After a short holiday, I thought I was beginning to get a handle on my workload after the excitement of the 1926 release. Yesterday, I put together a list of talks and workshops I’m running over the summer, initially thinking there were just a couple, but when I went through my diary, it was a much larger amount than I’d remembered! It was quite enough to make me forget the idyll of last week.

Antipaxos, Greece

Citing the 1926 census

Documenting your sources is an important part of your family history research. We all have notes written down with details and no idea where they came from. Getting into the habit of recording the when and where along with the info found is essential. I’ve written a blog post about citing the 1926 census to help you. A little bird also told me that MyHeritage will have their version of it available next week (transcriptions and images, where they have done their own corrections and improvements). Keep an eye on their Irish card catalogue.

Parish notes

If you’re a user of Rootsireland.ie then you’ll be pleased to hear that the two Galway heritage centres have amalgamated in one venue at Woodford Heritage Centre. This means you no longer have remember (or guess) which part of Galway a particular place is in!

I’m also delighted to have an article in the current issue of Family Tree magazine on the new census. I promise I’ll stop talking about it soon (not).

If you fancy a trip to balmy Glasgow this month, why not consider attending one (or all) of these 3 consecutive events? I’m much looking forward to them all. Some of them offer online access as well.

• APG Professional Genealogy Symposium on 24th June

• Beyond the Family Tree: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on AI, DNA, Education and Community in Genealogy conference on 25th - 26th June.

• Escape to the Past genealogy retreat on 27th-28th June

If travelling seems too much, perhaps I can interest you in a book review? Professor Turi King has a new book out and I’ve already read and reviewed it.

And now back to wading through my email. I’m excited to get cracking on a few new projects which have finally reached the top of the waiting list. I feel very fortunate that people are willing to wait to work with me. Isn’t it great to have a job you love?!

Whirlwind

The last 2 weeks have been an absolute whirlwind in the world of Irish genealogy. The 1926 census has been released to great fanfare. I’m not going to recap it all, but I do have several articles on my blog:

• Searching the 1926 census

• Error reporting

• Review of the census companion book: The Story of Us

If you prefer to watch videos, I have some on my YouTube channel.

In a thunder-stealing move, Ancestry also released the 1926 census (making use of the Creative Commons licence). The only thing that surprised me here is the speed of this. It has some extra searchable fields but the transcriptions are of variable quality. Expect other commercial organisations to follow suit in due course.

Census dates

I’ve put together a table of the dates for census in the UK and Ireland, separating out parts where there are differences. I’m going to pin it to my wall along with my map of Irish registration districts, with a related list by county, and a large poster of the Shared cM Project. What are your essential wall pin-ups? No rude answers please!

Podcasts

Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, has released a 6 part series called Come to your census presented by Dublin historian Liz Gillis, which is worth a listen.

Season 3 of BBC’s The Gift, presented by Jenny Kleeman, on the perils and joy of DNA testing is out now too. If you haven’t listened to the previous ones, start at the beginning and enjoy all 18 episodes. This current series is looking at the bigger picture. The episode on France, where DNA testing is banned, is particularly interesting.

New mapping site

I’ve been playing around with a site called Irish Roots developed by Galway-based web designer, Conor Maguire. You may remember he produced a tool for converting old Irish census links to the new version (1901/1911) when the new site launched last year. What makes this site different is the ways you can visualise data. Here’s a lovely comparison of the names of people in the townland of Coolroe, Co. Kerry. It’s pulling in data from townlands.ie (which is no longer updated), Logainm.ie, Griffith’s Valuation and the census returns. It’s still in development so you may see changes over time.

Coolroe, Co. Kerry

That’s my lot for this month. I’m still delivering a lot of talks on the new census (they’re not all the same either!) and watch out for an article on it in Family Tree magazine next month. I’m taking a holiday in June - very much needed! If you’re in the northern hemisphere, I hope the summer sun shines on you, and if you’re not, wrap up warm.

St Patrick’s Day

I’m not sure how our small green island in the north Atlantic ocean swung it, but everyone in the world celebrates our national holiday. What a lovely thing. It’s like a benign form of colonisation. All you have to do is raist a toast to Ireland once a year. What are you doing to celebrate this year? I’m celebrating by briefly leaving Ireland for London, which will involve a talk at the Society of Genealogists. I’ll be talking about my many compatriots who made that trip before me & enhanced a great city.

Spring Cleaning

This time of year naturally lends itself to tidying and cleaning. I’ve been getting rid of old genealogy magazines, which of course meant reading most of them again. Find out how I got on here.

The recycling pile

Records released

Since my last newsletter, Irishgenealogy.ie has uploaded their annual extra year of records. This means the site now has births from 1925, marriages from 1950 and deaths from 1975. Remember though that events which happened close to the end of the year may have been registered in 1926 or a subsequent year and may only give you an index. This is the case with my late lovely great-aunt, born in October 1925. On her entry, this message appears.

One interesting facet of the 1975 deaths is the most people by then die in a hospital. This means we no longer get a relative registering a person’s death, as you can see on this page from Killarney, where a variety of staff members have bulk registered everyone who died in Killarney hospital. The good news is that practically everyone in Ireland would have a newspaper death by the mid-1970s, so if you can find that, you’ll likely get significantly more detail on their family and, of course, where they were buried.

