Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genealogist specialising in Irish ancestry
In researching our family history, we spend a lot of time reading old handwriting. It can be a big challenge. Here are some tips I’ve gathered over 20 years of working in the field. They break down into 2 categories: digitised documents and manuscripts. Let’s look at manuscripts first. If you’re already working with digitised…
I am delighted to announce that I’ll be speaking at Rootstech 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah. I’m giving 2 lectures: one is on Irish civil records & the second is dissecting an Ancestry hint. Rootstech is largest genealogy convention in the world. Think ComicCon for genies, professional and hobbyists alike. It takes place on…
A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk during Heritage Week at Fingal Local Studies and Archives. An Irish Times journalist came along and I did a small interview with him beforehand. He stayed to hear all the questions and spoke to some people in the audience about their use of genetic genealogy to…
On my recent trip to PRONI in Belfast, I took some time to do some personal family genealogy. I knew my grandmother’s family had lived in Belfast and possibly also Ballymena for a time in her childhood. They came originally from Limerick city and moved north because my great-grandfather, Thomas Henry Guerins, worked for Woolworths…
If you missed part I, here it is. So I made it to PRONI in Belfast. Here’s some logistics. I stayed at the Premier Inn, Titanic Quarter, which is less than 250m from PRONI. It’s a budget hotel but clean, comfortable and sufficient for my needs. The wifi is a little slow but you can…
Readers of my Twitter account were surprised this week when I mentioned that I was going to visit PRONI (the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland) for the first time. I’ve attended talks there before but never actually done research there. I wanted to take some time to explain why this is the case and…
One of my hobbies (yes, I have non-genealogical hobbies) is writing letters to the Irish Times. They’re kind enough to publish them some of the time. Here’s one I wrote before the 2022 census. So imagine my surprise when I was playing around with the new search functionality on the newspapers section of Findmypast (which…
This month sees a personal milestone. I’ve been blogging about genealogy for 10 years! I’ve been taking commissioned work for a little longer but the blog is really what helped to build my online presence (along with Twitter). Here’s a word cloud of the most common words on my blog. The blog started out with just…
I recently got a copy of a beautiful photo book called On Leaving by photographer David Monahan. The topic is modern Irish emigration. As someone who works with emigration all the time, it’s easy to forget it isn’t just in the past. A sad but lovely thought-provoking book. His website for the project is here.
Heritage Week runs across the country from 12 – 20 August. Yes, I know that’s more than a week: I didn’t pick the name! I will be doing a DNA talk in Fingal Archives in Swords, Co. Dublin on Thursday 17 August. Space is limited at the venue so booking is essential.