Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genealogist specialising in Irish ancestry
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…
I’ve been using newspapers a lot recently to look for death notices and obituaries. There are two main types of notice to look for: This is an example of the former. It’s my 3x great-grandmother, Mary Lawless, née Swan, who died on the leap day in 1936. I wrote about her previously here. This is typical…
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…
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…
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!
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…
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…
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…
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…