Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

Have you discovered the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland yet?  This new website described itself as "an all-island and international legacy for the Decade of Centenaries.

The Treasury re-imagines and reconstructs through digital technologies the Public Record Office of Ireland, a magnificent archive destroyed on June 30th, 1922, in the opening engagement of the Civil War. 

This is an open-access resource, freely and permanently available online to all those interested in Ireland’s deep history at home and abroad. Together with our partners across Ireland and around the world, we are democratizing access to invaluable records and illuminating seven centuries of Irish history."

In 1922, the Irish Record Treasury contained

• 100,000 square feet of archival shelving
• organised into 4,500 series of records
• accumulated over 7 centuries.
• It was destroyed in 1 afternoon.

In 2022, the Virtual Record Treasury democratizes access to

• 50 million words of searchable text spanning 7 centuries
• 2.7 million knowledge graph triples
• 150,000+ database records
• 6,000+ maps
• created with the support of 70 archival partners.

The reconstructed records currently available include the Medieval Exchequer of the 13th-15 Centuries, the Cromwellian Surveys of the 17th Century and the 1766 Religious Census.

So take a look at this great new resource and see what it has to offer you in your research.

Irish Lives Remembered

The latest edition of the free online magazine 'Irish Lives Remembered' is now available.

Articles: 

• Fiona Fitzsimons – Maureen the Scarlet-haired O'Hara's Roots!
• Brigit McCone – The Celt and the Cossack: Connecting Irish and Ukrainian Nationalism
• Eamonn P. Kelly – Imbolg: Brigid and the Rites of Spring
• Nathan Mannion – Playing the World: Gaelic Games Abroad
• Paul MacCotter – The Cotter (or MacCotter) Family of County Cork
• Brian Mitchell – Derry~Londonderry: Emigration from the Foyle by sail and steam
• Gerard Leen – The Surprisingly Political History of Cahersiveen, County Kerry
• Katharine Simms – The Standing Council of Irish Chiefs and Clans of Ireland Prize in History 2022
• The Four Courts Press Book  Excerpt – Roscommon:The Irish Revolution 1912-23 (published 2021) by John Burke
• The Genealogical Publishing Company Book  Excerpt – Irish Relatives and Friends: From “Information Wanted” Ads in the Irish-American 1850-1871, (published 2001) compiled by Laura Murphy DeGrazia and Diane Fitzpatrick Haberstroh
• The Four Courts Press Book Excerpt - Crime and punishment in nineteenth-century Belfast: the story of John Linn (published 2020) by Jonathan Jeffrey Wright
  
  

Regular columns: 

• Dear Genie (Our Genealogists help you with your research block)
• Photodetective (Jayne Shrimpton analyses one of your family photos)
• FMP Roundup (Jessie O’Hara lets us know of the new Irish genealogy records that have been added to Findmypast)

Irish Registry of Deeds Index Project

The volunteers of the Irish Registry of Deeds Index Project have been hard at work on the project over the past few months, greatly expanding the work already done.

The purpose of this project is to provide finding aids for the records held at the Registry of Deeds in Dublin. There are three sets of indexes produced by the project:

• The main index is building a name index for the memorial transcription books held at the Registry of Deeds
• The grantors index consists of transcriptions of the Registry of Deeds' grantors indexes
• The townland index consists of transcriptions of the Registry of Deeds' townland indexes

Each of these index databases can be searched on a number of fields. None, of course, is complete. Each has those index entries contributed by the project volunteers.

Since the last update in the middle of December, the free online index has expanded by nearly 11,000 entries and the Townland index has grown by nearly 60,000 new entries.

The Grantor Index now had 49,381 records indexed and is continuing to expand.

All the Indexes are free to search

Irish Catholic Clergy Database

A new digital archive and database of the Irish clerical population from medieval to modern times has been launched out of Maynooth University's Arts and Humanities Institute. It's called Clericus.ie.

The first phase of the Clericus project focussed on students and faculty of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, historically Ireland's largest seminary and pontifical university.

Now in its second phase, the Clericus research team is expanding the range of the project to include datasets from the early modern period and Irish clergy abroad. Among the newest additions to the database are more than 1,500 Irish clerics who attended the universities of Paris and Toulouse between 1573 and 1792. Similar research will gather data from Lisbon (1587-1850) and Salamanca (1592-1638).

