Irish Roots »

• St. Patrick’s real home

  December 30, 2012 @ 10:08 am | by John Grenham

  One aspect of the myth of St. Patrick that always seemed peculiar to me was his early kidnapping and enslavement. Not the fact of it – Patrick’s Confessio is absolutely authentic, the fifth-century Irish enjoyed rich pickings in decaying Roman Britain, and they were enthusiastic slavers. What’s odd is the conflict between the general acceptance that Patrick was a Romanised Welshman and the place where he ended up herding sheep. Mount Slemish is between Ballymena and Larne, a long, long way from Wales and a fairly unnatural place for a low-value boy-slave to end up.

  Norman Davies’ wonderfully batty Vanished Kingdoms, (Allen Lane, 2011), suggests an explanation. The book aims to draw attention to European states that have disappeared virtually without trace, including such places as Burgundia, the Visigothic kingdom in Spain known as Tolosa and (weirdly) “Éire”. The most interesting is the kingdom of Alt Clud, “The Rock”, centred at Dumbarton just outside Glasgow and taking in most of what are now Kilbride, Kilmarnock and northern Galloway. In Davies’ account, the kingdom lasted from roughly the fourth century to roughly the ninth, and was North British in the original cultural sense, with its people speaking Cumbric, a p-Celtic language closely related to Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Part of the evidence is the only surviving authentic writing of Patrick’s apart from the Confessio. His Letter to Coroticus is a severe dressing-down aimed at a ruler identified by Davies as Ceredig Gueldig, the earliest king of The Rock. Who better for a bishop to wag his finger at than his own leader?

  Interpreting records from the period is notoriously problematic, akin to picking one’s way through a vast swamp using a few tiny, unstable stepping stones, but Davies’ performance is virtuoso. It is hard to resist the picture of the young Patrick on Slemish looking out across the narrowest stretch of water on the Irish Sea to his home in Alt Clud.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• The Os and the Macs

  December 28, 2012 @ 10:41 am | by John Grenham

  An axiom of all research is that absolutely no reliance can be placed on the precise spelling of surnames. So the reason I’m blue in the face is not apnoea or an impending heart attack, it’s from telling people over and over and over that it makes no difference whether your Quin family have been insanely fussy about spelling their surname with one N for the past three centuries. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the person writing the name down was not a Quin, and couldn’t give a hoot.

  And then look at what Irish research throws up: A family in Leitrim whose surname appears in a parish register as “Breheny” (from Mac an Bhreithiún, son of the Brehon lawyer or judge) in the 1830s and “Judge” in the 1840s; O’Sullivans recorded in the Beara peninsula as Bunow, Caobach, Bawn, Barrule, … ; Cadogans who are O’Driscolls and Caniffes who are O’Mahonys. Is it any wonder that Irish researchers’ insistence on surname variation can seem a bit hysterical?

  But useful information does exist in patterns of surname spelling, only not at the scale of individual families. The best-known Irish variation is the treatment of “O” and “Mc/Mac” as optional in English-language records. In Griffith’s Valuation in the mid nineteenth century, some 16,000 households were recorded as O’, but more than 100,000 as Mc. Evidently, O was more easily ignored than Mc. Look more closely at where the names are recorded, and it emerges that almost 70% of the Mc households are recorded in the nine counties of Ulster, while the eight counties along the Atlantic seaboard account for almost 60% of the O names.

  This is hard historical evidence. But what does it show? That, in Ulster, the last stronghold of Gaelic culture, people retained their grasp on

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column] surnames? That Ulster’s Scots Gaelic cousins encouraged a popular retention of Gaelic surnames? Or that Ulster people were (are?) just more stubborn than the rest of us?

• Chest-beating in order

  December 16, 2012 @ 2:35 pm | by John Grenham

  Trinity College is not an institution noted for its bashfulness. Any worthwhile TCD achievement tends to climb to the top of a tall building and loudly beat its own chest. All the more surprising, then, that the launch of Trinity Library’s Digital Collections (digitalcollections.tcd.ie) has been so low-key.

