Ireland

Recently I came across a Flickr group for Churches of Ireland. People have taken photographs of all sorts of churches in Ireland. You can search by county and some place names. You never know what you might find so go in and have a look.

Similarly another website is Stain Glass in the Church of Ireland. These are photographs of stain glass windows found in some Church of Ireland churches. They provide the date of the window, who designed the window and the studio that made it, who commissioned it and other information.

The search can be done by building or window. You can even search by the subject type of the window. Buildings are broken down into the choices of buildings, location, diocese, county, architect, country and parish group. Country is either Northern Ireland or the Republic.

The window search is broken down into building, iconography, artist, studio, date, location, diocese, county, architect, country and parish group.

You can leave the search criteria broad and have a large number of windows to look through or you can narrow the search. When the search is complete you have the option to display the windows or remove the criteria and start again. If you chose display you get a list at the bottom of the screen. If you click on the highlighted numbers under the window section you will see the display of the windows. If you click on the highlighted Principle Name you will get a picture of the church and the windows. You can click on the smaller images to make them bigger.

If you click on Diocese you will get a long list of the churches in the diocese. There will be pictures of the church along the bottom of the screen and if you click on the image you will get more detailed information and pictures of the windows for that church.

When people think of churches in Ireland the first thing that comes to mind is Catholic and Church of Ireland. Then you might think about Quakers, Presbyterian and Methodist. There are other religious denominations represented in Ireland. You can find Jewish, Baptist, The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, The Salvation Army and Moravian just to name a few.

©2011 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved

RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) is the National Public Service Broadcaster for Ireland. On RTÉ Radio One there is a program called “Documentary on One”. They cover many and varied topics. I download them through ITunes and listen to them on my IPod. You can also listen to them online or download them from their website.

Under the topic history was one very interesting program. It is called “Bullet Holes in the Manuscript” and was broadcast in 1991. It is a radio documentary that focuses on the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland in 1922. It is very interesting to find out some of the stories behind the event.

I remember my Grandfather telling me that he was 11 years old when the fire started and he saw bits of scorched paper floating down into his back garden. The family lived in Clonskeagh a suburb of Dublin. He said it was quite a sight and although my Grandfather did not know it then he was watching some of his nations printed history float down into his garden.

©2011 – Blair Archival Research All Rights Reserved

Have you visited the National Library of Ireland’s website recently? They have a lot of information available on their website to help the family historian.

The first is their page on doing family history research at the National Library of Ireland. Here you can download a PDF file to help you get started. The file is two pages and gives brief descriptions of civil, church, census and land and property records. There is a list of useful addresses to further your research.

On this page you will find a link to a description of the Genealogy Advisory Service which is free to all those who go to the library.

There is a searchable online catalogue and if you are lucky you may find some digitzed items in the results. You can narrow your search to just digitized items but you may miss out on something important.

Sources Database is the online version of Hayes Manuscript. I discussed this database in a blog posting entitled “Hayes Manuscript now Online at the National Library of Ireland.”

The Newspaper Database is a searchable database to find newspapers available at the library by either publication name or by publication town/city or county. You can chose to include titles from the Newsplan Project which are not held by the National Library of Ireland.

Manuscript Collection Lists provides a detailed listing for the contents of the manuscript collections. You can search by the following categories: business, cartographic, estate, family, Gaelic, literary, military, personal and political. You can browse the records by these categories as well.

Photographic Databases include: The Lawrence Collection, The Clonbrock Collection, The O’Dea Collection and The Poole Collection. This past St. Patrick’s Day Ancestry announced that they had the Lawrence Collection. You can view it for free here. Searches can be done by county, description keyword and location keyword.

The Clonbrock Collection can be searched by title, subject and year. The O’Dea Collection can be searched by county, location, description, date and subject. The Poole Collection can be searched by subject and year. There are some more specific search criteria but these will be the ones used by most family historians.

The Digital Photographs Database has eight collections: Clarke Collection; Eason Collection; Independent H Collection; Lawrence Royal & Cabinet Collections; Keogh Collection; Poole Whole Plate Collection; Stereo Pair Collection and the Tempest Collection.

I found the Stereo Pair Collection fun to go through. They were meant to be viewed in a stereoscope where you would get a 3D image of the photograph. The years covered are 1860-1890.

There was one of the Little Sugar Loaf in Wicklow that brought back memories. We used to climb the Little and Great Sugar Loaf mountains and have a picnic near the top. They were called Sugar Loaf because they looked like a loaf of sugar. You used to get sugar in a conical shape and shave off the amount you needed. You have the ability to order a digital copy of the images.

Why not go in and have a little fun at the National Library of Ireland today. You do not have to travel to Ireland to do it!

©2011 – Blair Archival Research