Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genealogist specialising in Irish ancestry
This month’s book review might seem a little out of place on a genealogy blog, but I promise you it’s not. My Name is Philippa by Philippa Ryder is largely a book about family – modern family. Philippa is Transgender and this memoir is her story of becoming the woman she wanted to be from…
This week’s review is one you may not have heard of it. Joseph Byrne’s Dictionary of Irish Local History is not a new publication – it came out in 2004. This is a fantastic reference book. It may not be something you pick up every day, but when you do, you find the rabbit hole…
Nathan Dylan Goodwin is a well-established author in the wide field of genealogy crime novels. I’ll cover some of his other novels at a later date. The Chester Creek Murders was a new departure for him as it forayed into the investigative genetic genealogy field combined with policing, as a US police detective hires a…
I had watched Julia Creet’s documentary Datamining the Deceased: Ancestry & the business of family last year and found it interesting. Her book The Genealogical Sublime expands the topic into chapters focusing on (amongst others) Ancestry, the Mormons, genetic genealogy, and the debate around ethnicity and what that means for minority groups like Native Americans.…
Today is the start of a new series on my blog where I review new and old books of relevance for Irish genealogy. No one has asked me to do this nor have I received any payment or free books for this content. If that changes, I will mention it in future reviews. Chris Paton’s…
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…
As part of work for my MA in the History of the Family, I had to contribute a piece of original research to a collaborative public history project called Ports: Past & Present. I wrote about the effect of the sinking of the RMS Leinster on the community of Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire). My ancestor…
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…
Tracing your Ancestors using DNA: a guide for Family Historians is published by Pen & Sword and edited by Graham S. Holton, with contributions from John Cleary, Michelle Leonard, Iain McDonald & Alasdair F. MacDonald. Having previously read Blaine Bettinger’s book on the same subject as a beginner a few years ago, I was ready…
My ancestor Thomas Henry Guerins had a younger brother called Joseph Francis. Here is the family on the 1911 census in Limerick city. He disappeared at some stage in the late 1910s and was never seen again. Using a combination of traditional genealogical research methods and DNA testing, I’m thrilled to say that I found…