They're here!!

The Catholic parish records database at http://registers.nli.ie/ is barely 24 hours old, and already I’ve been binge-searching it!  I have to say I’m quite impressed overall.  In 20 years of genealogy research, I’ve had basic exposure to Irish Catholic parish records that probably mirrors the experience of many of us doing family history from here in the states.  Starting with dealing with the county heritage centers in the 1990’s, moving to ordering films from the LDS when they were available, to more recently using the RootsIreland and Irish Genealogy databases online, I feel I’ve got a fairly good handle on the limitations, availability and condition of the records, especially those in the parishes I am most familiar with from Counties Laois, Wicklow, Clare and Galway.  This familiarity, along with the knowledge that these records were going to be searchable page by page only, prepared me fairly well for today’s debut.

Still I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised.  The records are pretty much as I expected, but the website itself and its search features are a definite positive.  It’s obvious that the National Library took great pains to make the database as user-friendly as possible.  This is something I greatly appreciate, knowing the hours of eyestrain that it can take to find a single record on microfilm. 

The search is fairly straight forward if one knows the parish and an approximate date.  Clear details are given as to the holdings of each parish- the years covered for baptisms and marriages, the number of images.  You can click on whichever roll within the parish contains the year you are interested in.  The image quality is also very good- I was able to navigate, and zoom in and out and maintain a clear image.  One function I love is the ease of searching page to page- no need to click a forward arrow to advance to the next image like on Ancestry or Family Search’s databases, simply just keep scrolling down to get to the next page.  Downloading the images was also easy and I was able to import into Picasa to enhance them for better readability.

Traditionally, we are lead to believe that the parishes around Dublin kept better and more detailed records than the “wilder”, more far-reaching parishes in the west of Ireland.  I found the records I looked through for counties Clare and Galway to be much easier to read than those from Laois and Wicklow- all from roughly the same time period.  So expect a few challenges to pre-conceived notions you might be holding on to!

Of course we know that not all parish records are created equal- spidery, faded writing is still going to be migraine-inducing even on an oversized monitor.  “Gaps and omissions” are going to remain a serious problem in many of the records.  (I did notice in the Aughrim, County Galway baptism records the priest had made a notation that the records were missing for an 18 month period of time- which could very well explain the absence of my husband’s GG grandfather’s baptism record)  Despite these unavoidable limitations, I can see many researchers making important discoveries using this database, and it is one I will be returning to frequently.  There’s something simply magical about seeing your ancestor’s name leap off a page of records from his or her homeland- it deepens our connection and solidifies our place in our family history.  Kudos to the National Library for providing the opportunity for people around the world to have this experience!   

Mark your calendars!

July 8 is a day family historians with Irish roots worldwide are eagerly anticipating.  That’s the day many of us will have the opportunity to get closer to our ancestors than we ever have before.  The National Library collection of Catholic parish records is scheduled to go online-bringing to the comfort of our own homes what we formerly had to travel all the way to Dublin to see.  I’m not knocking a trip to Dublin, of course, but wouldn’t that trip to Ireland be that much more meaningful if you could actually SEE your ancestor’s baptism record before you arrived?

Many of us have discovered the origins of our Irish ancestors courtesy of the County Heritage Center system, set up in the 1980’s to accommodate the growing numbers of descendants of Irish immigrants who wished to discover their roots.  Still more have used the transcription-only database of the Irish Family History Foundation, the unified organization of the heritage centers, at RootsIreland.  And some of us have even gone so far as to order films of parish records from the Family History Library, just to see for ourselves the handwritten records that show our ancestors.  The July 8 unveiling will bring all of this to us, for free!

Be prepared!  These images are not going to be accessible via search engine.  You will not be able to put your ancestor’s name into a little box, hit a button, and poof!  Instead you will have to know the county, parish, and an approximate year in order to get started searching.  In an era where a lot of internet-trained genealogists are used to nearly instant gratification, the concept of wading through page after page of spidery, smudged, faded, scribbled and all-too-often illegible handwriting is truly a foreign one.  Many of us will be transported back to a time before some census records had indexes (remember 1870?) and we would have to search whole towns and counties to find our ancestors, a not terribly happy memory!

