Irish resources online

I'll be giving a talk on online Irish resources for family history this month at the following venues:

Oct 8th - Irish Resources Online (50 mins), Dumfries & Galloway FHS (www.dgfhs.org.uk)

Oct 13th - Irish Resources Online (50 mins), East Ayrshire FHS
(www.eastayrshirefhs.co.uk)

Further details via the links!

Chris

National Library of Scotland - exhibition and workshops

The Scottish Working People's History exhibition continues until the end of this month at the National Library of Scotland (www.nls.uk) in Edinburgh. Here's the blurb:

The efforts of working people in Scotland to improve their lot is part of the focus of a small display this autumn at the National Library of Scotland in the Scottish Working People's History exhibition.

There is an unrivalled collection of material relating to Scottish working people at NLS. Among the collection are the oldest surviving records of trade unions and various organisations and activists involved in the working-class movement.

From these archives come letters, photographs, minute books and printed documents to help tell the story of working people's history. The oldest item on show dates from 1761. This is the deed setting up what is regarded as the world's first co-operative society - the Fenwick Weavers' Society in Ayrshire.

Also the following workshops will be held at the library:

Discovering family history at NLS
Monday 17 October 2011, 2pm - 3.30pm
Free

Find out what resources the Library holds to help with your family history research. This workshop includes a short tour of the public areas. Please note that this is a very popular workshop and places fill up quickly, so please book your place as soon as possible.

The next family history workshop at NLS will be held on 22 November from 6pm to 7.30pm. Book your place online, or call 0131 623 3918 .


Introduction to maps at NLS
Tuesday 18 October 2011, 2pm - 3.30pm
Free

The National Library of Scotland is home to one of the largest map collection in the world. Our shelves hold everything from town plans to world atlases, railway maps to star charts.

Learn about the range of maps available, and view a selection of highlights from the collection. Includes an introduction to the Maps Reading Room. Please note that this workshop takes place at our Causewayside building in Edinburgh. Book your place online, or call 0131 623 3918 .


Read all about it!
Tuesday 18 October 2011, 6pm - 7.30pm
Free

Enjoy an introduction to online newspaper resources available via the National Library of Scotland. This free, 90 minute workshop includes demonstrations of a selection of resources and tips on how to search and discover the information you need. Workshops fill up fast, so please book your place as soon as possible. Book your place online, or call 0131 623 3918 .

(With thanks to the NLS)

Chris

National Piping Centre oral history project

The National Piping Centre in Glasgow has been awarded funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund to carry out an oral history project entitled Noting the Tradition. The aim is to create an archive of piping lore, which will be made available to the public. From the centre's site - "interviews are to be conducted with people who have been involved in piping at all levels throughout Scotland in the past 50 years, to gather their stories, thoughts and reflections on their life through piping."

For more on the story, visit www.thepipingcentre.co.uk/2011/09/30/noting-the-tradition-volunteers-needed/#more-1932.

NB: The project is currently recruiting volunteers to carry out interviews.

(With thanks to @AddressHistory on Twitter)

Chris

Fife police archive online

Fife Council Archives has added a surname list of policemen for whom it has service records online at www.fifedirect.org.uk/publications/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication.pop&pubid=AF2471DE-E467-B3C9-5E5CA5D7B12A0681. The collection includes details of police officers who joined the Dunfermline City force between 1874 and 1913, the Burgh of Kirkcaldy force between 1877 and 1948 and the Fife county police force between 1858 and 1950.

Fife Today has an article on the release at www.fifetoday.co.uk/lifestyle/police_treasure_trove_opens_up_history_online_1_1884789

(With thanks to @ScotsArchives on Twitter)

Chris

List of deceased seamen on FIBIS

The Families in British India Society (www.new.fibis.org) has added a list of European Seamen who were "dead, discharged or run" since the 31st December 1764 (IOR Ref: O/5/31 and LDS Film: 2104568) to its database, as transcribed by Sylvia Murphy.

The collection is accessible athttp://search.fibis.org/frontis/bin/aps_browse_sources.php?mode=browse_dataset&id=985&s_id=862

(With thanks to Valmay Young @fibiswebmaster on Twitter)

UPDATE: Valmay has been in touch to say that she has also added 3 more datasets of Uncovenanted Madras Civil Servants - see site for details.

Chris

CWGC October newsletter out

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission newsletter is out for October 2011 at http://newsletters.wizontheweb.co.uk/t/r-9EEDE619AF6EB7D4. It includes news on Ireland's forthcoming Back to Our Past show, famous Olympians, the Guild of Battlefield Guides, the new war memorials at Struan, Isle of Skye, and Ford Park Cemetery, Plymouth, and other stories.

(With thanks to @JimKimpton on Twitter)

Chris

Free access to various Ancestry collections

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) is providing a fortnight of free access to individual worldwide collections for a day only as part of its 15 minutes with 15 collections promotions. To see the list visit http://blogs.ancestry.com/uk/2011/09/30/15-free-collections/ - there will be free access to English and Welsh BMD indexes from 1916-2005 on Monday, October 10th.