Still waiting for early death records though

Of course, I had hoped Irishgenealogy would update the death registers to finally include the earliest years (1864-1870) but there’s still no sign of it. Looks like there might be some kind inter-departmental bun fight going on. I wrote about it during February, but am still considering whether a Freedom of Information request might be useful here. This post also includes some workarounds for accessing those early records.

Irish Tontines

This isn’t a topic I knew much about but wanted to highlight the fantastic research done at the Royal Irish Academy on this subject by Dr Andrew McDiarmid.

International Women’s Day

I can’t leave March without a nod to International Women’s day which we celebrate on the 8th. Although it’s been marked for decades in eastern Europe, it’s really only been in this century that we’ve noted it in Ireland. I’ve written in previous years about my great-grandmothers, my great-great grandmother, Annie Mahony, and my most prolific ancestor, Anne Rourke, the mother of 17 children, but this month, I pay tribute to my own mother, Paula Walters, who died towards the end of last year and is very much missed. I haven’t written an obituary on my blog because I prefer to focus on less recent family. Although, there was a funny comment from a younger member of my family who asked if there would “be any ancestors at Nana’s funeral?” which brightened a very sad day! Here is my mother on St Patrick’s Day in 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. We met in a local park and used the bench as, er, a bench mark to keep 2 metres apart!

Paula Walters Bradley 1946-2025

Virtual Sunshine

I'm a big fan of RTÉ's Doc on One series and the latest episode has an interesting family history element as an Irish family goes to Jamaica to look into their ancestor's slave-owning activities there. Ireland, as part of the British Empire, has not yet really begun to properly address our own role in slavery and historical wrongdoing, so it's good to see this kind of documentary being broadcast.

Jamaica Daly

An Irish family learns about their ancestor's past as a slave-owner.

www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/1556016-jamaica-daly

Also on RTÉ recently, which I just happened to hear while cooking dinner, was a short segment on Drivetime with John Grenham, who was talking about how it's never been easier to research your family tree. He's right, but I don't agree that it's not worth hiring a genealogist to help you. There's lots of reasons why you might want to hire one (me!) such as:

• Not being confident using internet resources - if your Irish ancestry is not recent, then it's easy to make mistakes or be misled by someone else's poorly researched online tree

• You're interested but would rather enjoy the fruits of someone else's labour

• You're time poor

• You were adopted, born in a Mother & Baby home or were a foundling and need to rely on DNA to make progress - it has a much steeper learning curve than finding a family on the 1911 census

Census news

The countdown to the release of the 1926 Census continues. The National Archives media campaign is ramping up. They currently have an ad running advising centenarians that their personal data (i.e. the details of where and who they lived with on 18th April 1926) will be published online, but they can contact the NAI if they have concerns. You can hear the ad at 50:25 in this broadcast. If you are lucky enough to have someone in this category in your family and they lived in Ireland then, be sure to let them know.

Upcoming Talks & Workshops

I've got some talks and workshops coming up both in-person in Dublin and London (exciting!) and online. Read about them here.

Book review

I recently read a new book about the Guinness family written by the current Earl of Iveagh (although he's not using the title here). Guinness A family succcession: the true story of the battle to control the world’s largest brewery

I've written before about the fantastic Guinness archive of employees (hosted on Ancestry) & my family link as recipients of an Iveagh Trust flat. This book covers the first four generations of the Guinness family, which encompasses the generation who are the focus of the recent Netflix show House of Guinness. It’s fair to say it’s significantly more historically accurate than the TV show! There's a lot about the brewery's early days, the first Arthur Guinness’s social mobility and their huge wealth. Because it's written by their descendant, he's kinder on them than an impartial historian might be, but it's still an enjoyable easy read with some nice pictures. I picked up a signed copy to add to my collection.

More clusters

Hot on the heels of Ancestry finally bestowing their cluster tool, 23andMe have also released a beta version of their own clusters. It’s only available on the Premium service which has a monthly subscription fee. This service isn’t available in Ireland (or I suspect, more accurately, the EU) and I read some suggestions this is down to data privacy being more robustly protected by European laws. However, I don’t see why they can’t separate the spurious health stuff from the genealogy content and offer that separately. I wrote to them to complain and got a nonsense reply as below. If you’ve got the clusters, I’d be most interested to hear your thoughts.

I was back in my alma mater, Trinity College Dublin last week to do some research for an upcoming talk. Trinity has a legal deposit library which means they get a copy of every book publish in both Ireland and the UK. Alumni can apply for a reader’s ticket, but you have to go in there to do the research - no online access to journals (which would be super helpful to independent researchers like me). One nice perk of being a graduate here is the free access to the Book of Kells - you can even bring 2 friends for free. If you find that you have an ancestor who went to Trinity, then you can check out the admissions details for ancestors from 1593-1860 in Alumni dublinenses, which is searchable at Ulster Historical Foundation. Familysearch and Findmypast have an earlier edition that goes up to 1846. You can find more recent alumni in the register in the National Library or by contacting Trinity directly.

That’s your lot for this month!

It’s 2026 at last and we are on the home stretch in counting down the days to the 1926 census release. As I write this newsletter, we are 93 days and 8 hours away from the launch. Can you tell I’m excited?

The Director of the National Archives, Orlaith McBride, did a piece on David McCullough’s RTÉ Radio One yesterday, which you can listen to below.

