Sir William Betham (1779-1853) was appointed deputy Ulster King of Arms in 1807 and Ulster King of Arms in 1820. Betham spent a lifetime collating indexes and abstracts of the manuscripts held in the Record Tower of Dublin Castle. Although Betham was a polymath, it is his work in the Records Tower for which Irish genealogists and family historians
Read MoreThe Police Gazette or Hue-and-Cry Ireland
The Police Gazette or Hue-and-Cry Ireland was published in Dublin every Tuesday and Friday by Alexander Thom & Co., and is almost always referred to as Hue-and-Cry It is unclear when Hue-and Cry and was first published in Ireland and exactly how much of the publication survives. The National Library of Ireland’s holding runs from 1837 to 1917,
Read MoreThe Dublin Gazette & Iris Oifigiuil
The use of newspapers for the study of family history is well known. However, the name of one of the oldest publications in Ireland, the Dublin Gazette, will be less familiar, despite its myriad of potential uses to the family historian. The Dublin Gazette was first published on 5th November 1706 and was the official publication of British Government
Read MoreGriffith’s Valuation House Books
Griffith’s Valuation House Books are the notebooks that were used by valuators to record information on the majority of the buildings of Ireland, be it dwelling house, out-office or even lavatory in order to place a rateable value on the building and these records formed part of the information-gathering process required for the completion of the
Read MoreDeceased Seamen
Civil Registration of deaths began in Ireland in 1864. Unlike marriages, which were registered by the officiating priest or parish clerk, and births which could and were registered by anyone present at the event, deaths were often not registered. It has been estimated that between 1864 and 1900 some 15% of births went unregistered. The figure
Read MoreA Note on Burial Registers
Roman Catholic Burial Registers are relatively uncommon in Ireland prior to the 1830s and those that do exist seldom offer more detail than the name of the deceased. However, Burial Registers for Church of Ireland Parishes, where those records survived the fire at the Public Records in 1922, can be quite informative. Standardised forms were introduced
Read MoreA Will Proved a Century Ago: What Can be Done Online?
As an exercise in what can be achieved in online research I recently randomly opened-up a copy of the Calendar of Wills & Administrations for a century ago and read the following calendar entry: HOPKINS, Miles Richard. 10th January 1912. Probate of Will of Miles Richard Hopkins late of 1 Lower Sackville Street, Dublin and 1 Brighton Terrace,
Read MoreThe Ordnance Survey Name Books
The Ordnance Survey of Ireland, conducted between 1824 and 1846, is the only survey of Ireland to have ever been conclusively finished. Under the direction of Thomas Larcom, the Master-General of the Ordnance Survey and the Board of Ordnance, a complete Map of Ireland at the scale of six-inches to one-mile was published. One of the most important
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