Church of Ireland Gazette Archive 1856 - 1923

The Protestant Church of Ireland’s newspaper, the Church of Ireland Gazette started life as a monthly magazine, named The Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, became a weekly in 1880 and changed its name to The Church of Ireland Gazette in 1900 and is still in publication. 

The Church of Ireland's record repository, the Representative Church Body Library has the only complete hard-copy run of this newspaper and has digitised all editions for the 70-year period between 1856 and the end of 1923 and it’s available in their archive.

You don’t need to have Church of Ireland ancestors or even Irish ancestors to find the Gazette useful as the paper carried pieces about major national and international issues as well as appointments, retirements and general articles.

Search the archive.

An Eyemouth Maritime Family Story

The last meeting of our 2016-17 season is on Sunday 28th May at the Corn Exchange, Melrose, 2.30pm when the talk will be preceded by the Society AGM.

Please come along to find out what we have been doing and also about our plans.

Will Collin will present an illustrated talk on "William Collin and the ‘Christina Craig’ -  An Eyemouth Maritime Family Story from the Great War". 

2018 marks the 100^th anniversary of the loss of the Christina Craig, one of many Eyemouth fishing boats and crews which were signed up by the Admiralty to serve in the World War I Auxiliary patrol. Many photographs remain in the Collin family and are included in the talk.

Welcome to 2017 – the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology

At Borders FHS, we are looking forward to 2017 - to help with your family history, to build up your family tree and add to the Births, Marriages, Deaths & Census information you already have.

The Monumental Inscriptions team are busy photographing and recording throughout the Borders.  Final checks of the transcriptions are being done at Chirnside while several other burial places have been photographed and transcribed and the MI’s available for use in our Research Room will be increasing throughout the year.

Indexing of both the Poor Law and the Police & Criminal records continue using the digitised images of the records held by the Scottish Borders Archive.

We have over 15,000 individual arrest records already and have completed the indexing of the recruitment records for Policemen in the Borders Counties.  Our home-based volunteers are working away on Roxburghshire, Hawick and Berwickshire arrest records and these are providing fascinating insights into local and social history such as the building of the Borders railway in the 1860’s, the movement of seasonal workers from Ireland and the regiments stationed at Stobs Camp before WWI.

Research for the Stobs Project, looking at the camp during the years of WWI, is both interesting and challenging.  Our Stobs research team are researching both the POW’s and the soldiers stationed there.  Find more news about the project at http://www.stobscamp.org/

Over the last year, our library has been improved by many donations of books - biographies, family histories, local & social histories.

And we are looking forward to a bigger, brighter research room.  We will be opening on Tues 10^th Jan after our New Year break and will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the end of February.  In March, we will be open on Fridays again.  Please come along and meet our research team

And we have some fascinating talks lined up – all of the talks are in the Corn Exchange in Melrose and start at 2.30pm

Feb 26 – From Abbey St Bathans to Otago – the story of a forgotten Borderer

Mar 26 - Transcribing ScotlandsPlaces

Apr 30 - Farm Servants of South-East Scotland, 1750-1914

May 28 - The Deid’s Letterwills and Legacies - Lifting the Veil on Past Lives

Look out for news about the 2017 Borders Heritage Festival (They’re on facebook and Twitter @BHeritageFest and are planning their own website as well).  Over the last few years, the festival has spread over the whole of the Borders and this year will have much more to see and do.   And you can follow us on facebook and twitter too.