100 days until the 1926 census is released

Orlaith McBride, national archive

www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22573758

At the end of last year, I published a piece on my 2026 Irish genealogy wishlist. I’ve already got one thing on it - Ancestry clusters appeared earlier this week on my account at last, so I’m getting to grips with them and will review in due course. What’s on your wishlist? One thing not on the list, which I promised myself, was to try and get more reading done. Normally I’m a great reader but the non-fiction often piles up when I find I’m too tired for it at the end of the day. Well, I’ve started well with 6 books already under my belt for the month. One of them, Tracing your Farming Ancestors in Ireland by William J. Roulston will be of interest to my readers, so I’ve written up a review. Spoiler: it’s very good!

There are still a couple of places for my DNA workshop at Fingal Local Studies & Archives next week, so if you’re local to the area and would like to attend, here’s the booking details.

My copy of Family Tree magazine arrived in the post today and I see Chris Paton has an article about reviewing your own research. This is quite a coincidence because I had just written a piece on the same topic myself. Reviewing your own work is really good practice as you often spot gaps in the research or things you’d just plain missed. You can read my mea culpa here.

Lastly, I want to mention a very cool genealogy cruise that’s happening next November. If you feel like combining a Caribbean holiday with learning about genetic genealogy from the best in the biz, Dr Blaine Bettinger & Angie Bush, then this is the place to be.

Black Friday

Black Friday was never a thing in Europe until a few years ago. Given its connection to US Thanksgiving, it has no cultural resonance across the Atlantic. However, it seems to be here to stay and with it comes some fantastic genealogy offers. Here are some of the particularly good deals available if you are so inclined. There’s no affiliate links: just stuff I picked out to highlight.

MyHeritage is selling their autosomal DNA test for €29. Buy it now and hold off sending it back until they confirm the planned whole genome testing is being applied to all new kits.

Ancestry is selling their autosomal DNA test at UK ST £39 plus shipping until 20th November. This is the cheapest time of the year to get into the biggest database.

FamilyTree DNA has an array of upgrades, add-ons and bundles for their autosomal, Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA tests. If you’ve never tested with them before and are a biological male, you could take all 3 tests for USD $507. That’s a fantastic price. I’ve bought an add-on mitochondrial DNA test for one of my kits, which cost USD $129.

Remember though, it’s only a bargain if you would have bought it anyway! DNA tests don’t go out of date, so you could preemptively buy one.

Irish News Archive

Readers of my newsletter and blog will know how valuable newspapers can be to your family history research. A few years ago I found a letter written by my 3x great-grandfather to a newspaper in 1858.

The Irish Newspaper Archive is launching a new version of their site this week. I’ve had a sneaky peak by way of some beta testing and it looks great! Remember to be gentle when you look at the new site. It’ll take a while to learn the new navigation routes. I especially like the layout which shows me many pages of a newspaper all at once, which makes it easy to spot the deaths column. This was often moved around in a newspaper to fit other articles. You can see some demos they recorded in the video below. They usually have a great Black Friday offer too but I haven’t seen it yet this year.

Brand New Site 2025 on Vimeo

Join the web’s most supportive community of creators and get high-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD with no ads.

vimeo.com/showcase/10929977

Latin for Genealogists

If you have Catholic ancestors, it’s likely that you will at some stage need to read some Latin in your research. The International Institute of Genealogical Studies has a new book out specifically to guide family historians and genealogists. I had a small involvement in putting this book together, so naturally I think it’s great, but it’s modestly priced and available as an ebook if you want to avoid shipping and customs charges.

CIÉ Archives

Córas Iompair Éireann is Ireland’s national transport company: they manage trains and buses through various subsidiaries. They have just begun putting their archives online and it will hopefully be of interest to those whose ancestors worked on railways, canals or trams. Press coverage says there is over 166,000 pages of material dating back to the 19th century. It covers railway, tram and canal workers, as well as corporate records. I’ve only begun playing around with this database but it looks very promising. Of particular interest will be the name database, which holds 7000 names at present, with more to come. Here’s a sample result. The link brings you to a viewer where you can browse the books. I did a search for a client case (which for confidentiality I have not shown below) and it has identified a person in that family and it links to his census returns, so clearly a lot of thought has been put into this database.

Date set for Ireland’s next census

Historically, Ireland has done a census every 5 years since 1946, on the first and sixth year in a decade. The census was skipped in 1976 as a money saving exercise, only for the government to run a mini-census in 1979 after they sheepishly admitted they needed the census for long-term planning! It’s always been in April. In the 21st century, we’ve twice postponed the census in 2001, due to a foot and mouth epidemic, and more recently in 2021 because of COVID. We took the census in 2002 and then went back to the schedule of 2006, 2011, 2016, 2022, but now, throwing the whole thing off kilter, we’re going to 9th May 2027! Why move from April? Madness, I tell you. However, this will be the first census with an option to complete online. It will also incluse the blank “time capsule” space again. The letter I linked to above from my ancestor includes my 2022 letter to the Irish Times with suggestions of what to include in the space. I’m already planning what to put in the next one!

Finally for this newsletter, here’s a selection of my recent book purchases. I’ll be reviewing them in due course but thought I’d show you them now in case you’re in the mood for a bit of retail therapy.

Claire’s latest TBR pile

Upcoming talks

There is still time to book for my 4th October in-person talk on using DNA for family histoy, which is part of Fingal’s Festival of History. There are a couple of seats left. The brochure is full of interesting other lectures too.

