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Researching your Irish Family Tree – Part 1

My mum in law is very into genealogy, and managed to get me hooked on it when I was on maternity leave a couple of years ago. Well, for the couple of months before baby arrived, at least: once he was here, all time for such things went out the window. But I’m finally finding a few spare moments now to get back into it.

There’s more and more information becoming available online all the time, so you can do a lot from the comfort of your home. I’ve managed to fill in the direct line back as far as quite a few of my great-great-great grandparents on both sides now, with most of the info coming from online, and I’m starting to fill in brothers and sisters.

So, while I’m in the zone, I thought I’d share a few of the resources I’ve been using, and maybe you’ll get the bug too.

First off, some free sites that will get you started:

The National Archives Censuses of 1901 and 1911. These are a good place to start, as chances are you’ll be able to ask living relatives for enough information to find definite matches. In both censuses ,on the A form you’ll get the registered people’s full names, relationship to head of household, religion, literacy level, age, profession, marital status, birthplace, use of the Irish language, and whether they have one of a specified list of disabilities. The 1911 census includes a wee bit more information: how many years of marriage are completed, total number of children born alive, and number of children still living. If you’re happy you’ve got a match, you can take a look at the B forms too, and find out more about the house and extended property your ancestors lived in/on.
If you’re lucky enough to have ancestors in Carlow (CoI only), Cork & Ross (RC only), Dublin or Kerry, Irish Genealogy have digitised church records for these areas, so you may be able to track down births, deaths and marriages for some of the people you’ve found in the censuses. If you say you want to see births for a certain name, you’ll be shown all birth records that include that name, either as the child, a parent or a sponsor. There was a tendency back in the day (in my family at least!) to have a bundle of children about two years apart, so once you’ve found a birth and parent names for one ancestor, you can search for one or both of the parents on birth records in or around the same timeframe to get a set of siblings. Relatives often stood as sponsors, so recurring names here can tip you off to further family connections.
FamilySearch.org is a service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormons. It’s very thorough, and you stand a very good chance of finding something useful on here. The type of information returned depends on the resource. There’ll always be some kind of textual summary, and there may be a link or reference to where you can find more information (free or paid). For Irish births, deaths and marriages, keep an eye out for returns that show an event type, name, registration district, quarter and year, volume number and page number (as illustrated above for a random John Murphy – no relation). Jot these down, make your way to the General Register Office (GRO) in the Irish Life Mall between Talbot St and Abbey St in Dublin, and for the princely sum of €4, you can get a copy of the original registration entry for the event, which will contain more information to help you identify whether or not this is the person you’re looking for, and hopefully point you in the direction of more people to follow up. If you’re trying to do things on the cheap and are looking for marriage records, do this search for both husband and wife – if you get a match on district, year, quarter, volume and page, chances are you’ve found the pair.

OK – now I’ve started you down the spending money path, so let’s break and reconvene another time to look at a few more resources.

SkyDrive

SkyDrive is a cloud storage solution from Microsoft. It allows you to store content “in the cloud” and retrieve it through a web browser. They also provide free apps to allow access from Windows and Mac machines, Windows Phone and iThings. Anyone can sign up, for free, and at the time of writing, you get 25Gb of storage free with a basic account. Not to be sneezed at. You can add more storage (20-100Gb) for an annual fee (€8-€37).

There are a few nice features:

You can create and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files through the web interface. You won’t get all the functionality of the desktop versions of the software, but the essentials are there.
You can share uploaded content (individual files, or whole folders) with specific individuals by issuing invitations. They’ll only see the specific content you’ve chosen to share with them once they log on. I find this handy for sharing large documentation deliverables, too large for mail server limits, with clients.
If you install a desktop app on your PC or Mac, your SkyDrive will show up as a virtual drive on your local machine, and you can view and edit local copies of your content. Changes are synced back to the cloud. If your internet connection disappears, you might not notice, though, so for anything critical, it’s no harm to check your changes are in the cloud copy of the file before you shut down your machine and leave.
Even better, you can access your PC or Mac remotely to pick up any files you forgot to upload to the SkyDrive. For this to work, your will need to be on, the SkyDrive app installed, and you’ll need to authenticate with a code mailed to the email address your SkyDrive is associated to.
You can disconnect an authorised machine at any time via the web interface, so if your laptop is nicked, or you change jobs, you can break the link remotely.

Not bad at all for a free service.

I Shot the Serif

@DaveGorman gave this a mention on twitter a couple of days ago, and I had to give it a try.

