Scottish GENES

Sunday, 10 March 2024

Ancestry adds three new collections from Guinness, Ireland

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) has added the following new collections relating to Ireland:

Ireland, Dublin Coopers Society and Brewers' Guild Records, 1702-1945
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62587/
Source: Dublin Coopers Guild and the Brewers' Guild of Dublin. Dublin, Ireland: The Guinness Archives.

This collection includes an index of the membership of the Dublin Coopers Guild in Ireland, between 1765 and 1945 and minute books from the Brewers´ Guild of Dublin and Coopers' Guild. Notations about individual members were entered in handwritten indexes. The entries were made in alphabetical order based on the member's last name. Images of the original documents are available.

Using this collection

Records in this collection may include the following information:

Name
Place of residence
Residence date
Death date

This index can be used to confirm whether your ancestor was a member of the Coopers and Brewers Guild in Dublin, Ireland, at a specific point in time. The index also can be used to confirm where your ancestor lived when they were in the guild and possibly also the date they died.

Ireland, Guinness Trade Ledgers, 1860-1960
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62562/
Source: Guinness Trade Ledgers. Dublin, Ireland: Guinness Storehouse.

This collection contains images of trade ledgers produced by the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, and England between 1860 and 1960. The brewery's sales and personnel records were kept in printed ledger books. Entries were often handwritten during the earlier years included in the collection, and as the years progressed, the ledger entries were typed.

Using this collection

Records in this collection may include the following information:

Name
Employment date
Business Place

The records in this collection can be used to verify that your ancestor did business with the Guinness Brewery at a particular location and time. The records also may be useful for someone researching the financial history of Guinness Brewery.

Ireland, Guinness Employee Records, 1799-1939
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62561/
Source: Employee Records. Dublin, Ireland: Guinness Archive.

This collection contains images of employee records from the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland, between 1799 and 1939. Records of employee activities were kept in printed log books with entries typically handwritten. The information in the records includes key dates in the lives of employees and information about their relatives.

Using this collection

Records in this collection may include the following information:

Name
Gender
Marital status
Birth date and place
Marriage date
Age at employment
Employment dates
Death date
Street address
Occupation
Location of employment
Spouse’s name, birth date, and age
Names, ages, and relationships of up to four relatives

This collection can be used to verify that your ancestor worked for the Guinness Brewery at a particular location and time. The information in the records also can be used to confirm the vital dates of your ancestor’s life and add your ancestor’s spouse and relatives to your family history.

This collection contains several different types of records, such as wage books, authorization logs, and next of kin records, that can tell you when and how a person worked for Guinness and the events recorded by the company. These records can allow you to confirm details about your ancestor’s life that may have also been pertinent to their employer.

Some images have been redacted or removed to protect the privacy of those still alive in accordance with local laws. Some indexes may not include all information as originally recorded, where it is unavailable due to privacy laws.

In addition, Ancestry has also added the following:

Ireland, 2nd and 3rd Edition Map, 1899-1905
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62575/
Source: Ireland, 2nd and 3rd Edition Map, 1899-1905. Kent, England: Cassini Historical Maps.

This collection contains images of second- and third-edition Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland produced between 1899 and 1905. The maps use a scale in which one inch equals a mile, and they were based on previous maps that used a larger scale. The maps show details of cities and villages, roads, railroads, and topographical information.

Using this collection

Records in the collection may contain the following information:

Name of county
Name of town
Name of parish
Map scale
Map images
Survey date
Publication date
Revision date
Railway lines
Topographic information

UK, Imperial Gazetteer Maps, 1900
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62577/
Source: UK, Imperial Gazetteer Maps, 1900. Kent, England: Cassini Historical Maps.

This collection contains images of imperial gazetteer maps of the United Kingdom published in 1900. Gazetteers were geographical directories that included information about places and place names. They were intended to be used in conjunction with a map or atlas. Gazetteers provided information about the geography of the region they covered, combining social statistics with content on natural elements, like mountains and waterways, and man-made elements like roads and railroads.

Using this collection

Records in the collection may contain the following information:

County name
Town name
Parish name
Map scale
Map images
Survey date
Publication date
Revision date
Railway lines
Topographic information

Further details available via the links.

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Friday, 8 March 2024

FindmyPast adds Irish Land Commission loan records 1891-1920

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has added the following major Irish record set:

Ireland, Land Commission Advances, 1891-1920

Next up we have another brand new record set, Irish Land Commissions which includes 741,255 records.