It is anticipated that the database will further expand in the future with more information from a variety of sources.

Irish Lives Remembered Issue 54

The latest issue of the free quarterly online Irish Family History magazine 'Irish Lives Remembered' is out now.   The magazine can be downloaded and read on your computer or tablet.

Articles include: 

• Fiona Fitzsimons – HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco makes a Major Donation to Trinity College Dublin to Honour Family Links with the College and with Ireland
• Michael McShane and Catherine Kerr - The Re-Indexed 1821 Census for Cavan is Now Available at Cavantownlands.com
• Maurice Gleeson – Testing Siblings Helps the WATO (“What Are The Odds”) Tool Hone in on Unknown Relationships
• Robert Flanagan Stieglitz – Great-Great-Grandfather Thomas Flanagan, A New Yorker Carved in Stone: The Search for His Parents in Cloonfree, County Roscommon
• Paul MacCotter and Eamonn O’Hanlon – The O’Hanlons of Orior (County Armagh)
• Eamonn P. Kelly – The Goddess and the Horse-Eared King: Brigid and Labhraigh Loingseach – Ancestral Deities of the Leinstermen
• Brigit McCone – The Spiritualized Internationalism of Annie Besant
• Nathan Mannion – John Purroy Mitchel, the “Boy Mayor of New York”
• Book Excerpt – Ancestral Journeys (2021) by Kevin Terry 
• The Genealogical Publishing Company Book Excerpt – The People of Cork 1600 – 1799 (2017) by David Dobson

 

New Record Set on FamilySearch

For those of you with Irish ancestors, you may be interested in a new collection of  prison records for Ireland from the 18th to 20th centuries which has been added to the FamilySearch website.

The new collection, which comprises 3,127,924 records, is a compilation of prison records from collections held in the National Archives of Ireland. It includes most surviving prison records from the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. 

The records can contain the following information about individuals:

• Name
• Age
• Birthplace
• Name of prison
• Dates of admission and release
• Physical description
• Next of kin
• Details of crime and name of victim

Remember FamilySearch is a free resource for family history researchers.  To access you need to register with the website, then you have access to all their wonderful records.  To take a look and see what you can find.

Irish Lives Remembered

The latest issue of the free quarterly online Irish Family History magazine 'Irish Lives Remembered' is out now.   The magazine can be downloaded and read on your computer or tablet.

Articles: 

• Fiona Fitzsimons – President Joe Biden’s Irish Ancestry. Part 3. The Maternal Mayo Lines
• Michael McShane and Catherine Kerr - Data-Mining for Family History in County Cavan: Searchable, Accessible, and Accurate Records on Cavantownlands.com
• Jacqueline Gallup – Duchas: An Invaluable Resource for Folklore and for Family Historians. Part III. The Hearth is the Heart
• Greg Mahony – A Centenary Celebration of Captain Frank Hurley (1891–1921): 3rd West Cork Brigade of the Irish Republican Army
• Stephen Callaghan – Tracing the Story of Two Leinster Regiment Soldiers from a Photo Bought Online
• Maurice Gleeson – Unknown Parentage Cases. The Secret Benefits of 23andMe
• Mark Grace – A Taste of Mayo: Methodology and Early DNA Investigations into the Irish Roots of an English Black Country Family
• Paul MacCotter – The Barretts of County Cork. Part Two: The Later History
• Eamonn P. Kelly – Brigid: Pagan Goddess and Christian Saint
• Brigit McCone – Irish Involvement in the Congo
• Nathan Mannion – William Lefroy: Journalist, Alpinist, Freemason, and Dean
• Catherine Holmes – Stitch by Stitch and Word by Word: Finding the Women of the 19th Century Dun Emer and Cuala Arts and Crafts Industries (South Dublin)
• Book Review - A Review of The Fall of the Fitzmaurices: The Demise of Kerry’s First Family [Patrick Roycroft reviews the latest book by Kay Caball]
• Book Excerpt – The Fall of the Fitzmaurices: The Demise of Kerry’s First Family (2020, North Kerry Literary Trust) by Kay Caball
• The Genealogical Publishing Company Book Excerpt – O’Sullivan (Ó Súilleabháin). The Earliest Irish Royal Family. History and Genealogy (2013, third edition 2020) by William Randolph McCreight