Available for free as a web app and for iThings, I Shot the Serif is a fun way to squander a few idle moments. And you can tell yourself that you’re developing useful proof reading skills while you’re at it.

Basically, you’re presented with a grid of random letters, half of which are in serif fonts and half in sans-serif. You have to select (shoot) the serifs, and leave the sans-serifs alone. You’re playing against a timer, and are allowed a certain number of mistakes. The higher the level you play at, the less time you have, and the fewer mistakes that are allowed.

The 5yo (still high on his zombie shooting buzz from last week) was keen to have a go when he saw me playing, and I was impressed by how well he did. I’m kidding myself that it’s helping him improve his reading skills (he does whisper the names of the letters to himself as he inspects each one), but really I know he just likes the sound effects.

Downsides: I found that on the iPhone this crashed very frequently, often when I was on my way to a highscore. And the shooting sound effects were a bit much for me, so I played with the volume off. Aside from those 2 niggles, it’s great fun.

Math Vs Zombies

Math Vs Zombies Logo What more could you ask for really?

In this free iThing zombie shoot-em-up, you shoot the zombies, collect ammo and health packs by solving the simple equation atop your target. Different levels have different classes of maths problems (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), and different levels of difficulty.

I let my 5 year old play this for about 15 minutes yesterday and could not believe how much quicker he was at mental arithmetic by the end of it.

Because the problems associated with the zombies change each time you play a level, though stay in the same class and difficulty level, you can replay the same level over and over to suit the player’s ability, rather than being forced to move on a level, and it still sustains interest.

Screen layout changes on iPhone (numbers along edges) and iPad (number pad bottom centre) to make the numbers easier to reach, which is a nice touch.

Only problem I had with it is that you can wind up with multiple items on screen at the same time that have the same solution, and you don’t get a say in which of them gets shot/picked up, so the zombies will sometimes get you because you pick up ammo instead of shooting. This led to one or two moments of frustration for the small person.

Still, it’s fun in small doses and definitely has an educational outcome.

Baby-Related Podcasts

In response to the baby boom my friends and family are currently participating in, I recently wrote a post rounding up some baby-related websites.

Today, I’m going to cover a few pregnancy- and baby-related podcasts that I’ve found useful and enjoyed. I err more towards “this is what it’s like in the real world” content, than “here’s the official medically approved line” bumph. The podcasts recommended below will include plenty of information and upbeat humour, but will also include political griping, moaning about life being tough at times, and off topic items the presenters feel strongly about. I feel it’s part of their charm.

Pregnancy podcasts

Dan and Kerry over at Baby Timehave 2 kids and have been podcasting about parenthood since they were in the early stages of pregnancy with their first son. They’ve since added a second baby to the mix. Episodes are labelled to include the boys’ ages (or stage of gestation), so it’s easy to dip in to an episode that lines up with your own current stage. They’ve also neatly compiled groups of podcasts that cover:
- Baby Time: 1st Trimester
- Baby Time: 2nd Trimester
- Baby Time: 3rd Trimester (and their birth stories)
PregTASTIC is a panel podcast where a selection of women at different stages of pregnancy discuss their own experiences. There are regular guests with areas of expertise related to pregnancy and early childcare. And panellists come back to tell their birth stories once their babies are born. Lots of fun and banter, and it’s easy to get attached to the women. This was a hard one to unsubscribe from even when it stopped being relevant to me. In fact, writing this blog post is making me crave a couple of episodes!
Ruth and John over at Just Relax, It’ll Happen! have successfully had two children using IVF. Their podcast covers fertility issues, pregnancy, the post natal depression they both suffered from after baby number one, and life as a family. This podcast is in stasis at the moment, but old episodes are worth a listen. Ruth is now blogging and vlogging as the geekmummy.

Podcasts on living with small people

Again, the Baby Time folks have compiled podcasts covering when one or other of their boys was a specific age:
Dr Mike at PediaCast covers paediatric news (with a US focus), translated for the lay person, and answers listeners’ questions on particular health and medical issues they’re having with their kids. There’s a decent archive of old episodes, so there’s a good chance you’ll find your question answered already.
New Moms, New Babies was a podcast that erstwhile PregTASTIC panel members graduated to once their bumps had turned into babies. It’s also in stasis these days, but as with so many other podcasts related to a particular time in one’s life, the archives are worth a listen.

If one of your favourites didn’t get a mention here, please feel free to recommend in the comments!