I've just attended the final PRONI stakeholder forum this year, and there is some great news for family historians - PRONI's Christmas gift to us all is going to be the online release of the digitised indexes to Belfast's poor law applications from 1892-1921!
The index books, which cover periods of 3 months at a time, are for applications made for indoor relief, i.e. into the workhouse, and are catalogued under BG/7/GK/1-107. Whilst the admission registers themselves are not going online, being able to research the indexes through the online catalogue is still going to be a massive game changer for poor law research in the city. The first tranche will be out towards the end of this month (expect the update around 29 DEC 2021), and there are plans to extend the coverage further in due course. Wonderful!
Also from PRONI, on cataloguing there has been a recent effort to re-catalogue some materials previously recorded at series level only concerning the papers of Sir Wilfred Spender, the first secretary of the Northern Irish government post-Partition, and some items from Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. These include a mixture of offical papers and private papers, and will be available at D/12/95. The papers of Sir Wilfred Spender will be available to search now at item level. There will also be some official records catalogued under PM8/1 including correspondence from Sir Wilfred Spender covering the period 1921-1923, with letters concerning ex-servicemen seeking positions in the new state, the death of Michael Collins, the opening of the Northern Irish parliament, and more. Also tying in with the centenary of Northern Ireland will be the release of a hundred government files from the 1920s, including topics such as raids by the B-Specials, and some more recent records from 1997-98, which will include discussiuons leading up to the Belfast Agreement.
On site, PRONI will be shifting to a six weeks in advance booking system, to help better cater for those travelling from afar, and in the public search room they have also now taken out a subscription to the Library Edition of Ancestry, which will be accessible on two separate terminals (FindmyPast is already available on site). Further good news is that PRONI successfully made it through its summer mid-point review this year with regards to its accredited archive status.
Coming up in the near future, PRONI will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in both 2023 and 2024 - PRONI was created in June 1923 (after provision was initially made in the Government of Ireland Act, 1920), but did not actually open its doors to the public until March 1924, so there are two pegs well worth commemorating! Stephen Scarth has been tasked with writing an offical history of the institution, which he promises will be 'myth busting'.
Various projects will be created to help celebrate the anniversary, including a 100 PRONI documents project flagging up some extraordinary stories from the archive's history. One interesting fact mentioned by Stephen was that PRONI's first offical acquisition was two 18th century maps depicting Cookstown in County Tyrone, as sourced from a holder in Dublin. Since then PRONI has become a world class archive, with some particularly brilliant collections on areas such as emigrants letters, and the linen industry of the north.
For forthcoming PRONI events, visit https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/talks-and-events-proni.
Thanks again to the PRONI team for a great service provision in a challenging year, and a Happy Christmas to all in Belfast! (And I'm looking forward to the day when we can have on-site meetings again, once Covid diminishes - I miss my annual trip to the Christmas market after the December meetings!)
Chris
My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - 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. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
