How to trace a family farm or homestead.
01 August 2015Regular readers of this newsletter know that the Eneclann genealogists provide the Genealogical Advice Service in the National Library of Ireland every summer. One of the most common questions from visitors availing of the service, is how to trace a family farm or homestead. If you can identify your ancestor...
Always look for the anomaly
01 June 2015Family historians often start to work up a case, with very few documents to work from. The very first thing you learn as a researcher is to compare all documents, in case one may hold a key piece of information that opens up the story. Probably my all time favourite...
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother and he holds the key to unlocking my family history!
01 June 2015Okay, so the latter part of that might not quite be true to The Hollies version, but it can be true of tracing one’s ancestors. I’ve spoken before in tips about the importance of lateral thinking when conducting genealogical research. We often get people who’ve come to us, indicating that...
The search for a birth certificate online.
01 May 2015I have recently been researching a family that lived on Inishbofin, not the island off the Galway coast but a smaller one off the coast of Donegal. I had located the family in the 1901 and 1911 Census and was now interested in finding a birth certificate for one member...
Research confirms just how important the extended family network is in Irish life.
01 May 2015In a recent case I used a cluster of marriage records (church and civil). A close examination of the names of the recorded witnesses – the best man and the brides-maid – opened up the research. At first the witnesses appeared to be unrelated to the bride and groom. A...
Expect the unexpected
01 April 2015The great (frustrating) thing about genealogical research is that just when you think you’ve seen it all, something new crops up. Before joining Eneclann I spent 9 months with the National Archives of Ireland correcting errors in the 1911 Census, submitted as corrections by users of the site. That’s right,...
Electoral registers.
01 March 2015It’s worth celebrating John Ballance’s birthday today. On this very date in 1839 he was born in Antrim to a tenant farmer, Samuel Ballance and Mary Ballance (formerly McNeice), a quaker. John moved to Birmingham as a young man and using the findmypast website for the 1861 Census we can locate him...
As we head towards our national holiday, we think of what makes us Irish
01 March 2015As we head towards our national holiday, we think of what makes us Irish. Central to that would be our love of storytelling. Family stories are a key component in the genealogist’s arsenal. Alas, stories are a double edged sword for us genealogists trying to unravel fact from fiction. The...
It’s a wise child know’s it’s own father.
01 February 2015In Irish research you will often find clusters of family surnames in places – Bluett in Ballina, county Mayo; Clooney in county Kilkenny; Butterly in county Louth, to name but a few. These are not the names of the Irish clans that ruled territories. Names like these represent more recent...
Social networking and the genealogist.
01 February 2015“For the times they are a changing”, Bob Dylan’s immortal words can be applied to many things, not least genealogical research in the digital world. The greater availability of records online and the surge in global interest in family history over the past decade has meant that never has there...
The Role of Romance in Family History
01 February 2015Births and marriages are the stock in trade of genealogists. We spend our days in dusty archives, extracting information from these documents, seeking to learn more about our ancestors. On this Valentines weekend, it seems like a good time to press the pause button, and reflect on the human stories...
Do you have an ancestor with a popular name?
01 January 2015Do you have an ancestor with a popular name? Patrick Byrne from Thurles in county Tipperary or Mary Murphy from Macroom in county Cork. Were they born between 1864 and 1877? Let’s say you have identified their baptismal record in the parish – your Mary Murphy was baptised on the...