Category: Uncategorized

As a genealogist, I get to share exciting discoveries with my clients about their family histories. But it often happens that I find something about my own family and have to do a lot of explaining before someone is interested, and then usually is just pleased for me! Tonight I’ve hit on something potentially very…

We’re all adjusting to new things at the moment. My Spring term at Malahide Community School ended before St Patrick’s Day and we’ve completed the term over Zoom. It was great to be able to finish this way and, if we have to, we’ll start next term remotely as well. But hopefully not!

It’s that time of year again. People are looking for an evening course & I happen to have one. My course on tracing your ancestors will be starting this day 2 weeks (28th January 2020). I’ll be covering all the basics: the census, civil & church records, land & military records, newspapers and, of course,…

I’m running a Christmas competition. You could win some free genealogical research. To find out more, head over to my Facebook page.

We finished another successful term of my beginner’s genealogy class this evening. My lovely students have indulged me with a photo. I always learn from something from them & we have fun along the way. If you’re interested, I’ll be running another class in the New Year. Details will be available on Malahide Community School’s…

I’m really excited to share the news of a new genetic genealogy project. Middlesex University lecturer (and my friend) Dr Britta Stordal and I are working with her under-graduate students on a genetic genealogy project. The students will examine the results of direct to consumer DNA tests from anonymous volunteers and attempt to figure out…

As a genealogist, the satisfaction of a job well done is usually rewarded by a nice thank email or letter. People will then go on to share the findings with their wider family. It’s not often though that the genealogist gets invited to the family gathering, but that’s what happened to me today. I met…

With the recent news that FindmyPast has been awarded the contract to digitise the English & Welsh 1921 census, my thoughts have turned again to the next Irish census. We were busy having a War of Independence in 1921, so skipped the census. The next one was taken in 1926, the first census of the…

DNA tests are the hot topic for family historians these days. The area can be bewildering and often it can be difficult to decipher the results. What’s a centimorgan? How do you triangulate results? How should you approach contacts? Are ethnicity results nonsense (hint: mostly!)? Should you use Gedmatch? I can answer all these questions…