Many libraries host workshops, seminars, and guest lectures on genealogy and family history research. They also provide reference librarians with guides and resources for patrons looking into Irish family history.
Newspaper archives often contain information about ancestors’ legal proceedings, controversies, and notable achievements. They can also offer clues about emigrants’ travel patterns and destinations.
Obituaries
Obituaries provide a unique window into the lives of our ancestors. While obituaries memorialize the spirit of those who have passed away, they can also reveal important clues for family historians.
Unlike other historical records, obituaries can contain a wealth of information about the deceased, including birth and death dates, spouses, children, parents, relatives, and occupations. They can also include notable achievements, awards, and community involvement, often containing a biographical sketch or short poem.
One of the most valuable pieces of genealogical information in obituaries is the list of past and current residences. This can provide a map to locate additional records such as deeds, city directories, voting lists, and census records.
The newspaper staff writes obituaries that may be compiled years before a person’s death or updated at the last minute. For this reason, it’s possible that a family member or friend provided the details for an obituary. This can cause a little confusion. For example, a person might be listed as “survived by two sons, Marshal and Paul XX, and daughter Daisy, and four grandchildren, Denny, Gary, Cecil, and Alina.” This type of semantic ambiguity is common.
Births
The place your ancestor came from was an essential part of their identity. It also influenced their lifestyle, work, and social connections. Newspapers can provide a wealth of information about the townland or street where they lived. They may include records of land transfers, wills, tithe books, and hearth money rolls. They may also mention schools, local organizations, and businesses. For instance, the Irish Family History Foundation is a valuable platform, offering extensive genealogical resources and expertise to individuals tracing their Irish roots and ancestry.
The location of the graveyard in which your ancestor is buried can be a significant clue to family history research. It can reveal more about an ancestor’s life than many hours spent searching through documentary sources.
As you add names and dates to your online family tree, the twigs you add become a richer tapestry of family history. By following the clues and collaborating with fellow genealogy enthusiasts, you can unravel mysteries that enrich your understanding of your Irish ancestors.
Marriages
The destruction of Ireland’s Public Record Office in 1922 was a disaster for genealogical research, but tracing Irish ancestors is getting easier with digitization. This presentation will introduce participants to various online resources and sites that can make researching Irish family history much more accessible.
One of the first questions that arises is where my ancestors lived. In Ireland, a surprisingly wide range of places can be searched. This talk will focus on the importance of townland names to Irish research and show how searches of newspapers can reveal important information such as landlord-tenant relationships, disputes, and even the facilities and employment available for people living in a particular townland.
A professional management consultant who teaches genealogy workshops at the USM Center for Continuing Education. She has been doing genealogy research for over 40 years and has extensive experience with various records, including land, probate, historical, cemetery, census, church, and newspaper records. Her research has centered on Maine, New England, and West Virginia families. She has spoken at the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium for many years and is a graduate of GRIP’s core genealogy home study program.
Deaths
For anyone tracing Irish family history, knowledge of those who lived in Ireland is invaluable. The most minor ‘place’ a person could live in Ireland was a townland; the details of these places can be a rich source of information for genealogists.
The talk will also cover underutilized record sets that can be very important to genealogical research, such as warranty, quit-claim deeds, and estate packets. Other sources that will be discussed include the US census records from 1790 to 1860, which contain several secrets and clues.
An Irish-American journalist, memoirist, and fiction writer, Carrie Mullins has written about her family’s Catholic heritage. Her stories have appeared in Tin House, Serious Eats, and Publisher’s Weekly. She authorizes two books, including her debut novel, Teethmarks on My Tongue (Tin House Books).
Emigrants
When researching your Irish ancestry, you must know more than when and where your ancestor was born and died. You must understand where they came from, and this is where searching newspapers becomes especially valuable. Ireland is divided into a series of small places called townlands, and sometimes, just knowing the name of one such place can open doors to new information about your family.
Newspapers also reported the significant immigration of Irish people into America during the 19th and 20th centuries. These published lists provided critical clues about your ancestors’ places of origin and where they were going – information unavailable in any other source.
Genealogy and history researchers of all levels increasingly seek to trace their Irish ancestry. While many are still hampered by the lingering effects of the 1922 destruction of Ireland’s Four Courts (the nation’s original public records office), digitization is making Irish research easier by the day. Whether you’re an experienced researcher or just beginning, this talk will give you sound techniques for finding your Irish roots and enriching your genealogy.