Category: Family History

Our Jillian van Turnhout has been invited to speak to the students of St. Michael’s College (which is part of the University of Toronto in Canada) as part of their Celtic Studies Speakers Series.

Before starting genealogy.ie, I looked into my own family history for many years. During this research, I “discovered” an ancestor, who has since become one of my big inspirations: my Great Aunt Kathleen Hassett (born 7 February 1897, Limerick, Ireland; died 6 July 1985, Manchester, England).

In 1909, at age 12, Kathleen and her family moved back to the ancestral home in Knockanean, Co. Clare. At this time it was a very small house on a rural and hilly farm. She went to school here and in 1914 she achieved a first in Irish in her middle Intermediate Certificate. This earned her a scholarship, and from September 1915, Kathleen attended university at UCD (University College Dublin).

This university was founded in 1854 as a Catholic university by cardinal (now saint) John Henry Newman. It was located at St. Stephen’s Green, where three buildings, previously the homes of wealthy Dubliners, where purchased and converted. The university moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, but the original buildings are still owned by the institute and now house MoLi – the Museum of Literature Ireland.

Newman House, orginal home of UCD

Kathleen’s lecturers included Thomas MacDonagh (later one of the seven leaders of the Easter rising), Dr. Douglas Hyde (who would become the first President of Ireland), Mary Kate Ryan (who later married Sean T. O’Kelly, the second President), and Maurice Hayes (a top civil servant who would play a key role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland). And she bought her daily newspaper from Thomas Clarke, who would also be a leader of the Easter Rising.

In March of 1916, Proinnsias Ó Súilleabháin (a teacher and famous Irish language activist) got very interested in her plans for the Easter holiday period and encouraged her to go home to Clare for the break. Kathleen said she preferred to stay to study for her exams which were due to start on 3 June. As a result of this, she was an eyewitness to the events of Easter 1916 in Dublin.

Extract from Kathleen Hassett’s memoirs:

“Easter Sunday came and went, and Easter Monday was bright and clear. As we were taking our places in the dining-room, two fellow-boarders came in with sensational news – they had been going into the General Post Office in O’Connell Street when glass from the windows shattered and fell around them, and armed men began herding customers and counter hands into the street.”

Here is a link to a group of 1916-related postcards collected by my Great Aunt Ka. I organised for them to be donated to the Ephemera Collection of the National Library of Ireland.

The 1950 census records were released by the U.S. National Archives on April 1, 2022.

The official National Archives website provides full access to the 1950 census images, including population schedules, enumeration district maps, and enumeration district descriptions.

The collection contains:

• Approximately 6.57 million population schedules
• 33,360 Indian Reservation schedules
• 9,634 enumeration district maps images
• 234,447 enumeration district descriptions

You can explore the records by State, County/City, Name, Reservation, and Enumeration District.

Click the button below to start searching:

US 1950 Census

Here is an 8-year-old Robert A. Zimmerman. He would later change his name to Bob Dylan.

Who will you find?

A few months ago, a window of opportunity to travel opened up here in Ireland. Our own Michael van Turnhout decided to visit his family in The Netherlands. The last time he visited his mother had been in January 2020, and the opportunity to visit was warmly welcomed.

Cover of 1939 Phone Book

One thing he had promised his mother was that during his stay, he would bring her to some of the old addresses she had lived as a child, including the address where she was born. As her family had moved within a year of her birth, she could not remember it, nor had ever visited it. Thanks to some pre-travel research, we had discovered the address. This was not as easy as it sounds, as most cities and towns in The Netherlands renumbered their streets at some stage after the Second World War. So whilst we had an address, that address no longer exists. We just knew the street, which unfortunately for us is a very long one. It took the combination of a number of sources (newspaper, land registry, and municipal archives, old phonebooks and even a war diary of a local published online) to find it.

Address where Michael van Turnhout’s mother was born. Modern dwelling to the left, old company premises in white to the left.

The house itself had been replaced by a more modern dwelling, but the hall behind it – where Michael’s grandfather ran a milk business – still exists, albeit that it has been converted into a separate house.

