Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
If you’ve lived in Ireland in the past 25 years, you can hardly be unaware of various historical scandals that rocked the country. These included, but were not limited to, industrial school abuse, Magdalene laundries, Mother and Baby homes and illegal adoptions. A couple of years ago, I helped a man called Denis O Sullivan,…
Genealogy social media has been awash in the past couple of weeks about Ancestry.com’s newly launched Pro Tools. Initially, it seemed only to be available in the USA but I was able to buy it a couple of days ago. It was a few different prices but now seems to be fixed. Here’s my review.…
And so we reach the end of another great year in genealogy. Prompted by a recent discussion, I’ve been looking at the Old Age Pension search forms. This collection is held by the National Archives of Ireland. If you’re not familiar with this small record set, let me enlighten you. In 1908, Ireland was still…
It is often said that the Irish “do death well”. It is quite normal for people who never met the deceased to attend their funeral because they are a co-worker of a bereaved person. As I’ve been researching and revising death & burial recently for the International Institute of Genealogical Studies, I wrote some material…
We’re well into autumn now in Dublin, the leaves are falling, the evenings are getting darker and we’re anticipating Halloween. Decorated houses are popping up all over my town. According to John Grenham’s website, the surname Death features in Kilkenny, Wexford and Wicklow. In the 1901 census, 31 unfortunate Deaths lived in a variety of…
In researching our family history, we spend a lot of time reading old handwriting. It can be a big challenge. Here are some tips I’ve gathered over 20 years of working in the field. They break down into 2 categories: digitised documents and manuscripts. Let’s look at manuscripts first. If you’re already working with digitised…
On my recent trip to PRONI in Belfast, I took some time to do some personal family genealogy. I knew my grandmother’s family had lived in Belfast and possibly also Ballymena for a time in her childhood. They came originally from Limerick city and moved north because my great-grandfather, Thomas Henry Guerins, worked for Woolworths…
If you missed part I, here it is. So I made it to PRONI in Belfast. Here’s some logistics. I stayed at the Premier Inn, Titanic Quarter, which is less than 250m from PRONI. It’s a budget hotel but clean, comfortable and sufficient for my needs. The wifi is a little slow but you can…
Readers of my Twitter account were surprised this week when I mentioned that I was going to visit PRONI (the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland) for the first time. I’ve attended talks there before but never actually done research there. I wanted to take some time to explain why this is the case and…
One of the great things about genetic genealogy is how fast the field is growing. It’s changing and improving all the time. We can do all kinds of things now that 5 years ago were impossible. There’s so much to learn. I’ve written previously about clusters on my blog and I’m still periodically reviewing my…