John Grenham has recently blogged that the image quality is outstanding, but this doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have to do some work.  Having viewed  a few of these records in my day, I can tell you the form and quality varies widely from parish to parish.  Two examples I have in my personal collection are shown below.  

Baptism record of James Walsh, Agahaboe Parish, Queen's County, 1834 (sure glad I knew the date and his parents' names before I started looking!)

Baptism record of Thomas Doherty, Aughrim Parish, County Galway, 1843

You can see there is a vast difference in the above two baptism records.  In general, it will be best to have an idea of the exact parish, date and names of parents before attempting to search page by page.  The transcribed records available at www.rootsireland.ie can be used as a sort of "index" to locating the record of your choice in the National Library database.  Now, the countdown begins!  Only 58 days!

Genealogy social networking

I recently attended a large genealogy conference.  The New England Regional Genealogical Conference (NERGC) was held in Providence, Rhode Island over 4 days, April 15-18.  Genealogy conferences can be very beneficial to anyone interested in genealogy, whether they do it professionally or as a hobby.  There is always something for everyone.

One of the great benefits of attending a genealogy conference, big or small, is the chance to mingle with other people who are as enthralled by genealogy as you are.  Family historians in general lead a pretty solitary existence, and we are all used to the blank stares and vague acknowledgement we get from family and friends when we try to talk to them about our research.  Being at a genealogy conference where everyone “gets” what you mean when you talk about census records, is excited a new collection is being digitized, or knows what a GEDCOM file is can be quite refreshing.  It helps us realize that other genealogists are real people, not just message board posters or bloggers who exist only in cyber space. 

Sure, the genealogy community is connected now in 2015 in more ways than they ever have been before through DNA matches, online family trees, or even transcription projects, but once in a while we like to have that human contact.  Seeing the eager faces all around you at a genealogy conference can kick-start your research and get you motivated to move forward.  Hearing someone else’s story of success is always inspiring, especially if you can see that person in front of you and have the opportunity to interact live with them.

Then there are the genealogy celebrities- who are also real people and can be sighted and chatted with at a genealogy conference.  I personally encountered Josh Taylor of PBS’s “Genealogy Roadshow”, Mocavo.com founder Michael LeClerc and the Legal Genealogist Judy Russell.  All are nationally-known professionals who travel the conference circuit world-wide to offer their expertise to those of us who are lucky enough to attend.  They are also very gracious individuals who share a common interest with us, and started out just where we did. 

Conferences need not be big, or national in scope, to be beneficial.  There are plenty of smaller conferences offered annually in our local area that can serve the purpose of allowing us to connect with fellow genealogists, network, and learn new skills at the same time.  One that comes to mind is the annual Saratoga County Heritage Hunters conference, which is held every October.  Check out their website for more information:  http://www.saratoganygenweb.com/gwsarhh.html  Hope to see you there!

Familiarity breeds contempt, or creates opportunity

In the days before there were things like “independent living”, “assisted living” or nursing care facilities, our extended family members very often lived in the same home.  It was not uncommon for 3 generations to be living under one roof.  Families were large, and when elderly parents could no longer live on their own, they moved in with one or more of their children.  This system, like any other, had its benefits and drawbacks for those involved, but from a purely genealogical standpoint, it was a homerun!

Finding a census in which numerous generations of one family are recorded together in one household can add several branches to a family tree in a relatively short time.  Of course all relationships implied by the census should be verified by other sources, but there is no denying the giant step forward your research can take with such a discovery!

Starting with the 1880 federal census, the relationship of each household member to the “head” of the household is given.  Imagine you are trying to establish a maiden name for your great grandmother, Elizabeth Flannigan, wife of James Flannigan.  Locating a record like the one below from the 1880 census gives you the name of James Flannigan’s mother-in-law, Ellen O’Hanlan.  Now, it can be assumed from this information that Ellen is Elizabeth’s mother, but what can’t be assumed completely is that O’Hanlan is Elizabeth’s maiden name.  There is always the possibility Ellen remarried.

