Thursday 28 March 2024

Save 30% on 3- and 12-month subscriptions to FindMyPast UK

FindMyPast UK is offering eggcellent (ho ho) Easter savings to researchers taking out 3-month or 12-month subscriptions to the Plus, Pro or Premium packages.

The discount offer is valid from today until 9:59am (IST/BST) on Monday 1 April.

As far as I'm aware, this discount will be available only via the UK site.

To take advantage of this generous price reduction, click the image, right. On the landing page you'll see the discount has already been applied, and you'll be able to compare the different packages.


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Easter closures of archives and libraries across Ireland

It's a long weekend across the island but with different closure patterns on either side of the border. Here are the main arrangements for the main repositories:

Northern Ireland
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and all libraries will be open on Friday 29 March and closed on Easter Monday and Tuesday, 1 and 2 April.

Republic of Ireland
The National Archives of Ireland and all public county and branch libraries will be closed from Good Friday 29 March until Monday 1 April inclusive, returning to normal hours on Tuesday 2 April. While the Reading Rooms at the National Library of Ireland will also be closed over the same period, the NLI's Exhibitions (Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and People & Places) have bespoke arrangements, which you can check here.

Wednesday 27 March 2024

Recent releases & updates for English, Scottish & Welsh genealogy

Below is a two-week summary of newly-released and updated genealogy collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major family history database providers. (For previous list, see 12 March blogpost.)

My regular summary of releases and updates relating to British collections is designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales.

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

The figures in parentheses in the New Collections section are the numbers of records (or images, if browse-only) in the new record set.

Unless otherwise stated, the figures in parentheses in the Updated Collections section reflect the number of records added to the collection in the recent update. In some instances, the supplier has not made this figure 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.

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


NEW COLLECTIONS


Ancestry

BritishNewspaperArchive and FindMyPast

FindMyPast

MyHeritage

UPDATED COLLECTIONS


Ancestry

FamilySearch

FindMyPast

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.

Tuesday 26 March 2024

Free booklet published exploring the Great Famine in Co. Donegal

An illustrated booklet that explores the Famine in County Donegal has been published as a free flip-book on ISSUU.

Donegal County Council hosted Ireland's National Famine Commemmoration in Milford last year and marked the event by commissioning Historian in Residence Dr C. Hilary Mc Laughlin-Stonham to research and write about this period in Donegal's history using surviving workhouse records (and other collections) held by the County Archives and other institutions.

The booklet, which has been widely distributed in paper format to schools, libraries, colleges and heritage centres across Donegal and beyond, is entitled The Consequences will be fearful: The Great Famine in County Donegal. It presents four essays, as follows:

  • The impact of the Great Famine on County Donegal
  • Life and Death in Letterkenny during the Great Famine
  • Inishowen Workhouse in a time of crisis
  • Emigration: Farewells and Beginnings

An excellent list of reference material and digital sources is also provided.

I'm sure any family historian with Donegal ancestors who lived through the mid-1800s would find this publication very informative and helpful to their own research. Click the cover image to start reading.

Society of Genealogists' online Irish genealogy course starts 2 April

The Society of Genealogists (SoG) is to host an 8-week online Irish family history course starting next week.

Jill Williams FIGRS

Jill Williams, a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society, will present this new practical course which requires no previous experience with Irish records and will focus on collections available online.

The course will highlight the differences between Irish records and those from English and Welsh sources, and will use two families – one Catholic from county Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, the other Protestant from Ulster in the north of the island – as case studies.

Each online presentation will be followed by an optional short exercise for delegates to undertake at home and a handout covering key websites mentioned in the session.

Video recordings of each weekly class (excluding Q&A elements), will be made available the day after the session and for one month after the course ends.

The course will be held on zoom from 18:30hrs* to 20:30hrs* on Tuesdays, from 2 April to 21 May.

For further details and to book your place on this course, see the SoG website.

If you're not sure if this course is for you, why not consider taking the first session as a taster? Find out more about this option here.

* UK & Irish Summer time

Monday 25 March 2024

Deansgrange and Shananagh burial registers return online

Regular readers of Irish Genealogy News will recall that images of burial registers for Dublin's Deansgrange and Shananagh cemeteries disappeared from view on the EverAfter/PlotBox website towards the tail end of last year. (See my belated blogpost.)

I'm happy to report that the burial registers have been safely returned to the public pages. This means that headstone photos, transcribed inscriptions, cemetery maps and digisted burial registers can once again be viewed on the free to access website here.

