As I look forward to a new year, as a small business owner and professional genealogist, here are a few things I’m hoping for.
- 1926 Census for the Irish Free State – we know this one is coming, but I’m hoping for an on-time release with a robust web infrastructure behind it.
- The long-missing Irish death registers for 1864-1870 on IrishGenealogy.ie. There’s never been a good reason they weren’t loaded and, as I’ve previously reported, the GRO (run by the Dept of Social Protection) blames the Dept of Culture, Communications & Sport who run IrishGenealogy.ie, while the Dept blames the GRO. The indexes were removed last month, prompting some people to think that there might be movement at last on this. They’ve been tweaking the site all year.
- More goodies from the Virtual Treasury of Ireland. Dr Brian Gurrin recently reported a big increase of recovered names from the 18th-19th century census fragments.
- Ancestry introduced DNA clusters as a beta feature during the summer. I had it for about 3 days and then it disappeared, and has not come back. I have the relevant ProTools subscription. I chased Ancestry’s customer service about it in September and they said everyone should have clusters by December 2025: so they still have just over 3 days. While I don’t expect it to reveal anything new for myself, it would be useful to have it for professional work.
Thanks to my clients for their business and newsletter subscribers & blog commenters for their engagement this past year. I love my work & long may it last.
Wishing you and your loved ones a happy new year filled with genealogical dreams come true! Such as those missing documents suddenly reappearing.
Same to you, Marian! Happy New Year.
This is a great wishlist! I especially agree with your point about more comprehensive indexing of Irish newspapers. Even small snippets can unlock vital clues in our family histories. Hopefully some of these improvements will be in place for 2026 and beyond!