Happy St Patrick's Day from your ancestors ☘

 

With St Patrick’s Day coming up on Monday, it’s the perfect time to revisit some great free online Irish family history resources that I've mentioned in the past.  I hope you find them useful!

☘  National Archives This resource for Irish research offers a free genealogy advisory service by email as well as searchable church, civil and census records. 

☘ FamilySearch Wiki provides information, tools, how-to guides, tutorials, maps and more for your research into ancestors on the island of Ireland.

☘ IreAtlas Townland Database is a comprehensive searchable listing of Irish townlands and is a handy reference resource. 

☘ Irishgenealogy.ie is a government-owned website with access to church and civil records.  Having recently undergone an upgrade, it boasts a searchable index and images for many of the records, as well as a section offering research help.  One aspect of the service is 2016 Family History, an excellent resource for learning to do Irish genealogy.  It includes a workbook, case studies, record guides, and fun tasks to complete. 

☘ Irish Census Records are available for 1901 and 1911 in digital, indexed format. Like the church and civil records website above, it's just had a facelift, so if you've used it in the past, give the new interface a try, and bookmark its new web address.

☘ Context is key when exploring the history of your family. The Great Irish Famine website delves into many aspects of this time period in the history of Ireland and its people, including a map that shows the spread of the potato blight that triggered the tragic events of what became known as the Great Hunger. It will give you some insight into what prompted so many Irish people to emigrate, perhaps including your family.

☘ If you know your ancestors lived in Dublin in the mid-nineteenth century but can't locate them in the later census returns, perhaps this online city directory will help you pin them down.

These websites should help you have a

☘☘  Happy St Patrick’s Day!  ☘☘

Online events plus free software

 

Image by Alexa on Pixabay

This week’s post is a quick run-through of some upcoming online events (one on Tuesday 11 March) and a free genealogy software program for you to try. The presentations take us around the world from England and Wales to Canada and back to Scotland and Ireland.

A free online talk from the Society of Genealogists will cover the England & Wales Pre-1841 Census Returns. Was the 1841 census the first useful one, or can surviving pre-1841 fragments and substitutes reveal more? Else Churchill will explore early census records, including some that are held in the Society’s London-based collections. If you book in advance, a recording of the presentation will be available for one month.
Book free: https://t.co/SH5qZqL2ME 

Tuesday 11 March 2-3pm

Free Census access and Mining History

Image by Sabine from Pixabay

Until the 9th of March, Ancestry are offering free access to the 1921 England & Wales census to mark Women's History Month. If you haven't already searched this census for your relatives, it's definitely worth a dive, especially as it's free. However this is a shorter free run than Ancestry's standard 14-day trial subscription, and the sign-up procedure will be pretty much the same, plus the two-week trial gives you access to all Ancestry's records, not just the 1921 census.

My discovery of the week is the Eco-Museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes, guiding you on a virtual tour of the mining areas of central Scotland. Explore the site, and the mining communities, by clicking on the website's map. Plan and make your journey on foot or by bike, using the map's guide to industrial archaeology, geology, heritage, and, most essential, cafes along the routes. Parking and public transport access points are included to make the trip easier. Once the better weather is here I hope to try it out on the ground. The site is also looking for volunteers to build some of the walks in their local area. Their Facebook account highlights the latest developments.

The whole project (which also covers mining areas south of the border) is a tribute to our ancestors who laboured below and above ground to earn a pittance - no, it's not a pun - and provides a real-time way to experience and learn more about their communities and environment.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus - the National Library of Wales

  

National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Credit: Rhyshuw1~enwiki , CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A version of this post was originally published in 2021. Links were updated and it was last republished in 2023.

Happy St. David's Day!

If you have Welsh branches in your family tree, these online records, hosted by the National Library of Wales, are well worth exploring.

This list includes just a few of the indexed, original sources they have made freely available online.  I recommend exploring the website to see more of what they offer.

