I spent the last few days in lovely Kilrush, Co. Clare for their first genealogy conference. The theme was from the Great Famine to the 1926 census. Friday night featured a talk from Zoe Reid, Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Archives, followed by a talk from Catriona Crowe, who led the project to put the 1901/1911 censuses online in the first place. There was a bit contention between the two as well!
Some interesting points from her presentation: you can now filter search results by birthplace (county or country). Occupations will be the next filter they work on and the plan is that will be there by the end of the year. All errors reported up to the end of August are now fixed. I did notice some Dublin B forms that were previously missing are now present. Lastly, they plan to get started on the 1936 census before the end of the decade, and of course, they’ll have the experience of this one to inform that process.
Catriona Crowe’s look back on how they built the original census site was fascinating, seeming to only involve a handful of people and almost no money. I know a lot of people still miss the old site but I have adapted to the new one. I was pleased to discover that the contextual essays from the old site have been incorporated, albeit a bit buried. You can find them here.
Earlier that day, Paddy Waldron led a fantastic walking tour around the town, which ended at the marina for a private tour of Scattery Island.
My family has an oral memory of a particular branch coming from there, though I haven’t found any records to connect it. However, I had long wanted to visit and it did not disappoint. The rain held off but it was pretty windy! Time for me to pull out that Mahony research and see if I can work any magic on it now.
Here’s the inside of the tower looking upwards.
On Saturday, we had a full day of lectures from David Ryan setting the scene with land records from the famine to the census, followed by Dr Rachel Murphy’s look at the life course of children in Rathkeale born in the year before the 1901 census. Next was Fiona Fitzsimons talking about names and finding people in the 1926 census.
After lunch, we had John Grenham telling us about his own version of the 1926 census, which is definitely worth looking at. We finished the day with Dr Maurice Gleeson updating his Spierin and Morgan DNA project showing that work can continue over many years.
The conference dinner was held out in the golf club with a thoughtful mini-bus ferrying people around both during the day and home again. They provided some fantastic traditional musical and dancing entertainment. I came home with an enormous hamper of goodies after my name was randomly drawn from a list of attendees. It included a gift voucher for the local independent Banner Books, so I popped down this morning to avail of something before heading back to Dublin and found an amazing array of genealogy books ordered in just for the conference people! Next time, they need to get them up in the main venue.
Overall, well done to the committee & volunteers for a very successful weekend. Hopefully, they’ll plan to do another one in a couple of years.
Nice recap of the conference, Claire. It was lovely to meet you in person.
Great to meet you too!