Spurred on by this trip, Michael’s mother produced an old photo album that she had inherited from her mother, his grandmother. The pictures had been added without any comment and in a seemingly random manner. It was (relatively) easy to recognise Michael’s mother and her brother as babies, children, and young adults. But there were also lots of pictures of his aunt, who had died at a very young age before he was born. Michael had seen pictures of his maternal grandmother before, but was amazed to see pictures for the first time of his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother. The oldest pictures were 100 years old!

Great Grand Parents – before 1925

There were many other family members. It was only possible to put names to the many faces thanks to the amazing memory of Michael’s mother. Michael took of course many notes, and is now in the process of cataloging the collection, preserving the information.

Prayer Card for Theo and Arie Klever

Michael’s mother also told the sad story of two of her nephews, Theo and Arie Klever. During the Second World War, they joined the resistance against the Germans who had occupied The Netherlands. Their local resistance group was however betrayed. When the Germans tried to arrest the group, a firefight resulted in the death of  Theo. As several German soldiers had been killed too, out of revenge, the Germans executed 7 young men, some not even attached to the group. Arie was one of them. Both Theo and Arie were only in their twenties, and this happened just a few months before the end of the war. The story of the betrayal has been turned into a book and later also a documentary (in Dutch).

If you get the chance to visit a member of (a) previous generation(s) of your family this Christmas, why not ask them if they have any old family photo albums? And if they do, why not take some time to go through the pictures, ask as many questions as you can and take copious notes.

THE TEAM AT GENEALOGY.IE WISHES YOU A HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A FANTASTIC 2022!

Whilst carrying out family history research, we all encounter brick walls. One particularly stubborn one that I revisit every few years is the question of who the parents of my Great Grandfather Michael Foley were.

As I am a professional genealogist, you would think I would have my own family tree done. But take it from me, you are never finished. That is why I always keep an eye on new records becoming available. I got a flutter when I heard new records of the parish where my great grandparents hailed form had become available. I couldn’t resist and immediately looked… but first, let me give you the background story.

When I started working on my family tree, I quickly found the marriage certificate of my Grandfather, Michael Foley to Julia Cronin on 23 April 1898. The certificate informed me that Michael Foley was a teacher living in Cromane, Killorglin, County Kerry, and that his late father, John Foley, was a farmer. As a child, I spent many a happy summer holiday in Cromane in the former home of my Grandmother and my Great Grandparents.
 

 
To put a face to the name in this story, Michael Foley is on the left in the photograph, he is the man with the fantastic moustache. I can only imagine the scene, my Grandfather John Francis Hassett took a photo of his wife, his then five children, and her parents. My father, Michael Hassett, is the child sitting in the centre on his Grandmother’s lap. It took me some time to realise it was my Dad as I saw a ‘child in a dress’. I soon learned it was not unusual for young boys at the time, around 1940, to be dressed in this way.
 

 
This photo is very special to me as by 1945, both of my Great Grandparents Michael Foley and Julia Cronin, and my Grandparents John Francis Hassett and Mary Foley had all died. And this is one of the few pictures I have of them.

Since my childhood, I have always known my Great Grandfather was a school teacher and was the first ‘Master’ in Cromane near Killorglin. Through family history research, I established that Master Foley was the first headmaster of the newly built school in Cromane in 1886. I have visited the site of the old school and, with sincerest thanks to the current headmaster,  I have been able to view and take photographs of the old school registers.

I discovered that his grandchildren, including my father, regularly came from their then home in Cork for a long summer to Cromane. They would arrive around March and leave around October – thus enrolling in school for a few months and then returning to school in Cork. On occasion, they would even spend a full year in Cromane living with their grandparents.

I visited the Killorglin library and read an article from the 1980s published in a local history publication entitled “COIS LEAMNTHA”. A local oral historian had interviewed William Griffin, who was born in Cromane Upper in about 1894 and attended the school in the late 1890s / early 1900s.
 

 
From other information available to me, I know Michael Foley taught at Cromane National Boys School from 1886 to 1918, when Stephen Coffey succeeded him as Head.

Michael Foley had four children: Helen Maria Foley (1900 to 1980), John Laurence Foley (1904 to 1933), Mary Catherine Foley (1904 to 1944), and Catherine Mary Foley (1907 to 1909).

