of article titles at buff.ly/4aOAghm (scroll to bottom of the landing page for links).

Ancestry US: 50% discounts are up for grabs. Half price offers are available on a number of Ancestry products including DNA test kits, 6-month memberships to the main databases, subscriptions to Newspapers.com and Fold3, and to Ancestry PRO tools. These are all offered through the .com site, not the UK/Ireland site. Researchers in the USA can fill their boots. Researchers outside the USA can lap-up the discounts on digital goods but not on DNA test kits. Offer expired.

RootsIreland.ie: Notice of downtime. Scheduled maintenance is taking place on Monday 7 October from 7pm to 11:59pm (Irish time). The database may be unavailable for much of this time.