Dipping My Toes in to Irish Genealogy Research...

Apart from my British, Finnish and a little European heritage, I have some Irish blood in me too. About 30% in fact (according to my AncestryDNA test). But the whole Irish side is one that I’ve pretty much avoided. Afterall, there are so many other lines and branches to follow … so it always ended up in the “I’ll get to it one day” pile. Well I’ve just discovered John Grenham’s YouTube channel. And to say I’m a fan is an understatement. For anyone who hasn’t heard of John Grenham, he is like THE No.1 authority on Irish genealogy research. The Godfather of it so to speak. He’s also the author of the best known Irish research book “Tracing Your Irish Ancestors“, now up to the 5th edition, and which is commonly referred to as the Bible for Irish research. So in other words, he knows his stuff. He also has the most incredible website for Irish genealogy around. It has SO MUCH info. So much, that he’s actually created a video to show people how to use it. I urge to to find 20 minutes to watch this video, because if you haven’t used his website, you will be blow away by what it offers, and how it works. —————— But I also wanted to share another of his videos with you … one that is common for everyone starting their Irish research “Irish Ancestors: Why Can’t I Find Mine?” As I’m a total newbie to Irish research, I thought it would be good to watch this to see what he had to say, and as expected John gives his viewers lots of great advice, so I’m sharing it here. If you are researching Irish ancestors, please go...

Discovering Links: 21 FREE Links for Irish Genealogy and History...

In this “Discovering Links” post, we take a look at some links that relate to Ireland. You can see my previous Discovering Links posts here. These posts consist of a collection of links that I have discovered, or found useful, and want to share with others. But rather than simply giving you a whole batch of random links each time, I am grouping them by topic, country or Australian state. For this one I’ve decided to share my Irish links (together with a few covering specific counties). It is not intended to be an exhaustive collection of links (not by a long, long way), but they are simply some, that some may find useful, and may not have known about. And while many people think that genealogy costs a lot of money, let me tell you that all of the links below are free. Personally I find that it’s often a matter of knowing where to look beyond the big-name websites, and hopefully this will help with that. === IRELAND GENERAL === IRISH ALMANACS AND DIRECTORIES This site is the work of Peter Clarke, whose aim is to “build the biggest index of freely available ebooks on Irish history, biography and genealogy!” IRISH GRAVESTONE RECORDS This site currently features 70,000 free Irish gravestone records coming from hundreds of Irish graveyards, spanning all 32 counties, and compiled and transcribed by Dr. Jane Lyons and exclusive to From-Ireland.net. In addition, they have links to gravestone photographs, and complete transcriptions as well. IRELAND ON THE FAMILYSEARCH WIKI The FamilySearch Wiki is a powerful learning tool that everyone researching Ireland history and genealogy should use. IRISH MILITARY ARCHIVES The Military Archives has been the official place of deposit for records of the Irish...