If you’re a member of the Shropshire Family History Society (like me!) then join me for a Zoom talk on Tracing your Irish ancestors on Tuesday 21st October.

The Records Show

Have you been watching the second series of The Records Show on RTÉ? It’s presented by journalist Katie Hannon and each week details stories which come from archival documents held by the National Archives. You can catch it on the RTÉ Player if you haven’t seen it. Two very interesting segments worth highlighting here.

Media reported last year that there was at last plans to transfer the Land Commission records to the National Archives - something that historians and genealogists have been asking about for decades. It was mentioned on The Records Show that this process is getting underway on a phased basis with intentions to make the records public in due course. This is perhaps the holy grail of Irish genealogy so very exciting to know that they are actually acting on it.

Secondly, the second and third episode featured details about the 1926 Census and the immense preparations for its release next 18th April. New to me news was that institutional returns did not anonymise people’s names on that census. This means that we’ll have greater detail on people in hospitals, prisons and other institutions. I’ll be on the look out for my great-great grandmother’s sister, Jane Ure, who I believe I identified from initials on the 1911 census. They also mentioned the records will be live from 00:01 on the 18th, so I guess I won’t be going to bed that night. I’m also planning a special event for that night so watch this space! For now, I’ve just added a countdown clock to my website. And here’s some ideas for planning what you’ll do first.

And talking of the census, I’m finally taking the time to get to grips with the new site that upset everyone so much earlier this year. I’m pleased that a lot of the original issues have been sorted, and that there is now a table view instead of the card view as the main search results output. Just toggle the “view as” section highlighted below.

Watch

During September, I presented a lecture for the International Institute of Genealogical Studies on the identification of the Russian Romanov family via DNA in the 1990s. You can watch it on the school’s YouTube channel.

Review

I found the time to read a genealogical mystery recently. I enjoy MJ Lee’s series featuring genealogist Jayne Sinclair. Read my review of the latest “The Salford Sioux” here.

New Collections

MyHeritage has been a bit behind its competitors for a while now on the Irish resources but they are working to catch up. They finally got most of their long-promised Irish Catholic collections up during September. These are freshly transcribed versions of the National Library’s parish register collection matched with their images. Yes, these records are already transcribed in other locations (some better than others), but I’m happy to see a fresh attempt. You never know what a different algorithm will find you. The collections are in 3 lots and are free to use with a MyHeritage login:

• Irish Catholic Parish Death & Burials 1795-1881 (235,063 records)

• Irish Catholic Parish Marriages 1742-1912 (3,300,194 records)

• Irish Catholic Parish Baptisms not yet uploaded but coming in the next week or so

Parish notes

The Research Room for the Irish General Register Office is moving house. They’ve been on Werburgh St (very handy for Burdock’s afterwards) for the last decade or so. News is just out that they’re closing to the public 3 weeks from 30th September and then re-opening in new premises at The Guild Building, Cork St, Dublin on Tuesday 21st October. As a friend joked, they must be carrying each book individually on foot to the new office! In reality, this only means they’re closed to the public for 3 days since they only open on Tuesdays now. The email service is unaffected by this move. The Guild Building is already a Government office, housing various other services. I’ll plan a visit and report back in due course.

I’ve also spotted a change on Irishgenealogy.ie this past week. Previously, when you searched, it was by Superintendant Registrar District (more commonly called a registration district) but there were some quirks, such as if you entered “Dublin”, it would return results for Dublin North and Dublin South as well as the later amalgamation. One of my feedbacks for the site when it relaunched was that I felt you should be able to search by county and get returns from all the districts. Well, they listened and if you now put in Dublin, you’ll find the full gamut of Dublin SRDs on the side. See here with my test search for marriages of a Patrick Murphy 1870-1900 in Dublin.

I suspect they are still tweaking it because even though that filter list comes up, you can’t actually easily narrow it down to remove the ones you’re not interested in yet. I’ll do some more testing, but ultimately, I think this is good news for inexperienced and casual users who are not familiar with the districts. Now if you put in Cork, you’ll get results in up to 18 SRDs and not just from Cork city.

That’s it for this month!

Summer is over: long live Autumn

I’m a little late with my newsletter this month as I took some much needed time off at end of August and into the beginning of September.

I’ve had a number of projects come to fruition with the successful identification of previously unidentified fathers for several clients. Very rewarding work, much of which will remain private and confidential, as you would expect.

Many people start to get back into their hobbies this month and I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in enquiries. If I haven’t got back to you yet, rest assured, I will.

Upcoming Classes

This weekend, I have 2 talks for my International Institute of Genealogical Studies students. If you’re taking classes in the Irish or DNA courses, check the student calendar for times and links. I’ll be talking about the Irish military archives and the identification of the Romanovs this month. The latter in particular is a real crossing of the streams¹ for me. I have a primary degree in Russian language and history. The Romanovs have always held a particular fascination for me. I recently re-read Robert K. Massie’s book on the identification of their remains, which now has much more significance than when I first read it 24 years ago because I understand the science now too. You can also find some of my previous sessions on the school’s YouTube channel.

My Malahide Community School evening class starts back on Monday 15th September. There’s still a couple of places available. Full details on how to book here.

Lectures

I’m delighted to be back with the Society of Genealogists in London for a second time this year. This is an online talk and you can book for it here. The topic is using your DNA to find your Irish ancestors – it’ll be geared towards a UK audience but is applicable for anyone with Irish ancestry in another country.

