Irish Roots Magazine

Just seen the latest issue of Irish Roots.

Like the majority of Scots, I, too, have Irish ancestors somewhere in my family tree, so this looks like a useful magazine.

The magazine has 30 pages, plus covers, and is generally well laid out on glossy paper, and most of the text is black on white, which makes it easier to read. The front cover has a picture of Angela Lansbury, who stars in the popular TV crime drama, 'Murder She Wrote' and there's an article about her Irish connections inside.

There's a lot of fascinating articles in this magazine.

Most of interest to me is the article about adoption before the 1952 Adoption Act.
It discusses the records at different areas back to 1842, after Irish Poor Law was reorganised. I hadn't realised that Poor Law Unions crossed county boundaries, the article identifies the records to look for, and there's an interesting case study illustrating the difficulties.

There's an interesting article connecting an emigrant to the USA with the 1901 Irish Census, however the image of the 1901 census entry and land and building return is too small to read comfortably. There's unused space on that page, and the images would have been readable if that space had been used.

I found the article about the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the Irish equivalent to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, quite absorbing.

Other interesting articles are about stereo view photographs of Ireland; curiosities in Roscommon, and a female hangman; a review of a Family History Diploma course, the (English) National Archives at Kew and their usefulness for Irish records, and a page about the O'Toole clan.

There are also reports from family history societies, a conference in Wellington, New Zealand, an article on DNA, queries, correspondence, and adverts.

Will this magazine help me with my Irish forebears ?
Yes, and in this issue, I've seen several things to follow up.

At a price of 4.50 euros, it is on the expensive side, although that's probably due to the weakness of the pound sterling; however there's a lot of useful information between the covers, and I certainly feel that it's one of the better family history magazines I've seen.

More information at www.irishrootsmagazine.com .

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