  The only way to convey the extraordinary range of its contents is to pick out a few plums. They include: The full manuscript expedition journal of the 1924 British Everest expedition (the one on which Mallory and Irvine died) kept by the expedition doctor, Major R.M.G. Hingston; Thirty-one maps from 1812 of the estates of Sir Nicholas Conway Colthrust in Cork and Kerry, with tenants’ names; Two hundred and forty-six (beautifully-imaged) pages of Annales Ultonienses, the fifteenth-century Annals of Ulster; The pocket diaries and literary commonplace books of J.M. Synge between 1892 and 1907; The entire Robinson Collection of 2,074 eighteenth and early nineteenth century political caricatures; The Arthur Warren Samuels Collection of printed ephemera (especially pamphlets and posters) of the 1916 Rebellion, World War I, the War of Independence and the Civil War.

  From the point of view of genealogy, the most directly useful items are the eighteen manuscript volumes of Trinity’s own admission and matriculation registers from 1607 to 1907. Much of the information is already published, but it is always worthwhile to be able to examine the originals. They have also added the original term examination books for the second half of the eighteenth century. Good to know that Senior Freshman Kenny was cautioned for his performance at Greek in the term ending December 15 1750.

  Perhaps the Library’s long-standing and unswerving defence of its precious holdings against the grubby-fingered hordes has left it a little unsure of its welcome as it emerges, blinking, into the light. But the digital collections are astonishing. Chest-beating is most certainly in order.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• Weirdos like me

  December 9, 2012 @ 5:10 pm | by John Grenham

  For more than a decade now (which is to say centuries in Internet time), individuals and companies have been making a living by scanning hard-to-find publications and putting them out on CD-ROM. The daddy of them all is Archive CD Books, with franchisees in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain and Ireland. The connections between the territories are fraternal but loose: local knowledge is absolutely vital to identify which titles might be of interest to researchers.

  In Ireland, the brand (archivecdbooks.ie) is run by Eneclann, a Trinity College spin-off company also well known for its research and archival work and its partnership with FindMyPast.ie. The Trinity connection is extremely useful, since TCD Library has had a right of legal deposit since the Act of Union in 1800. In theory, then, the Library could have a copy of everything published in Britain or Ireland since 1801. Reality, as ever, falls a bit short. But there are still many, many wonderful things – ephemeral local directories, rare printed genealogies, valuations, biographies, pamphlets, surveys … and Eneclann/Archive CD Books have dug up many treasures for researchers.

  Now, in an act of commendable pragmatism, Eneclann have begun to convert their CDs to downloadable PDFs, and dropped their prices to reflect the cheaper distribution costs. See eneclann.ie/acatalog/New_download_releases.html for what they’ve converted so far.

  But as a business model, doesn’t the whole arrangement look a bit dated? Isn’t it all out there in The Cloud somewhere? Surely the problem with selling PDF versions of hard-to-find books is that very little is actually hard to find any more? Emphatically not true. Maybe eventually everything ever printed will be instantly available. In the meantime, there are still weirdos like me who actually want a full copy of all 800 pages of The Statistical Survey of the County of Roscommon, 1832, and want it now. Our time is at hand.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• Military census

  December 2, 2012 @ 12:12 pm | by John Grenham

  Getting information about soldiers who served in the Irish army can be a bit like trying to get directions from a Kerryman: “Why would you want to know that, now?” The glorious exception is the Military Archives in Cathal Brugha barracks in Dublin. At least for material up to the mid-1920s, it is a treasure trove, and its growing commitment to online access (militaryarchives.ie) provides detailed information without a hint of a Kerryman’s qualm.

  The most recent addition is the Military census taken on November 12th 1922. Such a census was needed for a very simple reason. By Autumn 1922, the civil war was at its peak, but the Free State Army had only a rudimentary idea of how many troops it had and where they were, the most basic information needed for any military action. So it was decided to send detailed census forms to each General Officer Commanding, which he would in turn send on to every post or outpost under his command. There, a compiling officer would use the forms to list comprehensive information on every individual present, covering all ranks and including home address, next of kin and next of kin’s address.

  It is important to keep in mind those two words “post” and “outpost”. Free State soldiers were then stationed in all sorts of places – Foxford, Toomevara, Killybegs – where no military barracks had ever existed. And when the returns came in, they were assembled as they had been collected, place by place, and then bound into ten large volumes. These are the volumes now available on militaryarchives.ie.