On Saturday 20th September, I’ll be giving a talk on tracing your Irish ancestors from a US perspective for the Clark County Nevada Genealogical Society. They’ll be in person but I’ll be online for this one. This will focus on records resources.

Finally, on Saturday 4th October, I’m in the Carnegie Library in Swords for a day of talks in the Fingal Festival of History. I’ll be discussing my pet topic of using DNA for family history. The full brochure of events is available. You do need to reserve a space for my talk – do so on Eventbrite.

Culture Night

On Friday, 19th September, it’s Culture Night in Ireland. It’s a nationwide evening of cultural events. Many museums, archives and galleries open late. I’ll be answering genealogy questions at Fingal Local Studies & Archives in Swords, Co. Dublin. It’s a great chance to have an in-person discussion and also see what the lovely team there have! No need to book for this, just drop by from 18:00 onwards on the night. If you can’t make it to Swords, then do check out what’s available in your own area.

Me at last year’s Culture Night

If you’re interested in engaging me to speak for your organisation, I am taking bookings for next year. There’s lots of interest in the 1926 Irish Free State census release² in April 2026 so I will be presenting on it for a couple of different organisations (more details closer to the time). Pop me a message through my contact form to discuss options, availability & rates.

How is it August already? The year is flying. We have a public holiday this weekend in Ireland so I’ll be taking Monday off.

Upcoming Talks

I’m excited to be doing my first webinar for Legacy Family Tree Webinars on 6th August. I’ll be talking about why you want Irish Quaker ancestors, which builds on research I did for my Masters dissertation at the University of Limerick. There’s still time to book in for the live show (10am Irish Standard Time) which is in the Down Under series, but the talk will of course be recorded and permanently available on Legacy.

Also this month, I’ll be doing a session for Family Tree Plus on RootsMagic10 on 19th August, which I reviewed this month in their magazine. You can read the article here but the webinar is your chance to see me demonstrate the software live and ask questions. If you’re not a member of Family Tree Plus, you can join for a free 7 day trial.

Heritage Week

16th-24th August in Ireland is Heritage Week (yes, it is erroneously named). There is a range of genealogy events and clinics happening around the country as well as tours of built and archaeological heritage. Everything is free and there’s plenty for kids too. Searching the site is quite overwhelming. Be sure to check under genealogy and family history if you’re looking for the full set. There’s lots of other categories too. I’m looking forward to checking out this exhibition of paintings in the City Assembly Rooms. The National Library also has a talk about heraldic records which looks cool.

Reviews

I’ve reviewed Cheri Hudson Passey's new book Genealogy in Reverse: Finding the Living, A practical guide for all genealogists. You can read my review here.

Also on the review front, I play a computer game about genealogy & thoroughly enjoyed. Here’s my review of The Roottrees are Dead. I’m on to the second game in the series now but not doing as well in it!

New Coaching Service

Having been quietly offering this service for a while, it’s time to officially launch it now. I am now offering one to one coaching over Zoom. This service is available both for traditional Irish research or DNA work. Whether you’re a hobbyist looking to attack a particular research question or a professional who hasn’t worked with DNA before, I can help get you on the right path. Hour long sessions are led by you (providing access to DNA results or existing research in advance) - you can decide what you want to learn. If you’re interested, drop me a line to discuss.

Virtual Treasury

You may have seen yesterday that the Virtual Treasury released new records on the 103rd anniversary of the Four Courts Fire, which had devasting consequences for Irish genealogy and history. International media coverage abounded but the big news is that they’ve got 60000 new census records found from fragments. Happy days! If you’re not familiar with the resources at the Virtual Treasury, then why not watch my Rootstech 2025 talk on the subject? Be sure to download the handout too.

Love a spot of bigamy!

I actually found some time in the past month to do a bit of research on my own family tree - what’s seldom is wonderful. I found another bigamist for my bingo card. Read about him here.

What subscription site is best for Irish research?

This is a question I get asked a lot when I teach, so I decided to do a bit of investigation, and I presented a lecture on for my International Institute of Genealogical Studies class last month. The school has shared this presentation (and many more) on YouTube so you can check it out too. If you have other go-to sites, I’d be delighted to hear about them.

My first DNA workshop for Fingal Local Studies & Archives took place last week and was a great success. We still have a couple of spots available for the next one on 8th July. You can book directly with Fingal. This is an in-person workshop and it’s not recorded. Incidentally, did you know they are a FamilySearch affiliate centre? This means you can access additional content from there (and any other Fingal library) than you can from home. I’ll be presenting a lecture on these extra resources later this year.

One of the reasons I’ve been so busy this month is that I took a week off to go aboard the MV Sylvia Earle as a genealogist in residence, which was a wonderful experience.

Photo credit: Pía Harboure

Finally for this month, I’ve read and reviewed a new DNA guide from Pen & Swords books. I think it’s worth reading, but do remember that DNA books often go out of date quickly, and indeed, this one went to print before the changes at MyHeritage, where they no longer allow uploads.

I wish you a wonderfuly July - may it be filled with new family history finds!

Welcome to my June newsletter. We’ve finally got some decent weather here in Ireland, so we need to use those single digit days to best purpose: genealogy.

I’m delighted to announce two DNA workshops at Fingal Local Studies & Archives in June and July. Spaces will be limited so that I can give personal attention to each participant, who will need to have already taken a DNA test and bring a device and/or be able to access their results on the day. All the details for booking are below.