Covering 1891 to 1920, these records contain details of tenants who were able to buy the farm they occupied from their landlord and will contain the names of both parties, as well as where the farm was and how much was paid.

The collection is accessible at https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/ireland-land-commission-advances-1891-1920.

The dataset documents loans advanced to tenants under the Irish land purchase acts, as published by HMSO in its Returns of Advances Under the Irish Land Purchase Acts. Whilst it covers the whole of Ireland, this will be particularly useful for those researching in the Republic, where the actual land commission records are not available to the public (unlike those for Northern Ireland, long story!), nor the Cancelled Land Books online, the follow on from Griffith's Valuation (although these are currently being digitised, and will be made available online in due course). Although the same books for this period for Northern Ireland are available online (as PRONI's Valuation Revision Books collection), these records are still useful to show the amounts loaned to Ulster-based tenants also.

The following is an example of a loan made to folk in the townland of Ballymartin in County Antrim, including likely extended family members from my family on the Bill and Coulter lines:

And the record for my wife's great great grandmother Margaret Murray in Tibberaghny (Tybroughney) townland in Co. Kilkenny, showing a loan granted to her of £180 for her farm of some 129 acres:

You can find out more on records concerned with the Irish Land Commission in my book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, available from Pen and Sword in the UK at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Ancestors-Through-Land-Records-Paperback/p/19283, and from the USA at https://www.penandswordbooks.com/9781526780218/tracing-your-irish-ancestors-through-land-records/.

(Source: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/womens-land-army-irish-land-commissions)

Chris

Temporary changes with PRONI's reading room access, plus Northern Irish 1939 National Identity requests now being processed

I attended the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni) stakeholder forum this morning; the following is a brief report.

The main PRONI reading room is being closed for a few weeks until mid-April, in order to facilitate some building works within it - the main reception room is being extended into the reading room, and a new staff consultation room is also being created in the space. This means that for the next few weeks the main search room on the same floor will host a reading room area, which will include twelve available desks, and one of the main scanners, onto which you can scan document productions and save images onto a USB drive (NB: this is only to be used for document productions, and not materials in the search room).

There have been some changes in the search room also, with the self-service microfilms moved to the middle of the room, and with some new library space to be added in the foreseeable future.

The new on-site Axiell catalogue is now envisaged to be available from about April, after some minor problems with the software are resolved in the beta testing stage. This will replace the current Calm based catalogue system, through which document productions are ordered for the reading room.

Stormont is back up and running - which means that Northern Irish 1939 National Identity Register applications, as well as FOI requests, can now be fulfilled (NI bizarrely needs a sitting minister in place for FOI requests to be dealt with, with processing suspended whilst the parliament was adjourned). These should start going out shortly, with the current backlog envisaged to take a week or two to complete.

Following the success of the PRONI centenary celebrations, the next year-long themed event will be on diversity and inclusivity, which will last from April 2024 to March 2025. As part of this the PRONI guide on slavery will be expanded and relaunched, which will include expanded content to cover areas such as the Caribbean. There will also be a conference at PRONI to tie in with Frederick Douglas Week in April (Douglas was a former slave in the US who became an anti-slavery campaigner in Belfast).

PRONI is currently discussion a community archives scheme with Newcastle and Glasgow Universities, with an event to be hosted in June in Belfast. It is hoped that grants may be available to make four or five community archive schemes sustainable.

Bernadette Walsh, archivist at Derry's Tower Museum (https://towermuseumcollections.com), confirmed that funding was now in place for a major move for the museum, which will close at some point in the near future and re-open in late 2026 at a new facility. The new digs in Derry will have a dedicated archive room called the Archive Discovery Zone, with about eight to ten spaces, to encourage those wishing to use the archives, including genealogists. The new museum will serve the wider district, not just Londonderry city.

Roddy Hegarty of the

Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives to close for several months from June for relocation

Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives (https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/aberdeen-city-and-aberdeenshire-archives) is due to close from 10th June 2024 until Spring 2025 in order to move its entire collection to the Town House - here's the full announcement:

Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives will be vacating its building at Dunbar Street in early 2025.

To prepare, pack and move the archive collections it is necessary for our opening hours to reduce from April 2024, as follows:

1 April - 3 June:

Old Aberdeen House open Mondays (by appointment only) 09:30 to 16:30.

