The popular databases.dublincity.ie site which hosted fifteen free-to-access collections (see list below) was taken offline on 4 March 2024. According to a subsequent tweet, this action was taken by Dublin City Council, which manages the site, as "a precautionary measure due to cyber security concerns". I assumed this was a newly identified technical issue that would be quickly corrected. And ..read more

Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors: The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600–1800 is on special offer until the end of this month. Written by the highly regarded Dr William Roulston and published by the Ulster Historical Foundation, the 640-page paperback is an essential reference book for any genealogist or historian looking for reliable guidance to sources of material from ..read more

If you're needing to download any of the National Archives of Ireland's Calendars of grants of probate of wills and letters of administration from 1858 to 1982 (held in CS/HC/PO/4), you're out of luck. This won't be a surprise to some researchers. The online links to download pdf copies of the annual calendars, previously available via the the online catalogue, are out of action. I don't know ..read more

Ancestry has added two World War 1 record collections today that will be of interest to Irish family historians. They are as folllows: United Kingdom, Red Cross Volunteers During WWI, 1914-1918. The index cards making up this collection provide details of more tha 8,200 people who were born in Ireland and/or resident on the island during WW1 and who volunteered to help the Red Cross in a ..read more

The RootsIreland database has been updated with the addition of 16,762 baptismal records for the Roman Catholic parish of Ballyferriter in County Kerry. They date from 1807 to 1899, with a gap in the first year. These join the existing marriage records for the parish, which date from 1808 to 1895. With this latest update, there are now more than 457,000 baptism and marriage records from 35 RC ..read more

As previously reported, construction work has closed the Reading Room of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) in Belfast since early March. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Next week, on Monday 22 April and Tuesday 23 April, the Reading Room will be unavailable until 1pm in order to facilitate the last stages of the building works.There will be no document production ..read more

A ground-breaking research project, launched yesterday by Trinity College Dublin's School of Histories and Humanities, aims to discover how our female ancestors – so often overlooked in history – experienced and responded to social upheaval and extreme violence in early modern Ireland. New digital technologies, including AI and ChatGPT, will help release previously forgotten or 'lost' stories ..read more

Please find below a two-week summary of newly-released and updated family history collections for England, Scotland and Wales from the major genealogy databases. (For the previous list, see 27 March blogpost.) These regular listings are designed to help researchers whose Irish ancestors migrated, temporarily or permanently, to England, Scotland or Wales. By default, they will also be useful to ..read more

Until 11:59pm (GMT+1) on Sunday 14 April, Ancestry UK is offering 25% savings on the company's DNA test kits. The discounts are via Ancestry UK only. If the link doesn't work for you,log out of your Ancestry account and try again.Ancestry DNA is the world's best selling consumer DNA test. With more than 25million people in its DNA database, it is – by some distance – the most useful dna test ..read more

Dublin-based Four Courts Press, one of Ireland's top academic publishers, has special offers on fifteen of its titles. As you'd expect from this independent and history-focussed publisher, some of the discounts have been applied to books likely to be of interest to genealogists. You can view them here. I don't know how long the reduced prices will hold. On special offer for just €9.95 – a ..read more