There was big news in the world of genetic genealogy this week with MyHeritage suddenly ending the transfer of kits. For many years, MyHeritage accepted a transfer of raw DNA from another testing company. You could upload for free, pay a small unlock fee to access all the tools and have another database for your matches. In more recent times, a subscription to MyHeritage was also required to make the best use of it. Many people have uploaded and it’s helped grow their database to an impressive 9.3m. It’s been a go to point for me in work on unknown parentage cases and I’ve found crucial matches in there every time. However, the industry has been aware for some years that forensic genetic genealogists (who work to solve crimes) use this database, despite it being expressly against the MH terms of service. While I’m not sure precisely what precipitated this on a Thursday/Friday overnight without any announcement, it seems to be appearing slowly across the world. I haven’t been able to upload for about a week now but some countries are still reporting that they can. MyHeritage has made no official announcement at all. The lovely Leah Larkin has a bigger piece about it here.

I was over in the Representative Church Body Library last week in Churchtown & I asked for an update on the digitisation of the Church of Ireland records they hold. Claire Santry last reported a couple of years ago that the project was heavily delayed by Covid. Here’s what I found out. They now have almost all parishes scanned but not transcribed. They have them on two computers in the reading room, which may make for faster checking. I asked about making them available online and it seems there isn't a plan for now. They intend to use Transkribus to transcribe the records but there is no timeframe for release at the moment.

Lovely Irish comedian, Aisling Bea, was on Who Do You Think You Are? on BBC two weeks ago. In a depature for the show, the whole episode was based in Ireland. Not surprising for someone who is Irish! Her ancestry featured the beautiful but no longer inhabited Blasket Islands and had some excellent maternal line stories. It was also very nice to see the pedigrees properly formatted with women’s birth names and some Irish used. WDYTYA often fails on this basic principle. If you have access to the BBC Iplayer or some other way to view, it is available now.

Lastly for this month, some more good news. Mount Jerome in Dublin is one of the city’s largest cemeteries. In the past, it was often favoured by Protestant denominations and was the first privately owned cemetery when it opened in 1836 on land that had previously belonged to the Earl of Meath. It has more than 220,000 burials. Over the years, I’ve made use of the partial transcriptions available at Ireland Genealogy Projects and often emailed the graveyard to ask for more details, when I spotted a newspaper notice of a burial there. The website lists some famous men (though no famous women) who were buried there including Sir William Wilde, father of Oscar, and Sir Richard Griffith (he of Griffith’s Valuation fame!) They have people who were not knighted as well. Mount Jerome has now finally built a free public database for searches, although it’s hard to find the link from their main website to it. Here’s a test search I did for my ancestor George Walters, who I already knew was buried there.

You can limit it to a range of years, or just use a surname for search. Each name is then hyper-linked to its own page, although the map search doesn’t work (still seems to be in beta). Clicking on all interments, you get a full list of who is in the grave, which hopefully might yield some additional family members. In this case, it didn’t for me.

However, I’m delighted to report I’ve killed off several family members by finding their graves in Mount Jerome, including the George Walters who died in 1916 in the above list, who was the son of the other George. Happy days!

Welcome to my May newsletter & hello to subscribers old and new. I really do appreciate you all taking the time to read and comment on my musings.

In the last month, I read and reviewed the new National Genealogical Society book: Forensic Genealogy by Michael Ramage & Catherine Desmarais. You can read my review here.

There’s a lot of my work I can’t talk to you about in the detail that I’d like and that’s because it’s confidential. Sometimes I ask a client if I may use some anonymised content for a talk or educational purposes and they’re always happy to allow that, but there’s some work I’ll never be able to talk about because it’s simply too personal, too private. But I did want to share that I solved a case this week. It was my longest open paternity case - using DNA to identify a person’s father. For years, despite testing on everywhere, there were only 3 matches above 100 centimorgans (which might be a third cousin), an extremely common surname to the area that looked relevant and no responses from the top matches. I became involved with the case 2 and a half years ago, and the cracks began to appear in the brickwall about 6 months ago. It’s very rewarding work. If you’re someone who has a similar situation, don’t give up hope.

With my Internationl Institute of Genealogical Studies Professor hat on, I did a session on the new Irishgenealogy.ie, which you may prefer to watch over my blog review.

So what about those myths then? I specifically want to address three.

The first is the very persistent myth is that “all the Irish records were destroyed in a fire”. Like many good myths, there’s an element of truth in it. There was a fire and records were destroyed. Let’s review what was destroyed: they fall into a couple of main categories:

• 1821-1851 Irish census returns

• Church of Ireland parish records*

• Wills & probate records*

• Court records

Four Courts on fire in 1922 (public domain image)

Not all the Church of Ireland records were destroyed because not all of them were housed in the Public Records Office of Ireland in 1922. Almost 1000 parishes were lost but 637 had been retained in their original parishes and so survived. You get a comprehensive parish by parish guide to what survives, where it is housed and whether any is online from the jointly produced RCB Library/IGRS master list.

Wills and other testamentary records were lost in the fire too. Before 1858, probate was managed by the relevant Church of Ireland diocese and most of these records were destroyed in 1922. Indexes remain and sometimes newspapers can help fill gaps. After that year, a new civil court of probate was setup with a Principal Registry in Dublin and district registries around the country (3 of which are now in Northern Ireland). A vast quantity was destroyed but the district registries had copies so we do have those accessible. The big loss is the Principal Registry, covering Dublin, and wealthier people who held property in multiple locations. Generally speaking, there is only a calender of wills and administration entry for anything before 1904. Check the online offerings for the Republic here and for Northern Ireland here.