Town House open Fridays (by appointment only) 09:30 to 16:30

10 June onwards:

Both Old Aberdeen House and Town House will be closed.

The Town House search room is scheduled to reopen in Spring 2025 (with access to collections formerly at Old Aberdeen House at this site by prior arrangement).

Our research service has also been temporarily suspended and, whilst e-mail enquiries remain open at archives@aberdeencity.gov.uk, we may not be able to answer all queries whilst access to our collections is limited.

We look forward to updating you with our plans in the future.

(Original announcement at the archive's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/aberdeencityandshirearchives)

Chris

Thursday, 7 March 2024

The decline of ScotlandsPeople centres provision in the west of Scotland

We are now way past the pandemic, but it seems that we are now settled into a major reset with regards to ScotlandsPeople access provision at centres across the country.

The ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh remains accessible five days a week, with spaces bookable at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/visit-us. Rate £15.

The Burns Monument Centre in Kilmarnock (https://www.east-ayrshire.gov.uk/CouncilAndGovernment/BirthMarriageAndDeath/Scotlands-People/ScotlandsPeopleCentre.aspx) continues to advertise that it is open three days a week from Tuesdays to Thursdays - however, in reality it has recently been offering just one day a week, and this can frustratingly fluctutate between a Wednesday and a Thursday. You can only book a place for the following week on a Friday morning. The centre has told me that this one day provision, down from five pre-pandemic, is due to "lack of demand and staffing provision". Rate £15.

The Glasgow Genealogy Centre (https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=17698) is open just two days a week, Mondays and Tuesdays, down from five pre-pandemic, and one Saturday a month. It is very difficult to get a booking that is not at least two months away ("Please note bookings for the Genealogy Centre can now only be made up to 8 weeks in advance. This applies to Saturday bookings also"), to the point where I have given up on trying. Those living in Glasgow can chance their arm to get a cancellation on the day itself, but it's a long way to travel for a remote possibility if you live further afield. In its most recent update, on February 5th, the centre reiterated that "We appreciate and fully understand that our clients who regularly use and access the centre, along with new visitors are frustrated with the reduced new opening times, however as the Family History Centre is a non-statutory service this is not a priority and unfortunately given other statutory elements of the work that we carry out, we are currently not in a position to open any other days at this time." Rate £15.

Inverness's Highlife Highland (https://www.highlifehighland.com/archives-service/family-history/) offers just four spaces on Tuesdays and Thursdays - but recently increased its rate to £20, rather than the £15 charged elsewhere in the country.

Clackmannanshire Council's Genealogy Service in Alloa (https://www.clacks.gov.uk/culture/genealogy/) offers access five days a week from 9am-4.30pm, but closes for lunch every day for an hour between 12.30 and 1.30pm. Rate £15.

Finally, Hawick Heritage Hub (https://www.liveborders.org.uk/borders-collection-online/scotlandspeople-and-research-services/), the heroes of the pandemic when it came to maintaining ScotlandsPeople centre access when everywhere else was closed, continues its excellent provision in the Borders five days a week. Rate £15.

The service provision in the west of Scotland, i.e. in Kilmarnock and Glasgow, has deteriorated to an appalling level since the pandemic. The last straw was this morning, when having secured a booking at Kilmarnock for today, I received a phone call whilst I was parking outside the centre to say that as there was no power going into the room, they would have to give me a refund or a gift voucher. That unfortunately is not a good enough basis on which I can rely on them for my research service needs, and so I will be defaulting to Edinburgh for the time being, until such times as either Glasgow or Kilmarnock can get their act together.

Chris

Ancestry adds third party index for PRONI's Northern Ireland, Street Directories, 1819-1900

As part of its agreement with PRONI (www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni) to celebrate the archive's centenary, Ancestry has released another third party PRONI index to its collection:

Northern Ireland, Street Directories, 1819-1900
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62710/
Source: Street Directories. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI).

About the Northern Ireland, Street Directories, 1819-1900

Here you can access over eighty years of street directories in Northern Ireland. While directories were typically maintained for larger cities such as Belfast and Londonderry, this collection also covers towns and even villages in greater Ulster. Some directories are organised alphabetically by resident's surname, while others are organised by street or occupation.

In addition to residential addresses, the directories provide information on local institutions such as banks, schools, churches, and town councils. You may also find histories and descriptions of local societies, businesses, and charitable organisations, which can paint a picture of the community your ancestor lived in.