Crime & Punishment   

Tithe Maps 

Welsh Newspapers  

Welsh Journals including magazines 1735-2007 

Marriage Bonds pre-1837 

Wills proved in Welsh ecclesiastical courts before 1858 

There’s also a first-steps guide to family history research, a guide to church records in Wales,  and a list of independent researchers who carry out work for clients at the NLW.

So, with all those resources, you can start your search for your Welsh ancestors right away!

 

 

This post was originally published in 2021. Links were updated and it was last republished in 2023.

New to RootsTech?

 

Next week, Thursday to Saturday, 6-8 March, it's RootsTech 2025.

If you've not come across RootsTech before, here's a quick introduction:

• It's an international 3-day family history conference
• It happens every year
• It's free to take part online
• That's it

To take part, you'll need to register, but no payment details, or indeed payment, are required. It's completely free to join in online.  Hundreds of pre-recorded presentations on a wide variety of genealogy-related subjects will be released over the three days of the event, adding to the many hundreds more already in the archive.

Watch a short video showing you how to register for RootsTech here,

then visit the conference website to sign up and learn about some of the speakers. Keep an eye on that website to see when a PDF file of the conference schedule is posted - that will help you choose which classes you'd like to watch. And don't worry if you can't view them in real time, as most of the presentations will be available for quite a while after the event.

As well as the video presentations, there will be

• Keynote speakers
• An expo hall
• Experts to chat to

and possibly one of the most useful aspects of the event: finding out if you're related to any of the thousands of other attendees, using Relatives at RootsTech.  Just last week, I used this to identify some distant cousins and see where their family tree joins mine.

The event as a whole is a great opportunity to learn new skills, discover new tools, and connect with others around the world - all helping you to build your family tree.

You can even check out some RootsTech presentations that I've delivered in previous years 😁

Exciting New Resources

 

This past week has seen the launch of two new exciting online resources. The first is Trove, the revamped portal for Historic Environment Scotland. It also includes information from SCRAN and Canmore.  

Describing itself as "the key to Scotland's past", it hosts over a million images and thousands of records and culturally significant objects. Not all of the site is complete yet, as I discovered when trying to use a link to explore objects. However there is a feedback facility which hopefully will help inform HES on how to improve things. Early days yet but a promising site.

The second resource, which I just heard about today, is Strathclyde Institute for Genealogical Studies' (SIGS) Papal Dispensations for Marriage Database.  Although I haven't yet discovered an ancestor in its records, I did stumble across a couple who were King and Queen of England.

Dispensation from the Pope was required when those marrying were related by blood. For instance, the royal couple I found had a fourth-degree relationship - meaning a third cousin, parent's second cousin, grandparent's first cousin, or a great-great uncle or aunt. Even "spiritual" relationships could be problematic. An example cited is if the groom's mother had been the bride's godmother at her christening.

The database will be most useful for those researching medieval genealogy but also provides fascinating insights into family life and religious practices of that time.

(Header image created using Bayeux Historic Tale Construction Kit)

Marriage, Slavery, and RootsTech

This week's helping of free family history events -

 ☙ As a nod to St. Valentine's Day, MyHeritage is giving free access to its marriage record collections - all 279 of them - from 13-16 February. You can find them here, and sign up for an account if you don't already have one (it's completely free to register).

☙ On Saturday 22 February, the Southern Ontario group of Aberdeen & North East Family History Society are hosting a Zoom presentation on the topic of slavery and its impact on family history. The speaker is Sally Low, an experienced researcher who just recently discovered links to slavery in her own family. She will share what she learned and how, which should make for a very interesting talk. The meeting is open to non-members of the Society and you can sign up for it on their website.

☙ Coming up at the beginning of March is the annual family history fest that is RootsTech. Now firmly in hybrid mode, a great deal of its content is available online. Advance registration allows you to browse the schedule of classes and talks and decide which ones are of most interest. Previous years' presentations are available on-demand including a few by myself 😊