Chris

60 years of Scottish Catholic history conference

The 20th Scottish Catholic Historical Association and Scottish Catholic Archives Conference takes place on Saturday, 22nd October 2011, at Cathedral Halls, St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Broughton Street, Edinburgh, and from 9.30am-4.15pm.

For more information visit www.scottishcatholicarchives.org.uk/Learning/HistoricalAssociation/Conferences/tabid/205/Default.aspx

(With thanks to @nicollandrew on Twitter)

Chris

Ancestry - Irish civil marriage searches walkthrough

I have been asked by a reader to clarify a marriage search on the new Irish civil records index on Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk), to point out the difference with the FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org) hosted equivalents. So here's a quick step through guide!

a) In this case I want to search for the wedding of a Patrick Giles who I know came from Carrick-on-Suir in Tipperary. I know he married an Ann Colleton, but not where and when the marriage happened. So I start with a very basic search on his name and use Carrick as a location:

b) Clicking on Search I find an entry for a Patrick Giles in Carrick comes up first in 1922, which seems a good bet.

c) If I now click on View Record, a page returns with the crucial details that I will need to order a certificate up from the GRO in Roscommon, namely name, date and place of registration, and volume and page number. If I want to order the Mormon microfilmed version of the record, the film number is also there. Note, however, one other thing - the page number, in this case 272, is listed as an active hyperlink, with click to see others on page written after it.

d) If I click on 272, a list of names now appears, all from the same page of the GRO index book. The first name on the list, before Patrick's, is Annie Colleton - so this is almost certainly the right marriage record (though there is always the possibility it is another Patrick Giles perhaps married to a Mary Kennedy). If I click on Annie's name, the same details, volume and page number, etc, will be returned.

If I did a search and knew that I was looking for a Patrick Giles from Carrick on Suir, but not his wife's name, I would still be presented with the option of knowing that either Annie Colleton or Mary Kennedy was his wife - again incredibly useful as I can now try to narrow down my search with those names to the right candidate.

The online FamilySearch version of this database does not offer this last option, making this a major improvement. The last part of a search through FamilySearch simply shows the following:

I therefore cannot find possible spouses' names through the FamilySearch database, so I cannot confirm if this is the right entry - but I can through Ancestry.

Hope that helps!

Chris

Celebrating the Census - report

Yesterday (Saturday 1st October) I attended the Celebrating the Census conference at the National Archives at Kew. I arrived early, having taken the overnight bus from Glasgow, so sat for an hour outside the building in what the English refer to as "warmth" and "sunlight", which I have to say is a highly recommended experience - it'll be great if it ever catches on here in Scotland! ("Sure we'd have a lovely little country, if they'd only move it!")

The conference started at 10am, but coffee and nibbles from 9am set the mood - bumped into quite a few familiar faces, such as Audrey Collins, Rosemary Morgan and Sheena Tait, and met a few others that I converse with on Twitter, as well as a couple of past Pharos students, so a good start! An introduction was given by Jeff James, TNA's Director of Operations and Services, to the day's activities, though I was amused in this to learn that the Scottish census apparently started in 1841, but you live and learn! (Sorry Jeff, big *FAIL* on that one!!!). Then the real meat of the day began.

There were several talks running in parallel, two at a time, so I started off listening to an interesting talk by Humphrey Southall of the University of Portsmouth entitled Making Geographical Sense of the Census: an Introduction to A Vision of Britain Through Time. The first half of the talk described the university's efforts in trying to plot the boundaries of the various administrative units identified in the censuses, which is a phenomenal task, and how the development of different district types developed in parallel with the development of initiatives such as the Ordnance Survey and Boundary Commission maps.

A Vision of Britain Through Time (www.visionofbritain.org.uk) is an immensely important website that can be used in genealogical research to identify how areas have changed across Britain, through maps, gazetteers and more, and in the second part of the talk Humphrey concentrated on demonstrating the site. To do so he chose a place name suggested by the audience, in this case Ashby de la Zouch. At this point Vietnam style flashbacks flew before my eyes, for I was once shot in Ashby, about fifteen years ago. The culprit was a member of the Sealed Knot - a director I was working with on War Walks suggested we put the camera in front of a few Sealed Knot re-enactors as they fired a volley towards us with matchlock muskets. Thankfully the muskets had no shot in them. They did, however, have gunpowder and plenty of grass packed in as wadding, and nobody told us that the grass would be shot out at about Mach 10 and scorch any item of clothing it hit! So having spent years in Northern Ireland and not seeing so much as a firework go off, I moved to England and got shot by a mad musketeer from the Sealed Knot... The grass didn't kill me, but the irony nearly did. It hurt like a bugger and it was in Ashby de la Zouch - but I digress! :)

From the humble genie's point of view a key bit of news is that the website is going to change slightly in the next month, with more clarification on what is available through it, as well as a download option for some of the maps - though I believe that is for academic purposes, so may just be through academic subscription.

