Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
I was in Paris recently and had the great pleasure of going to dinner chez my 1C1R and his husband. My friends and I were made very welcome, treated to a delicious meal and great conversation. Early in the evening, I was told there was a surprise for me later. I don’t really like surprises…
Ancestry has released a new ethnicity feature which separates your DNA by parent. I’ve just looked at mine and, well, it’s not what I expected. So what is surprising me is that I have known Scottish and Welsh ancestry on my mother’s side, and no known from either on my father’s side, which due to…
For International Women’s Day 2022, I’ve written up the life of Annie Mahony, one of my great-great grandmothers. Sadly, I don’t have a photograph of her, but she had at least 186 descendants. I’m hoping to share this amongst as many of them living as I can find & perhaps someone will have one that…
It may be Nollaig na mBán in Ireland today but it’s genealogy Christmas in England and Wales. The 1921 census has been exclusively released on Findmypast. It was taken in June of that year. This census was the first after World War I and saw some slight changes to format notably: Employer’s name and place…
UNESCO designates 8th September every year as International Literacy Day. It promotes the importance of literacy as a human right. Who among us doesn’t love getting caught up in a great novel? In this modern world, very few activities still require your full attention, we’re always on our phones or something, but reading is still…
This week I’m discussing how to break down a DNA match who has not responded to your messages. I had great success with this technique on a DNA match on MyHeritage recently. If you haven’t already taken a test with them or uploaded your results from another database to My Heritage, then it is worth your while.…
As we approach a second St Patrick’s day still beset by a terrible pandemic, albeit with light on the horizon, I wanted to focus on a collection of records that are relevant for our large diaspora. 80 million people around the world claim Irish heritage and half of that number are in the USA. I’ve…
This year, to mark International Women’s Day, I’ve created this graphic celebrating my four great-grandmothers.
The Irish Genealogist for 2020 has been published this week. It goes out to all members of the Irish Genealogical Research Society. I’m delighted to see my own article in it. My One-Name Study of the Ure families of Ireland represents more than a decade of research into this surname, which is more commonly found…
Many of us are researching our ancestry from a great distance. We might not easily be able to travel to the location our ancestors lived and see the local landscape. This may be for many reasons but it’s especially true at the moment, when Covid-19 means we are safer limiting our movements. The above marriage…