  The project is not yet complete. It is possible (with a broadband connection) to view and download the returns for any post, but there is no facility as yet to search by name. The site promises these transcriptions will be complete “in the coming months”. Roll on the new year.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• Problems with the Tithe Books

  November 26, 2012 @ 9:39 am | by John Grenham

  Mistranscriptions are the price we have to pay for the convenience of researching online. Unwelcome and infuriating they can be, but when kept to a reasonable level and accompanied by record images, they are a price well worth paying – the 1901/1911 census site makes the case very persuasively.

  So when readers began to point out mistakes in the new National Archives Tithe Books site – titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie – I just took a deep breath and tried to take the broader view. Alright, maybe Flatley is misread in no fewer than ten different ways in a single parish, (Knock in Mayo and Flattey, Hattley, Halley, Hattely, Hatley, Huttley, Slatterly, Slattery, Thally, and Harley, just for the record). But the record images are still there and can be searched manually if need be.

  Then some hair-raising peculiarities started to emerge in browsing the record images. Dunmore in Galway is lumped in with Dunmore in Kilkenny. Caher in South Tipperary is mixed in with Caher in Kerry. Aglish in North Tipperary becomes Aglish in Waterford. It appears that the notion that there might be two parishes with the same name never crossed the transcribers’ minds. God help anyone searching in one of the four separate parishes in Galway called Ballynakill. The only possible conclusion is that no checking of the transcriptions took place. And the result is a bit of a dog’s dinner.

  Let me be absolutely clear: the National Archives staff are not to blame for this. They are doing heroic work under atrocious conditions. The fault lies squarely with their masters in the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, who give their underlings a ball of string and a piece of Blu-tack and tell them to build the Taj Mahal. If the Archives had control of its own budget, something like this just would not happen. And if ever there was an argument against giving civil servants direct control of our cultural institutions, this is it.

  A postscript: the Archives have just responded to the (wave of) criticism of the quality of the transcripts with a clarification of where responsibility lies (here), and a detailed error correction function on the search page (example here). Hats off to them.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• Morpeth conference

  November 14, 2012 @ 2:57 pm | by John Grenham

  Gabriel Byrne’s dyspeptic take on The Gathering in 2013 has at least drawn more attention to it. But despite the hooting and jeering (see below), interesting things are happening. More and more local groups are actually taking up the idea of researching the descendants of those who emigrated from their area, and making clear that they are very welcome to come back. Something about the idea chimes with Irish notions of hospitality and extended family. As well as chiming with our beloved begrudgery.

  As part of the preparations for next year, the Department of History at NUI Maynooth is hosting a conference on Saturday November 24th next titled “The Gathering: Local History, Heritage & Diaspora“. Some very interesting speakers will discuss the concept of reverse genealogy and the practicalities of engaging with our diaspora.

  One of the main aims of the event, however, is to draw the attention of local history and genealogy groups to the Morpeth Roll. This is the huge testimonial to the departing Chief Secretary of Ireland George Howard, Viscount Morpeth, in 1841. Apparently organised by Daniel O’Connell’s supporters and encouraged by the Catholic Church, more than 250,000 signatures were collected in the space of a month. The giant roll recording them has been in Castle Howard in Yorkshire for the past century and a half and has only just been transcribed. As renowned local historian Mario Corrigan will show, local historical expertise brought to bear on the Roll can turn it into that most precious of genealogical treasures, a pre-Famine census.

  But to do that, the widest possible range of researchers need to engage with the Roll. So come one, come all. It sounds like a great Saturday, and a great project.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• Tithe on

  November 11, 2012 @ 1:00 pm | by John Grenham

  If we still had the early nineteenth-century Irish census returns – 1821, 1831, 1841, 1851 – then the Tithe Applotment Books would be an obscure backwater for researchers, of interest only as an afterthought. Thanks to the catastrophic destruction of 99% of these census returns in 1922, however, the Tithe records have acquired an unnatural importance. Quite simply, they are the only surviving island-wide survey of who was living where in the 1820s and 1830s.

  The Books were created between 1823 and 1838 as a result of The Composition Act (1823) which required that tithes due to the Church of Ireland, hitherto payable as a portion of agricultural yield, should now be paid in money. As a result, it was necessary to put a monetary value on the potential output of every eligible land-holding and the Books are the parish-by-parish record of this valuation.