Register entries usually include the deceased's name, age, religion, address of last residence and, for most men, profession or occupation, plus date of death, date of burial, a precise location of the grave or plot, fees paid, and the name of the funeral director. The example below is from 1948.

For enlarged view, click image

Saturday 16 March 2024

TheGenealogist uploads more than 3million Irish records

Also getting in on St Patrick's Day celebrations is TheGenealogist database. Principally known for its extensive collections covering England and Wales, TheGenealogist has extended its Irish and, to a lesser extent, Scottish coverage recently.

This week's releases aee more than three million records join the database. They fall into two categories: parish registers and probate, as follows:

Irish Catholic Parish Records: Some 1,769,007 individuals have been indexed from the Baptism and Marriage registers for more than 80 County Tipperary parishes. Additionally, Baptism and Marriage registers in four County Carlow parishes have made their way into the county's existing collection. This means the database now has significant collection of parish registers for Counties Carlow, Kildare, Laois, Tipperary and Wexford. You can see the list of available parishes, and the dates of the registers, on this page.

Irish Wills: Six probate collections have been released, making available a further 1,263,399 records. They are listed below:

  • Dublin Will and Grant Books 1272-1858
  • Calendar of Wills and Administrations 1858-1922
  • Irish Will Indexes 1484-1858
  • Prerogative and Diocesan Copies of Wills and Indexes 1596-1858
  • Will Registers 1858-1900
  • Soldiers’ Wills 1914-1918

If you're interested to see what TheGenealogist offers Irish genealogists, you might like to take up the offer of a free trial. Click the logo above to find out more.

FindMyPast Ireland adds three record-sets and three directories

This year's St Patrick's Day delivery from FindMyPast.ie comprises three new 18th-century record sets and a significant expansion of the existing Directories collection. These additions to the Irish database tot up to fewer than 8,000 short of a cool one million records.

18th century census substitutes

The originals of this trio of record sets were lost in the 1922 fire at the Public Record Office of Ireland. Fortunately for Irish family historians, antiquarian and professional genealogist Tenison Groves had spent the previous twenty-odd years transcribing many of the documents that went up in flames. The transcriptions are held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, and have been digitised by other suppliers. Their arrival in the FindMyPast collection will help many researchers. In chronological order, the record sets are:

Ireland, Census of Protestant Householders 1740: The 15,957 individuals recorded in this listing are arranged by their parish and county. Geographical coverage includes the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone and in some instances include the townland of residence. The purpose of the 'census' is not certain, but may have been connected with the Hearth Tax. See PRONI's article, here, for further background.

Ireland, 1766 Religious Census: These 20,505 transcriptions include returns from the six counties now in Northern Ireland and fifteen counties in the Republic of Ireland, and are arranged by parish. Geographical coverage is far from complete and the information collected is far from consistent; in some parishes, only a headcount was taken of each commuinity, while in others the names of the heads of household were noted. See PRONI's article, here, for further background.

Ireland, 1775 Dissenters' Petition: Presbyterian congregations across Ireland petitioned the Dublin parliament to repeal laws that restricted political, civic and professional postitions/occupations to communicant members of the Established Church of Ireland. Some members of the Established Church were also signatories. The petitions consist of dissenters' names categorized by parish, congregation, town, neighbourhood, or, in one case, barony. This small collection of 4,683 records includes parishes in Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Donegal, Down and Tyrone. For more details, see PRONI's article here.

Belfast & Ulster Directories

FindMyPast's existing collection of Belfast and Ulster Directories has been extended with the addition of three more titles and more than 951,000 names. It means that this collection now consists of 58 Belfast and/or Ulster directory titles spanning 1831 to 1900 and offer a total of 2,874,586 indexed name entries. (View the full list of titles here.) Both transcriptions and original page images can be explored to locate your ancestors by name, residence, occupation, and year.

Sample entries from the 1865 edition of The Belfast And Province Of Ulster Directory


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.

Friday 15 March 2024

Free access to MyHeritage's Irish Collection until Monday

For St Patrick's Day, MyHeritage has opened up its entire Irish collection of nearly 14 million records.

These are held in 104 record sets including censuses, census substitutes, births and marriages, wills and a good spread of publications and directories. It's a collection thiat is growing but in my opinion it is still quite a way from being a go-to database for Irish researchers.

However, for any family historians making their first foray into Irish records, it might be worth a free weekend dip.

You can find brief details and links to each of the record sets in the Ireland catalogue. Select one and enter your search criteria. You'll then be prompted to create a free account. Go ahead. It's free and doesn't require you to hand over any financial information.