Saturday 31 August 2013

The Importance of Sources

It can be so easy to get carried away when you find that new snippet of information. So many times I have slotted in a new piece with great excitement only to come back to it months later wondering about its reliability. I used to never put down my source, not realising how forgetful I am. It was a hard lesson learned, I had to remove some data from my tree as I could not be sure of its accuracy. No matter how much I rack my brain I can only very rarely remember where I got a document.
When you get something new get into the habit of putting the source in as well straight away. It will save you heartache in the future.

Catholic Church Records



 Some of these records are online on www.irishgenealogy.ie At the moment they have Dublin city, Carlow, Cork and Kerry available but it is a work in progress and they hope to have more up soon. The church records would have baptism, marriage and burial details.
The baptism record would have the date of the baptism, this usually occurred within days of the birth. It would also have the name of the child, the names of the parents, the family address and the godparents names. The godparents would often be family members which is handy.
The marriage record generally have the date of the marriage, the names of the spouses and witnesses, the parents names, ages and occupations. You will often find that records only have the basic details but it all helps.
The burial record contains very limited information. Usually only the date of burial, name and address of the deceased and sometimes the age of the deceased.
While the burial record does not contain much, if it helps you locate the grave then that is of huge benefit. Families are usually buried together often with son or daughter in laws as well. You can get the family members and if you are lucky a daughters married name too from a grave. Also buried in the same graveyard would be other family members and relatives so it is well worth visiting the graveyard if you can. If not then a lot of graveyards are on www.Internment.net
Graves from Co. Kerry are available online at www.kerrylaburials.ie
A very exciting new graveyard database that is being constantly updated is historicgraves.com. They have photographs of headstones and their details available on the site. This is a community led project which is hoping to eventually transcribe and photograph all the graveyards in the country. The website itself is very well laid out, be sure to check it out for yourself.

Saturday 24 August 2013

Irish

Tracing Irish ancestors is not as difficult as you may think, to a point. Once you start going into the early eighteen hundreds it does become more difficult.
I have taken advantage of the Internet to trace as many of mine as possible without having to get up from my seat. There are more and more sites coming on line everyday with Irish records, the problem is they are all spread out, there is no central place you can go for all of them.
I am going to attempt to list them here for you. I will start with the ones I found the best and use time and time again. At the top of the list has to be the National Archives website where they have the 1901 and the 1911 census available free of charge. Next is the church records website but mostly for Co. Kerry. Hopefully they will get more counties on to it eventually. They have changed the layout of it recently to include more of their collections but they have made it overly complected. I only use it for the church records at the moment.
I have written a booklet for the kindle which goes into more detail about the availability of Irish records on the Internet. You can find it here: Booklet
An absolute mine of information can be gotten from the Mormans website, familysearch.org. They have collected births, marraiges, deaths, prision records, and many more documents for people all over the world not just the Irish.

1) http://www.nationalarchives.ie/
2) http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/
3) https://familysearch.org/

In The Begining

I first started Genealogy as something I could do with my Father. It quickly took hold to become one of the most fascinating hobbies I could ever have imagined.
I believe it is a way of keeping people alive. I don't just try to find out how a relative fitted into my tree but I also try to find out the things that made them who they were. What they looked like, what their story was.
I have travelled continents with them, cried when I realised they were never to see their parents again and shared their happiness when things went right for them.
Genealogy opens up whole new adventures that you never knew existed but are all part of a story, your story. I hope I can help and maybe even inspire you to find the adventurers in your family too.