Helen Maria Foley was my Godmother and I was very lucky to have her in my early life. She encouraged me to explore the world. I didn’t realise until I started working on my family history that she had been a customs officer and that that was the reason why she was so informed about countries around the globe, bringing to life in her bedtime stories their sights and smells.

Mary Catherine Foley was my Grandmother. She sadly died when my father was only eight.

John Laurence Foley was also a customs officer and died at the young age of 29 of TB, still very common in those days. The write-ups in the newspaper articles I found were very moving.

It was only when I visited the cemetery where my family was buried,  in Killorglin, I found evidence of a fourth child,  Catherine Mary Foley, who died at age two.

However, despite finding all of this information, I could never find out more about my Great Grandfather John Foley. From the wedding certificate of his son Michael Foley in 1898 I could see he had been a farmer and had died before his son married. I searched all deaths of all John Foleys before 1898 in the area (and wider area) in the records available but without success. My search was made more complicated, because, at that stage, I didn’t even know if my Grandfather Master Michael Foley was born in the area.  I only knew that in 1886 he was the first schoolmaster. Also, Foley is not an uncommon name in the area.

Through a newspaper article on the death Michael Foley’s son, John Laurence, in 1933, I was able to confirm that Michael Foley had a sister: the newspaper article listed the mourners and this list included an Aunt Joanna Conway. She married a Francis Conway. Joanna Foley was also a school teacher. This information would prove to be important, as you will see later.

Then, a few years ago, the National Archives shared a gem of record set: the ‘List of Teachers Employed by the Commissioners of National Education on 31 March 1905’ went online. With this list, I was able to establish the month and year my Grandfather was born and where he went to primary and secondary school. I now knew he did grow up in the area. I doubled down and tried DNA, but it didn’t open any obvious doors. The wall seemed to be getting higher.
 

 
Every year, I would dip in again and see if any new information would become available. And it finally paid off when I looked at the new parish records mentioned at the start of this article. The 1898 Marriage register of my Grandparents Michael Foley and Julia Cronin had the names of the father and the mother of each of my Grandparents. The parents of Michael Foley are John Foley and Ellen Murphy. My great-grandmother’s name was there right in front of me. It almost seemed too easy. I admit to doing a little dance.

And if any more proof was needed, I also found the baptism record of Joanna Foley with her parents John Foley and Ellen Murphy, and the dates matched.

Next, I looked for the marriage of John Foley and Ellen Murphy and found a transcription on RootsIreland of the marriage of John Foley and Ellen Murphy on 2 March 1840 in Killarney, County Kerry. The transcription stated John Foley lived at Coolcorcoran, near Killarney. The witnesses were Timothy Murphy and David Foley.

So, I then searched land records available for Coolcorcoran and could find that a Timothy Murphy was a tenant and could find baptism records for an Ellen Murphy and her siblings and a marriage record in 1803 for Timothy Murphy and Hannah Sullivan.

However, there was no sign of any Foley’s living at Coolcorcoran. As a genealogist, I was of course now itching to see the original marriage register. On Ancestry.com, I found the original page on the register from Killarney Parish Register. And as you can see, it was Ellen Murphy who was from Coolcorcoran.
 

 
In a short few hours, I was now back two further generations. And have many new doors open to examine and explore. I wish you equal success with your brick walls.

At Genealogy.ie we love when we come across the work of previous genealogists. In this regard, we hail Dr. Francis Crosslé and his son Philip Crosslé (1875-1953) who created the Crosslé Genealogical abstracts in the 19th century. Their work is now available online, and for one of our clients, it helped us break through a brick wall.

The Crosslé Genealogical abstracts are a miscellaneous collection of more than 657,000 detailed abstracts dates from 1620 to 1804. Many records are transcriptions from prerogative wills subsequently destroyed in the fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin in 1922. Crosslé also provides a wealth of material for those tracing military ancestors, including yearly Army returns from 1767 to 1816. A large proportion of the material comes from the Northwest of Ireland.

In the Crosslé Genealogical abstracts, we came across this great quote from Philip Crosslé when he was writing to a potential client:

“The fees for search and matching of abstracts of records are 3/ per hour, but when one is experienced a good deal may be done in a short time”.
 