  These are exclusively rural records. Anyone not involved in agriculture was omitted, and even within agriculture there were exclusions: most pasturage was exempt, for example. On the other hand, as ever, the tax fell most heavily on those who could resist it least, poor tenant farmers for whom few other records survive. At a (wildish) guess, perhaps 40% of households are recorded here in some form.

  And because the Church of Ireland was the State (“Established”) Church, everyone, including Dissenters and Catholics, were required to pay these tithes. If you think the Household Charge is unpopular today, imagine the fury 180 years ago. The resulting “Tithe Wars” raged through the early 1830s until finally, in 1838, direct tithe payments by tenants were abolished.

  The Tithe Books have long been widely available on microfilm but, because they are handwritten and had such a peculiar genesis, they have been under-appreciated. No longer. The National Archives, in cooperation with the Mormon Church, has digitised their entire 26-county collection and made it available free at titheapplotmentbooks.nationalarchives.ie. Happy hunting.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• More graveyard buzz

  November 4, 2012 @ 7:57 pm | by John Grenham

  A few weeks ago I wrote about the Northern Irish gravestone and graveyard management site discovereverafter.com. Like buses, you wait for ages and then umpteen graveyard management sites come along at once.

  First, Marie Mannion, Heritage Officer for Co. Galway, points out that the County Council is supporting a project in the North-East of the county to map each graveyard, then photograph and transcribe every gravestone and make the end result available online, along with a Google Earth aerial image. So far, the project has covered just thirteen graveyards (see tinyurl.ie/als) , but it promises to become very useful indeed for Galway research.

  On a different scale altogether is the site historicgraves.com. This is designed by archaeologists and aims to facilitate community-focused grassroots cemetery projects. Teams of volunteers are trained in using GPS-enabled smart-phones and cameras to survey the graveyards, and the results are combined on the site with text transcripts, maps, and audio and video interviews. When done well, an extraordinary multi-dimensional record of the graveyard emerges. The site has records of about 350 graveyards, but actual headstone transcripts from fewer, perhaps 60 or so. Most seem to be in the Tipperary-Kilkenny-Waterford area, but the potential exists for much broader coverage.

  And then of course, there are the large numbers of transcriptions already done: for Northern Ireland by historyfromheadstones.com; for Wicklow and Galway by the Cantwell family at findmypast.ie; for almost every part of the country by volunteer transcribers at interment.net; for (at least parts of ) seven counties by FÁS schemes at rootsireland.ie.

  The difference with the new projects is largely technical. A digital photograph of the headstone relieves that sceptical genealogical itch like nothing else. Precise GPS coordinates make it child’s play to locate the most inconspicuous grave in the largest cemetery. It would be great to see the existing transcripts used as the jumping-off points for broader projects.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

• ‘The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine’

  October 28, 2012 @ 3:59 pm | by John Grenham

  The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork, August 2012) is the most recent in the magnificent series of atlases published by Cork University Press. Over the past six weeks, I’ve been slowly working my way through it, and am astonished again and again at every aspect of it. The sheer weight and heft of the thing is extraordinary, more than 700 pages of eight- by twelve-inch high-quality paper, weighing in at over ten pounds. No vanity is involved. The heavy paper is necessary because of the colour illustrations, and the astonishing detail and fine distinctions made in the illustrations are what render the book unique.

  The most vivid of these are the maps visualising and contrasting information from the censuses of 1841 and 1851, before and after the Famine. Again and again, they produce a transfixing, visceral understanding of the underlying dry numbers and tables: the intense concentration in 1841 of children under five in the poorest, most vulnerable areas of the western seaboard; the percentage population decrease between 1841 and 1851 mapped out parish by parish over the entire country; land values, again mapped parish by parish over the entire country, instantly demonstrating the connection between poverty and starvation.

  The written contributions show the same combination of meticulous detail and sweeping overview. At the heart of the book are the 300-odd pages devoted to detailed studies of areas in each of the four provinces. Among the stand-outs here are William Smyth’s month-by-month story of the Famine in the Tipperary parish of Shanrahan and Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill’s account of Clifden Workhouse. The only criticism to be made is that, as bedtime reading, this book is guaranteed to end any marriage.

  The Atlas was number seven in the Hodges Figgis in-store bestsellers list last week. There’s hope for us all yet.

  ['Irish Roots archive from 2009 at www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/magazine/column]

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