Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
Readers of my blog will know that I often review relevant books for Irish genealogy, history and DNA research. This review is a little bit different. I haven’t been a regular computer gamer since my teens. I used to play Monkey Island and other investigative computer games on pc with my late Dad. It was…
A couple of years ago, I struck genealogical gold. We all have touchstones: things we would ideally like in our family history. Some people want royalty, but I’m a bit weird. I wanted bigamy. My great-grandfather’s first cousin, Richard Kent, was a bigamist. I wrote about it for Family Tree Magazine, in my first published…
I specifically want to address three myths about genealogy: two are specific to Ireland and one is more general. The first is the very persistent myth is that “all the Irish records were destroyed in a fire”. Like many good myths, there’s an element of truth in it. There was a fire and records were…
As an Irish genealogist, I spend a lot of time explaining context. This comes in many forms. In reports, I have paragraphs to help clients understand different sources like Griffith’s Valuation or the Tithe Applotment books. I contextualise census material by explaining that the building a family lived in housed other families in a number…
As reported by various media outlets today, 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy protection in the USA. Anne Wojcicki has stepped down as CEO but is staying on the board. They’ve also published an open letter to their customers. The current intention is to sell the company. There’s a lot of discussion on social media about…
Hot on the heels of the changes to the National Archives website, the other main state portal for genealogical research has had a refresh. ETA: 27/2 – several of the issues that I noted below are now fixed! Hence, I’ve removed or edited my comments. Last week, I was in touch with IrishGenealogy to ask…
I’m very excited to be giving a talk on St Patrick’s weekend for the Society of Genealogists in London. Sadly I won’t be there in-person to see the new premises (fond memories of the old one from my IGRS days though). This talk is all about Irish censuses and census substitutes. I’ll be covering all…
As of 5th February, there’s been a major refresh of the National Archives websites. There are a lot of changes so buckle up! This post will focus on the main genealogy changes, mostly to the census returns and I’ll do another post about the catalogue as time allows. My review is done in a rush…
Sometimes it’s a risk to watch a show that features a topic you know a lot about. You might find yourself nodding along but you also can be quickly shouting at the screen “that would never happen”. Police procedurals sometimes commit the crime of saying things like “we checked the 1991 census and here are…
I’ve talked before about the pros and cons of different kinds of hints on the various commercial genealogy sites. Today I want to write about Ancestry’s ThruLines, which are a DNA hint. When you get your results, if you attach your DNA to your tree, it will look for matches who could be related through…