In the past year, we have seen an increasing number of records becoming available online. If you have a brick wall, perhaps the time is now to relook at the information you know and to see if there are any new resources to help you find out more about your ancestor.

If you need help to find out more about an ancestor, explore a line on your family tree, or build your family tree, contact us at info@genealogy.ie. You can check out our customer testimonials on our website:

Testimonials

As the Covid19 pandemic continues, why not take some time to interview your older relatives or answer these questions yourself to leave for future generations? While you may not be able to be physically together, you could phone or use online software to meet your relative? Take the time over the coming weeks to share and engage?

 
Remember, this should be a conversation and not a memory test; here are some suggestions for conversation starters. It is best to keep your questions as open-ended as possible and to let the interview flow naturally.
 

 
Ensure you record (with permission) or transcribe your notes afterwards to keep an accurate record of this rich and valuable information you have gathered.
 
Stay Safe!

The oldest possible epidemic in Ireland dates back to the sixth century. We actually don’t know if there was an epidemic – it is believed there was one because many monasteries were founded in the sixth century. The thinking is that a plague epidemic caused a rise in religious fervour. Unlike Covid-19, which is a virus, the plague is caused by bacteria. The bacteria are spread by fleas.

We know there was an epidemic, known as the yellow plague, active in Ireland from 664 to 668 and again from 683 to 684. The second one was especially deadly for children, as a lot of adults had gained immunity during the first outbreak.

It wasn’t just plagues. We have descriptions of outbreaks of fever in Ireland since the 12th century. Fever would be endemic in Ireland, with the disease still around in the 19th century.

In the mid-fourteenth century, it was again the plague which wreaked havoc. This would be the most famous outbreak of the disease. It is thought that the “Black Death” as it was called, killed 30-60% of the European population. During the outbreak, it was believed rats were spreading the disease (bacteria were still unknown). This led to rats being hunted down and killed in great numbers. Causing the fleas that were living on the rats to spread and infect even more people! There were further outbreaks of this terrible pestilence until the early eighteenth century.

Another disease that is spread by lice is typhus. During the Famine, hunger was already having a devastating impact on many of the poor. They often had to leave their homestead, expelled by landlords for not paying rent or leaving to find food. In the hospitals, workhouses and on the ships to North America they huddled together for warmth and lack of space. This formed ideal circumstances for the spread of lice and with them the disease. It started in 1846 in the West of Ireland. It reached Ulster in the winter of that year. It is thought 20% of people in Belfast were infected. Although widespread among the poor, still more prevalent was the aforementioned fever, which also became epidemic during the famine. Interestingly it was among the higher social classes that typhus – more deadly than fever, mortality if untreated can be as high as 60% – was more widespread. It is thought it was contracted by those exposed to the disease (clergymen, doctors, member of relief committees) and then spread to their families, etc.

The famine was accompanied by several other diseases such as dysentery and smallpox. Like fever, these had also long been endemic in Ireland but swept the country epidemically during these years. And then in 1848-1849 Asiatic cholera became pandemic.
Dysentery is spread by flies, by direct contact, or by pollution of the water by faeces infected with the bacteria. Like typhus, it became widespread in Ireland during the terrible winter of 1846-47. It was especially the area of West Cork that was badly affected.

Smallpox is no longer active thankfully. Like COVID it is a viral disease transmitted by airborne droplets. Attacks would last for approximately 6 weeks and would work its way through a family. So, it would often afflict families for months. This would often mean even more poverty for already impoverished people, as they lost their earning power for a prolonged period.

Even in the 20th century, Ireland has had epidemics. Tuberculosis was one. Its common name was consumption as the patient was “consumed” by weight loss and breathlessness. According to research by the Irish Red Cross Journal, 12,000 young Irish adults died of TB in 1904. Mortality remained high in the 1920s and 1930s, especially among children. Despite years of non-stop efforts, it was not until the 1950s that TB started to decline and only by the 1970s it had all but vanished from our shores.

