Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genealogist specialising in Irish ancestry
As many people will be aware, a lot of genealogy happens on the internet these days. As professionals, we depend on certain websites being available to do our work. Irishgenealogy.ie is one of those sites. It’s a state-run free website which hosts civil and religious records. When it launched in 2016, I called it a…
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…
We’re well into autumn now in Dublin, the leaves are falling, the evenings are getting darker and we’re anticipating Halloween. Decorated houses are popping up all over my town. According to John Grenham, the surname Death features in Kilkenny, Wexford and Wicklow. In the 1901 census, 31 unfortunate Deaths lived in a variety of counties,…
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…
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…
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…
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.
One of the great things about genetic genealogy is how fast the field is growing. It’s changing and improving all the time. We can do all kinds of things now that 5 years ago were impossible. There’s so much to learn. I’ve written previously about clusters on my blog and I’m still periodically reviewing my…