Claire Bradley is a Dublin-based genetic genealogist specialising in ancestry from Ireland
One of the lovely features of the 1926 census is the detail of people’s employers. My great-grandfather, Fred Walters, worked in Clerys Department store on the then newly renamed O’Connell St. I knew he had worked there but not when he started. The census told me he was already there in 1926. Clerys was an…
Clients frequently ask me to collaborate with them on their family history. People have usually done a little bit themselves and then get stuck. I come in to help untangle and correct their homework! The proliferation of hint systems in online commercial genealogy sites means that it’s very easy for an error to be replicated,…
A couple of years ago, I struck genealogical gold. We all have touchstones: things we would ideally like in our family history. Some people want royalty, but I’m a bit weird. I wanted bigamy. My great-grandfather’s first cousin, Richard Kent, was a bigamist. I wrote about it for Family Tree Magazine, in my first published…
T-minus 41 days to 18 April 2026. On that day, professionals, family historians, hobbyists and regular historians will be sitting at their desks hitting refresh while we await the first Irish census release in more than 50 years (if we count the microfilm release of the previous two in the 1960s!) The Dept of Culture,…
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…
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 my hobbies (yes, I have non-genealogical hobbies) is writing letters to the Irish Times. They’re kind enough to publish them some of the time. Here’s one I wrote before the 2022 census. So imagine my surprise when I was playing around with the new search functionality on the newspapers section of Findmypast (which…
For International Women’s Day 2022, I’ve written up the life of Annie Mahony, one of my great-great grandmothers. Sadly, I don’t have a photograph of her, but she had at least 186 descendants. I’m hoping to share this amongst as many of them living as I can find & perhaps someone will have one that…
A new initiative born from Twitter sees family historians talking about their genealogy origin story using the hashtag #MyGenealogyStory. Here’s mine. I was a child who was interested in the past. I loved history at school. I researched some of my recent ancestors named when choosing my confirmation name. At 12, we were given a…
UNESCO designates 8th September every year as International Literacy Day. It promotes the importance of literacy as a human right. Who among us doesn’t love getting caught up in a great novel? In this modern world, very few activities still require your full attention, we’re always on our phones or something, but reading is still…