Using this collection

You may find the following information about your ancestor in this collection:

Given name and surname
Occupation
Address

There are numerous ways street directories can be helpful to family history. Knowing your ancestor's address can help you accurately identify them in vital records, court records, and newspapers. Individuals living at the same address may lead to previously undiscovered relatives. In addition, an ancestor's approximate death year can sometimes be determined through their presence and absence in directories. Street directories also provide lists of local institutions, which can point you to a church or school your ancestor may have attended.

Further details via the link.

Chris

25% discount offer on annual RootsIreland subscriptions

From RootsIreland (www.rootsireland.ie):

Celebrate St Patrick's Day With a Special 25% Discount on Annual Subscriptions

Celebrate St Patrick's Day by taking out a 12-month subscription for RootsIreland with 25% off from 6th March to 31st March 2024!

Why take out a subscription to Roots Ireland?

RootsIreland have the most complete and most accurate set of Roman Catholic church records online, as well as millions of Protestant records, civil records, census records, headstone inscriptions and census substitutes. Our index is easily searchable and has features such as standardised surname and forename searches which make your searches even more user-friendly.
We hold over 23 million records, and our database is being added to continually. Since 2020, we have added over 1 million records to our database from Limerick, Clare, Sligo, Kerry, Wicklow, Westmeath, Kilkenny, South Dublin, South Tipperary, Monaghan, Armagh, North Mayo, Cork, Laois, Offaly and East Galway. New records are continually being added to our database throughout the year, which will be announced in due course.
Together, our 34 genealogy centres have an unparalleled amount of local knowledge which can be invaluable to those tracing their ancestors, a service which no other website or company can provide to such a high standard. By taking out a subscription with RootsIreland, you are helping these centres to continue to provide a world-class service and securing many Irish jobs.

If you have any questions please check our Help section and if this does not provide an answer, then you may contact us or one of the county centres. You can check what is available on our site for each countyÂ here.

*Offer applies from 6 March 2024 to 12 midnight Irish time on 31 March 2024 only. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.

(With thanks to RootsIreland via email)

Chris

Sunday, 3 March 2024

Association of Genealogy Educators and Schools (AGES) conference on March 16th 2024

Registration for the annual conference of the Association of Genealogy Educators and Schools (AGES) is now available online at https://agesgenealogy.org.

This online conference, to be held 16 March 2024 via a Zoom space, will bring together international participants involved with or interested in genealogy/family history education at the college/university level. Founded in 2018, the Association of Genealogy Educators and Schools supports developing the academic field of genealogy and family history via teaching, training, and research.

The theme of the conference is “The influence of technology on academic genealogy and family history.”
Speakers from around the world with a variety of disciplines and backgrounds will be giving talks on a variety of topics including:

•   The Future of Family History in the Digital Age
•   Family History Blogs as Recognized Research Outputs
•   Exploring the Application of Generative AI in Educational Content Creation
•   Sharing and Preserving Memories in a Digital Era

Time for discussion will also be available. All are welcome to attend and the conference fee includes membership in AGES for 2024. Registration closes on 15 March 2024.

(With thanks to Tahitia McCabe at the University of Strathclyde)

Chris

The next Scottish Indexes conference is on March 23rd 2024

The next Scottish Indexes conference takes place on Saturday March 23rd 2024, with the following talks and speakers:

'The Orkney Archive Service' by Lucy Gibbon, Archivist at Orkney Library and Archive
'Survival Sex, Poverty and Desperation: Prostitution in Aberdeen 1840-1870' by Dr. Dee Hoole
'Understanding Scottish Inheritance Records' by genealogist Chris Paton
'The John Gray Centre' by Dr. Hanita Ritchie
'Making the most of Scottish High Court records' by genealogist Emma Maxwell
'Researching Hudson Bay Company Ancestors' by Christine Woodcock
Scottish Genealogy Q&A hosted by Graham and Emma Maxwell

For further details on how to sign up, visit https://www.scottishindexes.com/conference.aspx#c3 - the schedule itself will be made available about a week in advance by Graham and Emma!

