Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
I am a big fan of Turkish Delight and was gifted a box of Hadji Bey at Christmas by my aunt. This brand has a long association with Cork city although the present company is no longer controlled by the original family. The box comes complete with a reproduced article from the Guardian in 1964,…
As a European, the concept of a lineage society was only vaguely familiar to me, so I was surprised when Genealogical sent me a free copy of The Complete Guide to Lineage Societies by Kimberly Ormsby Nagy for review purposes. I remember an episode of the Golden Girls where Blanche has to hide a Jewish…
It was a great professional year. I solved a number of unknown parentage cases – some of which took more than a year of work. I also wrote full family histories for multiple clients and worked on many projects helping people gain Irish citizenship and solve smaller mysteries. Here’s some highlights in numbers. 61 classes/lectures…
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…
I’ve been looking at Christmas traditions in Ireland, both old and new. One of my favourite places to look at old stories is the Schools Collection hosted by Duchas. Did you know that animals have the power of speech on Christmas night? It was news to me but is mentioned in several stories in the…
A second season of the BBC radio programme/podcast The Gift has just come out. Presented and researched by journalist Jenny Kleeman, it’s a show about at home DNA testing and the stories it uncovers. I hoovered up the first season last year and no doubt will do the same with the second. It was well-researched,…
The Valuations Office is a working arm of Taillte Eireann, which is the national property authority. This post was originally written before the winter 2025 move to the Registry of Deeds premises. See here for an update on visit planning. What is the Valuations Office? Taillte Éireann is the umbrella organisation which manages property in…
Within the Roman Catholic Church, couples needed a dispensation to marry if they were related to each within a certain degree. The rules were laid down by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. If a couple shared great-great grandparents or closer, then they needed a dispensation. Depending on how close, this might be granted at…
Many of us have taken a DNA test to advance our family history research. Some people have been able to go further and test parents too. But have you considered testing your parents’ cousins? This was something I did right from the start, as my budget allowed. My mother’s lovely cousin, sadly no longer with…
I’m really thrilled to announce that I’ll be back at Rootstech in March 2025 to deliver three in-person talks on Irish subjects including the Virtual Treasury and Obituaries & Death notices. More details in due course! Registration opens on 25th September. Hopefully I’ll get some time at the FamilySearch library too.