Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
Back to our Past (BTOP) has existed in a physical format for several years now. It usually comprises of an exhibition area with stands from various repositories, commercial entities and family history societies, and runs a strand of lectures on traditional genealogical research. In recent years, these lectures have been largely focused on records offered…
For lots of our ancestors, we don’t know what they look like, or what they liked to read or eat. We can look them up in records and gain some information. One of my great-great grandmothers was called Anne Rourke (though her surname is variably spelled in different records). She was born during the Great…
In a previous blog post, I looked at the sizes of families and infant mortality across three generations of my tree. This time I’ve examined the average age of women having their first child. I’ve sampled 100 Irish women, whose age can be verified from a birth or baptismal record and compared the age each…
If you’re a user of Ancestry, and you have a tree attached to your account or DNA results, then you’re familiar with this little leaf which appears to give you hints. These suggestions come in 2 forms. This blog discusses how to know when to accept or ignore them. It can be very exciting when…
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…
Today is not the St Patrick’s Day we’d hoped for in Ireland. Our parades are cancelled and most people are cocooned at home, worried about COVID-19. Let’s take a look at some St Patrick’s day-related genealogy. This blog post stems from some research done as part of the National Library’s Genealogy Advisory Service last year.…
I often find it happens in genealogy that I’m researching someone and discover that it is their birthday or death anniversary on the very day I’m looking them up. Earlier this week, I was adding a distant cousin to my tree, newly discovered, but then found that it was the second anniversary of her death.…
Irishgenealogy.ie is one of the top sites for Irish ancestral research. It contains the historic civil records for Ireland (with data protection limits in place). I use it daily in my work. You can search by a full name or just a first name or surname and also by specific date parameters. But you can…
Readers of my blog will know about my long-term Ure One Name Study. A sister of my Ure ancestor, Margaret, was married by 1901, and widowed by 1911. She had one son. The husband was not present for the census and up til recently I’d never found any evidence of a marriage or the birth…
I was recently doing some work for a client from Cork. The family had 2 branches, based in Monalahy and Newcastle, 2 townlands near Blarney. When I looked at the 1911 census, I found the 2 branches easily. But for the 1901 census, it wasn’t so easy, as both townlands seemed to be missing from…