 

More complex extended family relationships can also be analyzed from the data found in census records to open up more research possibilities.  The 1900 census from Albany, NY, below, shows the household of William Kirtley at 838 Madison Avenue. 

   

William resides with his wife Margaret, to whom he has been married for 7 years, and their only son Alfred.  There are 6 extending family members also living in the household, as well as a “boarder”.  (often people classified as boarders are also family members).  Mary Kirtley is identified as “mother in law”, but she is likely William’s mother as they share the same surname.  Mary Chase is a widowed aunt, Thomas D. Olney an unmarried cousin, Mary Boyd, a widowed mother-in-law, Florence and Elizabeth Maxwell, teenaged nieces, and finally, Mary E. Monroe, a single boarder.  Sorting out who all these people are gives us valuable clues as to our own ancestor’s origins.  If you go looking for William Kirtley in earlier census records in an effort to identify his parents, you will know to look for him in a household with a mother named Mary. 

Though the thought of having our extended family members residing with us today makes many of us cringe, we can be happy our ancestors either did not feel the same or were able to conceal their opinion more effectively.  Either way the happy result is often more research possibilities to extend the branches of our family tree!

There's no place like home.......

Last summer I moved my mother out of the condo she had resided in for 10 years into a smaller “independent living” apartment.  In years prior, I had moved both her and my grandmother out of homes they had lived in for 40+ years.  These types of moves conjure up all kinds of emotions- sadness, nostalgia, anger, apprehension, dread.  Contemplating this got me thinking about how such a move can really be an opportunity to more deeply explore our family history, and the role the places we live play in it. 

A house becomes so much more than 4 walls and a roof as our families grow inside it.  It transforms into the place that we think of as the keeper of the memories- newlyweds setting up housekeeping, bringing baby home from the hospital, birthday parties, homework sessions at the kitchen table, bumps and bruises, accidents and injuries, backyard barbecues, proms, weddings.  The cycles of everyday life and the flurry of important milestones all take place with the house as a backdrop.  If the walls could talk, the stories they could tell!

But walls can’t talk, so we have to do the talking for them.  Cleaning out a parents’ home can be an opportunity to find the documentation of all these memories and take steps to preserve them, so the legacy of the home can be passed down through the generations.  We may never again pass through the doors of the house, but the home continues to be alive in our memories.  Many years from now when someone drives by the house, which may be greatly altered, they can smile and recall the stories that have been carefully preserved and passed down. 

There are bound to boxes and boxes of pictures that capture those special times in that very special place.  Now is the time to develop a system for digitizing them- software and scanners are developing and changing at a very fast rate.  One product I own which I heartedly endorse for both its convenience and performance is a Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner.  It’s a small flatbed scanner that runs on batteries and scans everything to an SD card that can be easily transferred to a computer.  It’s great for scanning things on the go, and can be purchased on Amazon.  There are so many options for software that edits and organizes digital photo files that certainly there would be one that would fit your budget, time constraints, and technological capability.  I use the free software offered by Google called Picasa.  It’s basic features make it easy to edit and organize your digital photo files. 

Once you have them scanned, share them!  A great vehicle for this is starting a Facebook group.  I have had a group for descendants of my great great grandparents, Alfred and Lydia Spencer, for several years now.  This group includes 50-odd members from all over the country.  Some of us know each other, some of us have never met.  There’s nothing like posting an interesting old family photo to get a discussion going.  We have debates on who the people were, what occasion they were celebrating, whose home they were in.  Somehow remembering and reflecting on these people and places makes them feel like they are using Facebook right along with us in 2015!

Saying goodbye to a home that has meant so much over the years can be painful, but it can also be an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the past.  As I get ready to leave my home of 24 years, I know the memories will stay with me, because I’ve got the tools to make it happen.