This St. Patrick’s Festival the Irish Family History Centre held a treasure hunt for the smaller detectives in the family. Participants could choose from two levels of clue-finding challenges, ranging from finding sea monsters in our time lines, to more complex puzzles that involved delving into the records to find historic figures. Many families opted for both versions of the challenge and brought out their competitive streaks as they raced against each other!
Family history in itself is a path-finding mission. We follow paper trails and clues to find and verify the correct answers to ensure we are going the right way: it can be easy to be led astray! Our treasure hunt offered little detectives an opportunity to explore clues and documents in the same way our researchers do and gave them a taster of how much fun historical detective work can be. Our costumes were also a great hit as the kids morphed into their historic alter egos! There were smiles and laughs all around – even some city snow – and some excellent drawings of sea monsters too.
In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, there was of course treasure at the end of the trail – tasty treats for the mini detectives and FindMyPast World vouchers for the grown-ups. Sweet!
By Claire Murray