Chris

Friday, 1 March 2024

MyHeritage launches OldNews website

From MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com):

MyHeritage Launches OldNews.com: A New Website for Exploring Historical Newspapers
OldNews.com includes hundreds of millions of pages from thousands of historical newspaper titles from the U.S., Europe, Oceania and more

TEL AVIV, Israel & LEHI, Utah, March 1, 2024 — MyHeritage, the leading global family history platform, announced today the launch of OldNews.com (https://www.oldnews.com), an innovative website for historical newspapers. OldNews.com enables genealogists, researchers, and history enthusiasts to search, save, and share articles about people and events throughout history. At launch, OldNews.com includes a huge repository of hundreds of millions of historical newspaper pages from around the world, with millions more added monthly. The website features easy navigation and consists of a diverse range of high-quality publications, from major international newspapers to small-town journals and gazettes.

At launch, OldNews.com more than doubles the amount of historical newspaper content that was previously available on MyHeritage. The website includes all the historical newspapers from MyHeritage, plus new, unique content. The new content was processed using best-in-class optical character recognition (OCR) technology and enhanced with sophisticated algorithms developed in-house by MyHeritage.

Historical newspapers offer a treasure trove of stories that are rich in detail. In the past, you didn’t need to be famous to appear in the newspaper; anyone could be found in them, which makes them of tremendous value to genealogists, historians, and educators. Whether you are looking to discover fascinating stories about your ancestors and the wider historical context of their lives, or want to gain deeper insights into watershed moments in history, OldNews.com is a vital resource for you. In addition to headline news, historical newspapers offer valuable details about life events such as birth announcements, marriage announcements and obituaries; sports and culture; lifestyle news; advertisements, and more.

OldNews.com offers a wide range of publications from local, national, and international news, with extensive coverage of the 1800s and 1900s. At launch, the site includes newspapers from publications across the U.S., Canada, U.K., Austria, the Netherlands, and Australia. Millions of newspaper pages are added each month, and content from additional countries will be added in the future. The site is available in 11 languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. More newspapers in some of these languages will be added soon.

“Historical newspapers contain a wealth of information and provide an unparalleled level of detail about the past,” says Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “We are launching OldNews.com to serve as our focal point for historical newspapers, with a robust content offering. This release is just the beginning; we have an incredible pipeline of additional content and features, and ambitious plans to make OldNews.com the number one online repository of international historical newspapers beyond the English-speaking world. On a personal level, I’ve uncovered wonderful insights into my own family history through historical newspapers, and I’m confident OldNews.com will deliver similar, exceptional value to researchers of all kinds. For genealogists, nothing beats OldNews!”

The website includes an easy-to-use search engine so anyone can quickly and effortlessly find information on a person, topic, or event. Every search result includes a zoomed-in thumbnail image of the article, with the terms from the search query highlighted. The search terms are also highlighted when viewing the full article. Additional browsing capabilities and new features such as saving and sharing newspaper clippings will be added in the coming months.

OldNews.com is a subscription-based service, and customers can start a 7-day free trial to explore the content before committing to an annual OldNews.com Pro subscription, which costs $99/year with 25% off the first year.

Content from OldNews.com is also accessible with MyHeritage’s new Omni subscription plan, launched today. The Omni plan is a one-stop shop for genealogy and a superset of MyHeritage’s Complete plan. It includes full access to all features and content on MyHeritage, plus all newspapers on OldNews.com, a Geni.com Pro plan, all 2,136 genealogy and DNA webinars on Legacy Family Tree Webinars, and unlimited photo scanning using MyHeritage’s Reimagine photo app. The new Omni plan gives family history enthusiasts of all levels highly affordable access to a vast range of family tree tools, historical records, historical newspapers, innovative technologies, and expert knowledge to help propel their research to new heights. This combines many of the best tools and services in the genealogy industry into one subscription plan that is much more affordable than when purchased separately.

Existing MyHeritage users can log in to OldNews.com with their MyHeritage account credentials, and new users registering via OldNews.com can use the same login credentials to access MyHeritage. OldNews.com supports Two-Factor Authentication, for enhanced security.

COMMENT: It's always good to see new newspaper content appearting online, but I have to be honest, this initial version of the platform is not very user friendly. I've no idea how to identify what content it holds, and there is no guide on how to perform searches. Fingers crossed this becomes a more refined platform in due course.

(With thanks to Daniel Horowitz)

Chris

Pages

Sunday, 10 March 2024

Friday, 8 March 2024

Thursday, 7 March 2024

Sunday, 3 March 2024

Friday, 1 March 2024