Another one was polio. This is again a viral disease, spread through person-to-person or faecal-oral contact. Its mortality is between 5 and 10%, but in some outbreaks mortality of over 25% has been reported. Unlike COVID, it especially affects children under 5. There is no cure but can be prevented with vaccines. In Ireland, vaccines were introduced in 1957, after several bad outbreaks. Ireland had its first registered epidemic of this disease in 1942. There were further waves in 1947, 1950 and 1953 and in 1956 in Cork. Advice from authorities might sound familiar: closure of swimming pools and schools, advice on handwashing and on general hygiene, warnings against unnecessary travel into or out of communities where the disease was prevalent. And for the vulnerable, in this case, children, to avoid crowded places and gatherings of other children. Circus, swimming and tennis tournaments and GAA activities were either postponed or abandoned. Social and commercial life was badly affected. The epidemic was over around May 1957. It was not completely gone but had returned to “normal” levels.

Like the rest of the world, Ireland is now suffering from the outbreak of the COVID 19 pandemic. The whole country now sees restrictions even more severe than those in Cork in 1956. History shows the importance of adhering to these restrictions: many epidemics/pandemics have seen several waves and high levels of mortality, esp. among the vulnerable. By social distancing, working from home, not having large gatherings, festivals, etc. we should be able to minimise the impact. And nowadays many can work from home and we can stay into contact via social media. So there are no excuses. And the good news: many vaccines have been developed and most of the diseases mentioned have been eradicated or their prevalence has been drastically reduced.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay firm!

 
 
 
Sources:

The third and final installment of our posts on genealogical resources.

If you are researching the period before civil registration started, your only source is the Parish registers. You do need to know in what County and Parish your ancestor(s) lived. If you don’t know, a good starting point is to look at where your family lived in the Census, as a lot of families would continue to live in a Parish for many generations.

Most Parish Registers only started round 1830, and for many counties even decades later. Also, over time, many have been lost. You should also consider that errors – both in the original entry and in transcription – are not uncommon. Names were also often misspelled: priests would write down what they thought the name was and many of the parishioners could not check it as many could not read or write.

The three main sources for the Parish records are:

•  Irish Genealogy which is a free Irish government website. You should always check which registers are available before you start your search, as for some areas none are.
• Roots Ireland. This is a paid site. You should always check which registers are available before you start your search, as for some areas none are. This database contains also some Church of Ireland registers. Not many of these survived as most were destroyed in 1922.
• National Library Ireland. This is a free site, that provides digitised copies of the Parish registers. Baptismal registers are also available at Ancestry and Find My Past.

For Northern Ireland, you should check their guide first. You can then head to PRONI for their catalogue.

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The second of three posts on Irish genealogy resources: the Civil registrations of Irish births, marriages, and deaths. This was started in  1864, although Non-Catholic marriages were registered from 1845. If you are looking for records from before these dates, you will have to rely on the Parish records, of which more in our third post. You should also be aware that a significant portion of births, marriage, and even deaths were never registered and thus go unrecorded.

The main resources for these records are the following two free databases:

•  Irish Genealogy which is an Irish government website.
•  Family Search which is the LDS website.

We recommend you search BOTH databases, because they are not identical.

On Irish Genealogy you will find the indexes for

• Births from 1864 to 1916
• Catholic Marriages form 1864 to 1940
• Non-Catholic marriages from 1845 to 1864
• Deaths from 1864 to 1965

The index often contain a link to the original registration, which you can download for free. But if not, the record will need to be ordered. If you require help with obtaining a record, please feel free to contact us.

When searching, be aware that you might have to try different variations and spellings of the names you are looking for. Also, you will be asked for the “Registration District”. There were usually 3 to 6 registration districts in each county, and some districts crossed county borders. If you don’t know, it can be quite a puzzle to find out. Again, we would be happy to help. Finally, be aware that people were not always born, married or died in the same area they lived in.

Family Search,  Ancestry (paid) and FindMyPast (paid) also offer Irish civil registration indexes up to 1958 (excluding records from Northern Ireland after 1922). However these are indexes only, and it often hard to be sure that you are looking at “your” ancestor or someone else’s.

For Northern Ireland after 1922  you will need to go to  GRONI  This contains the records for births over 100 years old, marriages over 75 years and deaths over 50 years.  You can search and view the original registrations for this period but you do need to sign up and purchase credits to undertake a search.
 

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