A two-centre conference entitled Plantation Families: People, records and resources will take place in September. It is aimed at anyone with an interest in the Ulster Plantation of the early 17th century, a period of crucial importance in the shaping of modern Ulster and Ireland.
Venue and dates:
PRONI, Belfast: Friday 27 September
Tower Museu, Derry: Saturday 28 September
The focus of the PRONI presentations will be on early 17th-century records for Belfast and east Ulster while the Derry sessions will concentrate on Derry and the Northwest.
Held in tribute to the life and work of Ulster historian R J (Bob) Hunter, the conference will be chaired by Dr Sam Burnside. Speakers include Dr Brendan Scott, Dr Patricia Stewart, John Johnston, Ian Montgomery, Dr Glynn Kelso, Bernadette Walsh, Brian Mitchell, Ruairi O Baoill and Dr William Roulston.
The conference is free to attend and will be held 9:30am–4:00pm on both days. Refreshments will be provided. Booking for one or both days is essential: tel: +44 (0)28 9066 1988 or email.
The Ulster Historical Foundation (UHF) needs some help with a research project. It has been commissioned to carry out research into Ulster Presbyterians who sought refuge in the United States around the time of the 1798 Rebellion.
Many Presbyterians in the north of Ireland, along with a good number of other Protestant dissenters and Catholics, supported the United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group. As a result, a number of them had to leave the island.
The UHF project aims to find out more about these individuals and their experiences in the US and has assembled a team of academics and researchers on both sides of the Atlantic to investigate further. So, if you have an ancestor who was involved in the United Irishmen cause and left Ireland as a consequence, please contact the UHF by email, using 'Presbyterian Exiles of 1798' in the subject line.
The UHF is committed to keeping your information confidential; no details will be released into the public domain without your permission.
The Library of the Irish Genealogical Research Society will re-open tomorrow, Saturday 18 May, at the Society of Genealogists in London.
Internationally recognised as the most important collection of Irish genealogical materials in private hands, the Library had to leave its long-term home in the crypt of St Magnus the Martyr in Lower Thames Street on the expiry of its lease back in March. The move to the Society of Genealogists (SOG) is a temporary arrangement while the IGRS seeks a permanent accommodation solution.
Space at the SOG is limited, so it hasn't been possible to relocate all the Library's holdings; much has had to be put in storage, off-site. However, some of the most popular and regularly accessed materials can be made available to visitors at the new venue. Among them are collections of family manuscripts, including the Michael Leader manuscripts and the Rosemary ffolliott manuscripts; the Francis-Jane French collection; the Michael Leader Parish Register collection and all volumes of O'Kief, Cosh Mang. Many digitised collections will also be available on the Society's laptop.
As previously, the IGRS Library will be open only on Saturdays, but to fit in with the SOG schedule, operating times are slightly amended to 1:30pm to 5:30pm. IGRS Members may visit the Library free. Non-members are also welcome but a charge of £10 per visit is made. All visitors to the IGRS Library will be issued with a special temporary pass to the IGRS section for the day. This pass will not provide access to the SOG Library.
The Library team ask that anyone planning to visit should email in advance so that the relevant files and manuscripts can be retrieved from the SOG storeroom in time for their arrival.
The Society of Genealogists is located at Charterhouse Buildings, Goswell Road, London EC1M 7BA. Map.
DOWN Genealogy Archives Miscellaneous –
Protestants in favour of Catholic Emancipation: signatures from HILLSBOROUGH and NEWRY Cemetery Records –
Balligan Church, Parish of Inishargy Memorials
DUBLIN Genealogy Archives Headstones –
Mount Jerome Victorian Chapel Memorial Plaques Cemetery –
Drimnagh or the Bluebell Churchyard Memorials v.7 pg 29-34
FERMANAGH Genealogy Archives Church –
Colaghty: List of young persons confirmed by the Bishop of Kilmore on 16/6/1856
Tempo (CoI) Births, Marriages & Deaths Census –
1766 Derryloran Parish Religious Census
1766 Devenish Parish Religious Census
*numerous others
A full week of free-of-charge events to celebrate the Gathering will kick off with a Genealogy Day at Skibbereen Heritage Centre on Saturday, 17 August.
The Centre's family history team (William, Margaret, Patricia and Deirdre... take a bow) will be ready and willing to help all-comers to find their West Cork roots. Free 30-minute consultations (2pm–5pm) are available for booking now. To reserve your place, please call Skibbereen Heritage Centre on +353 (0)28 40900 or email.
The afternoon's one-on-ones will be followed in the evening with an illustrated talk by William Casey on genealogy research. I've interviewed William in the past and know that he's an experienced genealogist with an impressive depth of knowledge of the area's history, so I'm sure his talk will be highly informative. He'll be concentrating on practical family history steps and how to avoid the most common pitfalls encountered by researchers.
Booking is required for William's talk, which starts at 8:30pm and is free. Use the telephone number or email above to book.
Belfast will be celebrating its rich maritime heritage over the upcoming Late May Bank Holiday Weekend (Saturday 25 to Monday 27 May) at Queen's Quay extending down to Titanic Belfast. The Belfast Titanic Maritime Festival will see tall ships and many other vessels arriving in the lough and all manner of family fun to be had on the quays.
Among the events of most interest, perhaps, to those with ancestors from the city, is the Titanic Walking Tour. This follows in the footsteps of the famous ship's builders on a guided tour of Queen's Island, where Titanic and her two sister ships were designed, built and launched. The tour will depart at 11am, 1pm and 3pm on each of the three days of the Festival, and is free. Booking is required on +44 (0)28 9024 6609. Details.
A new Trinity College website has brought together a unique 17th-century map collection for the first time in 300 years as a free, publically accessible online resource. The Down Survey website maps out in great detail the dramatic transfer in landownership from Catholics to Protestants and changes our understanding of 17th-century Ireland (video below).
The Down Survey of Ireland was undertaken by the Cromwellian regime in the years 1656-1658 and introduced modern mapping techniques into Ireland to create the first recognizable maps of the country. It was also the first ever detailed land survey on a national scale anywhere in the world and measured all the estates to be forfeited by Catholic landowners.
This magnificent map collection, the originals of which were destroyed in two fires in 1711 and at the Four Courts in 1922, comprises county, barony and parish maps and is rich in detail showing not only townland boundaries, but also churches, roads, rivers, bogs, woods and settlements.
Led by Dr Micheál Ó Siochrú, Associate Professor in Modern History, TCD historians have now tracked down over 2,000 contemporaneous copies of the original survey maps in dozens of libraries and archives throughout Ireland, Britain and France, and brought them together as a free online resource.
By overlaying these maps onto Ordnance Survey maps and Google maps, and employing GIS technology, the website allows users to explore this turbulent period in Irish history to an extraordinary level of detail.
Key features of the website include:
2,000 magnificent county, barony and parish maps from the Down Survey
National, provincial and county maps detailing massive landownership transfer
Mapping out of murders and violent assaults reported during the 1641 rebellion
Representation of 17th-century road network
Searchable database of over 10,000 landowners
The official launch of the website took place this evening at Trinity College Dublin.
Watch the video below (it's 5.5 minutes long) for a great overview of the website and how it links up with TCD's earlier release of the 1641 Depositions.
Dr Micheál Ó Siochrú will be presenting a lecture about the Down Survey project at the IGRS Open Day in Dublin on Saturday 25 May. Details.
