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Upcoming Workshops

I’m delighted to announce 2 genealogy workshops during March in conjunction with Fingal Libraries. Many people don’t know where to start with researching their family history. Fingal Libraries has an array of available subscription sites that you can use in all their branches and the local archives. This series of workshops (the same in each…

Valentines

This year for Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d take a look at how often Irish people were called Valentine in February. St Valentine was a 3rd century CE Roman martyred clergyman who is also the patron saint of beekeepers and asthma. I didn’t know illnesses could have saints, but there you go! He has an…

Clusters

So it’s October already. Halloween is coming. In Irish, October is mí Dheireadh Fómhair, which literally means the end of autumn. However, there’s still a lot of leaves on the ground, and being a genealogist, leaves make me think of trees, and well, you get the picture. In between working on other people’s family history, I…

YouTube channel launched

I’ve launched a YouTube channel. The plan is to have videos on Irish genealogy and DNA testing. I have a few taster videos up already but more will come over the weeks and months. If you have any ideas for content, please do leave a comment. If you enjoy, please do like, share and subscribe!

Quaker Ancestors

I’m giving a talk next Saturday, 9th July for the Irish Genealogical Research Society on Irish Quakers. It’s free and online. You can register here. Some of you will know that I wrote my MA dissertation on Irish Quakers, who are a fascinating and quite distinct community. I’ll sharing some historical insights, talking about their…

Q&A following RootsTech

Many of you will be aware that I gave a workshop at the recent RootsTech. It was attended by people from all over the world. Unfortunately, it was beset with technical issues. The recording is now online here, but I didn’t get time to answer all the questions during the session. Fortunately, we were able…

My Genealogy Story

A new initiative born from Twitter sees family historians talking about their genealogy origin story using the hashtag #MyGenealogyStory. Here’s mine. I was a child who was interested in the past. I loved history at school. I researched some of my recent ancestors named when choosing my confirmation name. At 12, we were given a…

Graduation

I was delighted to be able to graduate in person from the University of Limerick yesterday with an MA in History of the Family. It’s been a fascinating year of study – hard work but worthwhile. It’s really added to my knowledge of Irish history and genealogy. Covid meant that this was our only time…