Many of the court records before the 20th century were destroyed, and these went back centuries. There’s very little online in this category and I often try to use newspapers to plug these gaps.

But what didn’t get destroyed, mostly because they were never housed in the Four Courts?

• Civil records of birth, marriage and death

• Roman Catholic parish records

• Land valuation records

• The Registry of Deeds

• 1901/1911 census

There’s so much out there: it just may mean you need to be a little more creative with your research. Challenge extended!

Another big myth that gets my goat is this nonsense.

Why is it nonsense? Because there were far fewer people in the past than there are today. Your ancestry looks more like a mushroom than a pyramid. It goes up, out and in again. This is called pedigree collapse. Some people will be your ancestor more than once, in fact, many will. Here’s what Adam Rutherford said in his A Brief History of Everyone who ever lived book. He cites a mathematical researcher called Joseph Chang who modelled this problem and worked out that all Europeans alive now would likely have a common ancestor around the end of the 13th century CE. If we go back a bit further in time, everyone alive in the 9th century who had children who still have descendants now is your ancestor. Go right ahead and claim Charlemagne as your very own ancestor. Documenting it on paper: highly unlikely. This is what makes the Danny Dyer reveal on Who Do You Think You Are? so great.

Irish people love a good story and never let the truth get in the way of it. My last myth is about the Spanish Armada. Everyone in Ireland who is a bit sallow or olive-skinned has been told they must descend from someone in the Spanish Armada. Let me explain why this is rubbish.

The Spanish Armada was a fleet of ships which were driven off-course on the way home by a storm following the battle of Gravelines in 1588. Approximately 24 ships were wrecked off the coast of Ireland from Antrim down to Kerry. Thousands of those aboard died. That’s the first point. Two things happened to those who survived: they became prisoners of war and were then executed by the English. So no babies there. Some of them did survive and they escaped to Scotland (Catholic nation at the time) and from there back to Spain. There’s a lot more detail with ships and crew numbers, etc here. So likely very few of them decided to stay in Ireland, a place not noted for its lovely weather, where the natives did not speak the same language, etc. Let’s be generous and say 50 Spaniards stayed in Ireland. There’s been about 15 generations since then. They’re still not all responsible for every olive-complexion in the island today. 3% Iberian peninsula on your ethnicity result does not mean you’ve got Spanish ancestry. Rant over!

Have you any other myths in your family tree that you’ve proven or disproven? Let me know in the comments.

As we’ve moved into our summer time clocks, everything looks bright and fresh. It’s a time when many people like to do deep cleaning at home. This month, I’ve got some podcast recommendations for you, in case you need some company while you scrub the floors. They’re all Irish history or genealogy themed. Do let me know if you have others!

You’ll find all my recommendations in this article on my blog. Now I’ll get back to cleaning out the freezer!

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, we feel a stretch in the evenings in February and this always encourages me to take up new activities instead of just huddling in my house with a blanket wrapped around me.

The Irish Independent published an exciting piece about plans for the release of the long-awaited 1926 census next year. I’ve written a blog on it with my own suggestions on how you can prepare for it.

Are you aware the Familysearch has now enabled the full text search for the last big untapped resource for Irish genealogy? The Registry of Deeds was founded in 1708 for the purpose of transferring land from Catholics to Protestants. It was not mandatory to register a deed but more credence was given to those which were, in the event of a dispute. A somewhat byzatine source, it is unwieldy and difficult to use, especially if you’re new to Irish research. However, the advent of a free text search means you can now put in a place and a name and comb through results. The transcriptions provided are done by AI so they’re not perfect, but they’re certainly good enough to skim read. If you find something of note, you can set up one screen with the text and the other with the handwritten image and manually make corrections. My own family are not going to trouble these records greatly, having very few farming ancestors or people of note, but I have found a deed relating to my great-great grandfather’s purchase of a house in Limerick in 1914.

To use it, you’ll need to register a free account on Familysearch. When you identify something, you can download a pdf of the image with the transcription. The citation that comes with it isn’t amazing but there is a link back to the image, so you can always improve the citation yourself if necessary.

I haven’t noticed a huge overlap between people who like family history and people who play video games but this one came across my socials recently and I’ve earmarked it to play. The Roottrees Are Dead is a detective puzzle game where you do research and find clues to complete a family tree. Sounds great, but possibly a bit of a busman’s holiday for me!

I have some talks coming up. If you’re a member of the Irish Family History Forum, then you’ll find me speaking to them on Saturday 15th February on how to use DNA for family history research. I’ll be on Zoom but if you’re in the New York area, then the meeting is also open to the public. Full details are here. I am a member of this society and they put on a great range of talks during the year.

Secondly, it’s almost time for Rootstech again. It takes place in Salt Lake City on 6-8 March and has both in-person and online content available. I’m delighted to be attending for the second time. Here’s a list of the talks I’ll be doing - all in Mountain Time. Unfortunately, only the webinar will be recorded. You’ll also find me from time to time at the International Institute of Genealogical Studies booth in the Expo Hall.

If you are planning to attend and would like connect or book a consultation, please let me know and we can discuss.

