Showing posts with label Irish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish. Show all posts

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Finding Your Irish Roots


There’s a new charitable organisation, Ireland Reaching Out, set up by the Irish government to boost tourism (or as they say to welcome home the Irish diaspora to their ancestral parishes) by encouraging people of Irish extraction to find out about their roots. 

One of their main aims is to identify people who left Ireland, and trace them and their descendants worldwide and their other main aim is to help people researching their Irish ancestry to find an elusive gravestone, the location of their ancestor’s dwelling, make contact with living relatives or discover more about a community. 

They’ve recruited an army of volunteers covering over 500 Irish parishes and they’re offering their services free but they offer the opportunity to make a donation too.  It’s organised at the parish level so you need to know which parish an ancestor came from, and then you can register and add details about the ancestor that you want to research. There are links to family history societies, archives, and other resources. 

Whatever the origin of your roots, find out more from the exhibitors at our family and local history fair on 11th May 2013 in Galashiels, Scotland. 

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

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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