There then followed an enjoyable talk by Sharon Hintze of the London based LDS Family History Centre, which is temporarily operating out of TNA for a few months. The talk was entitled Worldwide Census Returns, and did what it said on the tin, describing different census resources from around the world. The earliest census was apparently in Egypt in 3340BC, and the original name of the Domesday Book was the Book of the Treasury, so all sorts of interesting bits and bobs! The talk actually clarified something I had been unsure of with Belgian censuses. My Scottish great grandfather had spent thirty years in Brussels prior to the First World War, and my grandfather had been born there. A few years ago I went to the Brussels Archives and was given information which I was told by my translator was census information, but it was not in a decennial format, but rather a 'rolling return', with additions every time my family came and went from Belgium to Scotland or moved address between communes in Brussels. Apparently this is the form of census return in several European countries, and based on an old Japanese system, so particularly useful to establish. Sharon is currently on the hunt for an old 6th century census that was said to have been taken of the old kingdom of Dalriada (straddling eastern Ulster and western Scotland) - not one I've heard of before, but certainly one I'd be interested to know more about!

After lunch, Richard Deswarte of the University of Essex's UK Data Archive then gave a talk entitled Histpop - the online historical populations report website and other census resources from the HDS. This focussed on the Histpop website (www.histpop.org), again another important site for genies, which lists population data reports and relevant government legislation. The site currently covers the period from 1801-1937 for the UK, including the south of Ireland prior to partition, but not after, so nothing on the 1926 census of the Irish Free State, for example. The team would like to extend coverage up to 1961, but it seems a distant prospect as the team itself was recently shrunk from six or seven members to just one full time member and Richard, who jointly manages it with other projects. One ambitious project that was raised as being under consideration is a thing called the Integrated Census Microdata (I-Cem) project, which I think it is fair to say drew quite a mixed reaction from the audience. The aims of the project, from what I can gather, is to try to connect households between all of the censuses across Britain. A few genies in the room thought this seemed a bit fantastical, with the amount of errors in the censuses, spelling variants, common names (John Smith) etc. It is apparently under consideration for academical purposes, but with a commercial partner also being mooted. From my own point of view, my initial reaction was that there's not a hope in hell of getting that to work without a heck of a lot of genealogical expertise thrown in, though developing it as a crowd sourcing project was suggested (i.e. use the public) - but to be honest, I didn't quite see the point, other than for academic use. Sharon Hintze mentioned in her talk that England and Wales are the only countries in the world with four or five ways to access the censuses. We are already quite well covered on the census front, and I would have thought that the commercial firms would think of using their money and resources to try and target something else instead of playing further with the censuses.

An Irish genealogist called Helen Kelly then gave a talk on Irish census returns, a subject I am fairly well versed in, so the only real key development I got from this was news that John Grenham is currently pulling together a fourth edition of his Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, which should be out early next year according to Helen. The book is considered by most genies to be the bible of Irish genealogy, as John certainly knows his stuff, so that will be an important addition to the library when released. Helen did mention some Roman Catholic 19th Century censuses, I think she cited one from 1845 that I had not come across before, though I wasn't clear if these were national censuses, or something like status animarum records - so one area to perhaps look into further at some stage. I had a chat after with Helen and cited an observation that I had made that all the schedule forms from 1901 and 1911 that I have come across so far seemed to have been distributed by Royal Irish Constabulary officers - apparently that was indeed the case, so useful to know I wasn't going mad on that front!

Finally, I attended a talk by Mark Pearsall from TNA entitled Censuses and Listings before 1841. It almost exclusively dealt with English substitutes and listings, but was a fascinating journey through some amazing resources. He did mention that he believed that there used to be a comprehensive listing of the availability of 1801-1831 census records incorporating names available on the Hispop site (i.e. names did not exclusively start from 1841 onwards, some parishes did so earlier) - Richard promised that if it had disappeared he would make sure it went back online. One of the Jeremy Gibson and Mervyn Medlycott guides deals with the subject, and some transcriptions can be found online on the census Finder website (www.censusfinder.com), though this Histpop list is apparently the most well defined version, so well worth looking for.

Two final pieces of news - the unredacted forms of the 1911 English and Welsh censuses will apparently be going online on January 3rd 2012, but I don't know if these will need to be paid for if an entry has already been viewed, and do not know which platforms this will happen on. The census is currently available on FindmyPast (and 1911census.co.uk), Ancestry and The Genealogist. And keep an eye out in the next few months for the Scottish wills additions on ScotlandsPeople from 1902-1925, which should be out early next year.

All in all a superbly organised and executed day by TNA, and a great turn out. I should add that there were additional talks given by Audrey Collins, Dee Williams, Anna Buelow, Elizabeth Crawford and Dave Annal, which I could not go to as they ran in parallel, but feedback seemed to be great from those also. I believe some of the talks, those held in Conference Room A, will be issued as TNA podcasts at some point, though happy to be corrected on that. Will definitely go back for more at a future occasion - though may book by train well in advance next time and not leave to the bus at the last minute, which might have happened this time...!

Chris