Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
James Joyce is one of Ireland’s most famous authors. On 16th June each year, we celebrate Bloomsday with a festival of Joycean events. It commemorates the date he met his later wife, Nora Barnacle in 1904 in the fictional Dublin of Ulysses. Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and died in Zurich in 1941,…
It’s Mental Health Awareness week in Ireland. Prompted by my recent review of a book about Grangegorman Mental Hospital, I’ve been re-reading my great-grandmother’s medical file. Mary Bradley, née Lawless, spent the last 10 years of her life at the hospital following suicidal thoughts. She had been widowed young in her 50s with 4 children.…
This is my final blog post following my trip to Rootstech 2024 which was held in Salt Lake City in Utah. If you’re not aware, then this building is the something akin to Mecca for genealogists. The LDS Church considers genealogy a part of their religion and so they collect and make available records for…
For St. Patrick’s Day 2024, I’m taking a look at a new collection on Ancestry of Guinness records. Guinness, in case you didn’t know, is one of Ireland’s most famous exports. The Guinness Store House is a top tourist attraction in Dublin. I actually don’t much like the black stuff, but I do recognise the…
If you’ve lived in Ireland in the past 25 years, you can hardly be unaware of various historical scandals that rocked the country. These included, but were not limited to, industrial school abuse, Magdalene laundries, Mother and Baby homes and illegal adoptions. A couple of years ago, I helped a man called Denis O Sullivan,…
And so we reach the end of another great year in genealogy. Prompted by a recent discussion, I’ve been looking at the Old Age Pension search forms. This collection is held by the National Archives of Ireland. If you’re not familiar with this small record set, let me enlighten you. In 1908, Ireland was still…
If you’re looking for a unique present this Christmas, why not buy a gift voucher for family history research! I’m taking bookings for 2024.
It is often said that the Irish “do death well”. It is quite normal for people who never met the deceased to attend their funeral because they are a co-worker of a bereaved person. As I’ve been researching and revising death & burial recently for the International Institute of Genealogical Studies, I wrote some material…
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…