Today is St Bridget’s Day. Bridget is the slightly less well-known patron saint of Ireland. A couple of years ago, the government decided to make 1st February or the nearest Monday a public holiday. No one is really used to yet but it’s a nice long weekend in an otherwise uneventful period. If you’re celebrating, I hope you make the most of it.

It’s a new year & suddenly, we’re one quarter of the way through the century. How did that happen? Here’s a small look back at my 2024, which I posted for posterity.

Although I took a break from work over Christmas, I have some new articles for you to read. First up, some original research spawned by a gift of Turkish Delight. Find out why this (totally unPC but relevant) statue features here. This one was a real rabbit hole.

It’s also the time of year when I begin teaching in Malahide Community School again. There’s still a couple of places left if you are local to the area. More details & booking.

I’m rarely away from my DNA results and a glance at my Ancestry ThruLines just before Christmas prompted me to write this article about its perils.

Lastly, the first book review of the year is up. Lineage Societies by Kimberley Ormsby Nagy - it’s not really for a European audience, but I suspect of great value for those who want to join a society.

I’m busy finalising my lecture schedule for the year but March is already shaping up to be a busy month between a return visit to Salt Lake City for Rootstech and online talks in at least 2 more countries. I’ll release a calendar soon. I’m very exciting to be doing a first talk for Legacy Family Tree Webinars in August, which you can already register for! It’s all about Irish Quakers.

Let me know what your genealogical goals are for the year.

This November I’m talking about the Valuations Office, which is a working arm of Taillte Eireann, which is the national property authority. But first, I want to mention two offers.

The Irish News Archive is Irish-owned and has a large collection of newspapers. Over the last decade, there has been a huge growth in the numbers of national and regional Irish newspapers which can be searched online. They have a 25% discount running on their silver subscription and 30% off their Gold for Halloween, which is why you’re getting this newsletter on the last day of October.

Secondly, AncestryDNA in Ireland and the UK is having a flash sale at £39.99 plus shipping. I’ve never seen it this cheap before. This offer ends on 3rd November. Don’t waste time on the other test which offers traits as well. Just read your horoscope for free: it’ll be as accurate!

What is the Valuations Office?

On to the Valuations Office then. Taillte Éireann is the umbrella organisation which manages property in Ireland. It also has responsibility for the Registry of Deeds.

The Valuations Office is where you go to trace who owned a plot of land over time. Following on from the Primary Valuation of Ireland (colloquially known as Griffith’s Valuation), land was periodically resurveyed and valued, approximately every 5 years. This included updates to the occupier (tenant) and immediate lessor (who they were renting from) as well as the size and type of holding (in acres, roods and perches) and the value of it (plus any buildings on it) in pre-decimal pounds. Different coloured ink was used as a shorthand for particular years in a given decade (see example below).

Valuation Office, Irish Life complex, Abbey St, Dublin (my own photo)

Therefore, it can be very useful for tracking land ownership over a long period of time. In many counties, these records run right up to 1977. It’s a repository that I make frequent use of. The genealogical uses are myriad but here’s just a couple of examples.

Susan has identified her family in the 1911 census but the description just gives a house number in a townland. She would like to be able to plot this on a map and see what is there today. The Valuation Office records can be consulted to find the correct name in that townland - being careful to confirm that there isn’t another person of the same name to get mixed up. This can then be plotted on to a map with longitude & latitude.

Roger knows that his family ran a farm near Tullamore in the late 19th century, but cannot find them on Griffith’s Valuation, which means they must have taken possession after it was surveyed in 1854. Using the Valuations Office, he can work backwards from when his family were there and see when the names changed. This might lead to the identification of a lease.

Where are these records?

If your ancestors were in modern-day Northern Ireland, then head straight to PRONI to view the revision books for those 6 counties online from 1864-1933. These records are not transcribed but you can search by placename and then flip through the pages digitally. Thanks to Allie for reminding me that there is a not great transcribed version of this on Ancestry too.

If your ancestors were in the modern-day Republic of Ireland, then the records are not online. Most counties have been scanned but you need to go into the Valuations Office to view them on a computer. There are no current plans to make these images available online. Staff are helpful, but you do need to make an appointment, and visitors should note there is no public toilet (which I think is totally unacceptable). You can photograph the images from the screen or pay small fees to print out pages.

Let’s take a look at some images - all my own photos. This first example is from the townland of Clonad in Philipstown, Co. Offaly. You can see here that plot 1 has changed from Patrick Keating to Mary Keating and over in the observations column, the matching purple ink shows this revision happened in 1908. We might find here taht Patrick died since the previous valuation and Mary, his wife, took over. Of course, this can be verified by looking at the death records on Irishgenealogy.ie. There are also changes to several other plots on this page.

This next example is from Portnard, near Doon in Limerick. The purple stamp marked LAP indicates a plot has been purchased by the occupier through the Land Acts. In future, this may mean we can consult the archives of the Land Commission to see the documentation on this purchase but for now, they remain closed to the public. The words “in fee” mean owned.

As with Griffith’s Valuation, if there’s no differentiation, then the same name appearing at more than one plot in the same townland can be taken as the same person. I have sometimes seen these plots linked in the notes, as shown in this example from Rush, Co. Dublin.

I hope you’ve found this newsletter useful. If you’re not in a position to visit the Valuations Office yourself, please contact me for a quote to get photos of a townland or property.