Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genealogist specialising in Irish ancestry
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 My Heritage 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…
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.
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…
This week’s topic is inspired by a recent blog post by my friend & fellow genealogist, Sophie Kay.Do have a read of her post, but I’ll summarise here. We never really have a full picture of someone’s life through official records. In most countries, there are 10 years between censuses and anything happening in between could be…
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…
Back to our Past (BTOP) has existed in a physical format for several years now. It usually comprises of an exhibition area with stands from various repositories, commercial entities and family history societies, and runs a strand of lectures on traditional genealogical research. In recent years, these lectures have been largely focused on records offered…
For lots of our ancestors, we don’t know what they look like, or what they liked to read or eat. We can look them up in records and gain some information. One of my great-great grandmothers was called Anne Rourke (though her surname is variably spelled in different records). She was born during the Great…
As the summer draws to a close, people often look to evening classes to learn a new skill or pass the darker evenings. For almost a decade, I’ve been teaching a beginners’ Irish genealogy class in Malahide Community School. In this time, I’ve helped over many people begin or further their ancestry. I am excited…