The Settlement Patterns of Families
08 December 2016With a great deal (but not all!) civil certificates online, now, at our fingertips we have a wealth of easily accessible records. There is so much we can do with these easily accessed records that it is difficult to know which direction to run in first. One recurring and thorny...
Highway 61 Revisited
24 November 2016Much has been written in this space, and others, about the revolution in the availability of genealogical records online in the past decade. There are more records available now, to anyone with a computer and reasonable internet connection, than at any time previous, and these records grow on literally a...
Back to Basics
11 November 2016If you have been researching for a very long time and have made good progress, then this research tip is not for you. This week, I thought I would go back to basics to look at one of the building blocks of family research, the census. For many, the starting...
Familiarising yourself with words no longer in everyday use
27 October 2016As our vast lexicon expands to include new words such as ‘upspeak’ and ‘emoji’ so it also contracts and any person researching their ancestors has to familiarise themselves with words no longer in everyday use. This struck me the other day when I was searching through the baptismal registers for...
Catholic Convert and Qualification Rolls
04 October 2016One of the most interesting aspects of studying family history is the ability to recover the stories of individuals, families and even communities. As more records collections are published online, I often revisit old case-studies, to see if it’s possible to recover gaps in the narrative. Recently the Catholic Convert...
IrishGenealogy.ie Now Offers the Civil Records
22 September 2016IrishGenealogy.ie now offers the civil records of births over 100 years ago, marriages over 75 years ago and deaths over 50 years ago of the General Register Office (GRO) to view online. This is a fantastic new resource for all family historians, negating the need for some trips to the...
The Calendar of Ancients Records of Dublin
09 September 2016On the open shelves in the National Library reading room there are a set of nineteen volumes that I have often looked at, fascinated by the details, but always frustrated that there was no index. The books that I am referring to are The Calendar of Ancients Records of Dublin...
The importance of cross-checking your information
26 August 2016It is so important to cross check our information at all times, to use every available source in our quest to learn more about our ancestors. A recent search for a marriage of Anne to Edward prior to 1917 proved, frustratingly, negative. Anne gave birth to a son, Patrick, in 1917...
Legislation, and how to use it to gain access to records you’re legally entitled to see.
12 August 2016The Dail [Irish parliament] has passed legislation to protect the privacy of Irish citizens. An unintended consequence, is to sometimes set limits to tracing exempt records: military records, but also records relating to children raised in care. Many researchers who are genuinely trying to trace their own family history have...
Putting flesh on the bones
27 July 2016A common phenomenon with those of us that are engaged in genealogical research is that; after the initial relentless pursuit of the line(s) of descent, focus often switches to trying to learn more about our ancestors. To put flesh on the bones and get a better sense of what they...
Catholic Parish Records Online
15 July 2016It is now about a year since the NLI launched their collection of Catholic parish records online and this is a record set that keeps giving and giving. Having these records online is such a wonderful step forward for family historians. For many, visiting the Library and viewing the microfilms...
Hidden Gems
28 June 2016An important feature of family history, is the where of our ancestors. Once we can locate our ancestors in a time and place, we then usually want to know more about the place. This is where local and family history can combine. The Federation of Local Histories can be a...
