From Ireland

The genealogy website FromIreland has posted an amazing collection of about 14,500 photographs of Irish gravestones, making it one of the largest Irish gravestone photograph collections. The collection is arranged in albums by county. The main counties covered are Kilkenny (4,600 images) and Laois (6,800 images), with additional images from Clare, Cork, Kerry, Kildare, Limerick and Offaly. The images have been transcribed and are searchable.  A number of other Irish records and resources are also available through the site.  Access is free.  

Shetland Newspaper Transcriptions

The Shetland Newspaper Transcriptions by Janice Halcrow aims to provide indexes of historic births, marriages and death announcements made in the Shetland newspapers available to as wide an audience as possible. The Zetland Times started publication in 1872 and changed its name to The Shetland Times in 1873 and as such it continues to this day. The Shetland News was published from 1885 to 1963.  Announcements are transcribed exactly as they appeared in the original newspapers misspellings and all!  

Danish State Archives

Probate records from the islands of Sjaelland, Bornholm and Maribo are now online from the Danish StateArchives. Many court records are also now available as well as more records from Copenhagen, including death records and fire insurance records. Being able to use the site in Danish, German or English is a definite plus.  Access is free. 

National Library of Scotland Directories

The National Library of Scotland now has now reached over 700 digitized post office directories posted online. These directories cover most of Scotland and date from 1773 to 1911. The directories list alphabetically the name of the inhabitants, their address and often their profession. Access is free.  With their alphabetical list of a location's inhabitants and information on their profession and address, the directories enable you easily to find out where people lived at a certain time and how they earned their living.  

Church of Ireland Gazette

The Church of Ireland has put online all 52 editions of the church’s official weekly gazette for the year 1913. The Church of Ireland gazette essentially served as the weekly newspaper for the church. It lists specific names, places and events that occurred in 1913. The gazette can be searched by keyword or phrase. 

Cloud Convert

Has someone sent you a word processing document in a file format your word processor doesn't understand? Or a digital image that you cannot open? Have you received a file format via email which you cannot open on your smartphone or tablet? Perhaps you dragged out a CD-ROM disk from the storage box, only to find it has files on it stored in a format your new computer doesn't understand? Usually that means searching for a program that will read the other file, purchasing the program, installing it, and hoping it will convert the old file. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. Now there is a better way and it is in the cloud. It is also available free of charge to everyone: Windows users, Macintosh users, Linux, Android, and Apple iPhone and iPad users.

CloudConvert supports the conversion between more than 100 different audio, video, document, ebook, archive, image, spreadsheet and presentation formats. You can specify advanced options for every conversion type. Best of all, it is available to you now and it is free of charge.

The Down Survey

The Down Survey, so called because a chain was laid down and a scale made, was taken from 1656-8 under the direction of William Petty. Using the Civil Survey as a guide, teams of surveyors, mainly former soldiers, were sent out under Petty’s direction to measure every townland to be forfeited to soldiers and adventurers. The resulting maps, made at a scale of 40 perches to one inch (the modern equivalent of 1:50,000), were the first systematic mapping of a large area on such a scale attempted anywhere. The primary purpose of these maps was to record the boundaries of each townland and to calculate their areas with great precision. The maps are also rich in other detail showing churches, roads, rivers, castles, houses and fortifications. Most towns are represented pictorially and the cartouches, the decorative titles, of each map in many cases reflect a specific characteristic of each barony.


These maps and a lot more information have now been placed online on a web site created by Trinity College Dublin. If you can trace your ancestors back to the 1600s, you may be able to find a lot more about them by using the maps of the Down Survey of Ireland web site. Not only will you find names, but eve maps of their villages, showing roads, churches, and even buildings.


The maps chart the changes in land ownership in Ireland. Users can search by the names of landowners in 1641 and in 1670. It also displays ownership by religion. The web site also displays a lot of other historical information, such as roads and even a Map of the Ulster 1641 Depositions showing the number of recorded murders in each townland.