Fantastic Find! Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury

The fire that destroyed the Public Records Office in Dublin in June of 1922 with the resulting loss of centuries of Irish records has made researching our Irish ancestors difficult.

[Source: Trinity College, Dublin]

But now, five institutions* have joined together to search out duplicates of the original records in other collections to"recreate virtually as much of the archive as possible in a digital format that can be accessible to everybody" in time for the centenary of the fire.**

The project is called Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury and its director Peter Crooks*** explains:

“We are committed to producing 50 million words of searchable material by 2022 and that is possible with the artificial intelligence we are using,” he said. 

“Tens of thousands of papers will be digitised, but they will also be searchable, which is a change. We will be able to mine this information for individual names.”

I strongly suggest you visit Trinity College Dublin's website about the project, especially the Gallery which has a number of images and videos, including a 1922 newsreel that shows the Public Records Office on fire.

I learned about Beyond 2022 through a link to the this article in the Irish Times.

*They are: the National Archives, the UK national archives, the public records office in Northern Ireland, the Irish Manuscripts Collection and the library at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
**Which happened on June 30, 1922, two days after the start of the Irish Civil War.
**You can watch a video with Peter Crooks here.

© 2019 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

I'm a whopping less-than-1-percent Irish/Scotland/Wales (my dad has 2 percent and my mom has 7 percent, so I don't think it is just noise).  Thanks to my husband's contribution my son has 4 percent.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: John Grenham - Irish Roots

Mr. Grenham's website is a great resource for those of you researching your Irish ancestors. Check out his blog Irish Roots. For instance, his most recent post (dated 24 April 2017) is titled "We have grave concerns..." and it's chock full of links to an impressive number of sources for Irish cemetery records.

The post begins:

I was once told by an American psychotherapist that the Irish have serious problems with bereavement. Apparently we find it very hard to let go. Maybe that’s the reason we have such a thing about graveyards. Because we certainly do have a thing about graveyards.

[City cemetery, Belfast, Ireland, October 1918. American National Red Cross Collection in the 

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

You can read a short biography of John Grenham at Legacy Family Tree's website but, sadly, you've a month late to hear his webinar "Why are Irish records so weird?" for free.


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Connections: John Irish and John Howland

When records of our ancestors locate them in some place at the same time as better-known historical figures there's always the question: Did they know each other? All too often, even though it's very likely, there's no proof.

But that's not the case with John Irish and John Howland, both residents of Plymouth Colony in the 17th century.

John Howland arrived in New England on the Mayflower in 1620, survived the first brutal winter, and went on to play an active role in colonial life. He's famous (and not just for being the man who fell off the ship on his way to the New World) and there's even a society created in 1897 composed of his descendants that has about 1,200 members.

A generation younger, John Irish came to Plymouth in 1630 having signed a five year indenture. He appears in various records over the years but he was never prominent.

So how can we be certain that these two men met?

Plymouth Colony received a patent in 1628 which gave them the sole right to set up trade with the Native People on the Kennebec River in what is now Maine. The chief commodity they sought was fur and the trade became very profitable which tempted men from other colonies to trespass on Plymouth's monopoly.

In April 1634, a man named John Hocking (or Hockin) from Piscataway (in New Hampshire) sailed his ship upriver past the Plymouth trading post with the intention of finding somewhere he could make his own deals with the Native People before they got to the trading post.

Naturally the Plymouth traders, led by John Howland, responded to what they considered an act of piracy by going upstream to cut the anchor cables of Hocking's ship and force him to leave. In the altercation Hocking killed one of the Plymouth men and was immediately shot himself.

Three accounts of the event have come down to us.

[Bradford's history of the Plymouth settlement, 1608-1650 by Bradford, William, 1588-1657; Paget, Harold, 1876-; published c.1920.

Source: Internet Archive, original source: New York Public Library.]

[Winthrop's Journal, "History of New England," 1630-1649 by John Winthrop, James Kendall Hosmer, Published 1908.

Source: Internet Archive, original source: University of Virginia.]

  

[Collections and proceedings from the Maine Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. II, 1906.

Google Books.]

On the first page of final extract above, the only account to give the names of the men in the attacking boat, the first named is John Frish, which scholars have determined could only be John Irish. And there's the connection!

Because Hocking was backed by influential people in England, Hocking's death caused a lot of trouble but the Plymouth men were finally exonerated when it became clear that the New Hampshire man had killed one of theirs first. The name of the man who shot Hocking is never mentioned in any report of the event.

You can read the Pilgrim John Howland Society's take on the event here.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: John Irish (About 1611 - 1677), Laborer, Roper, Farmer

On April 20, 1629, this maternal tenth great grandfather entered into an indenture with a man called Timothy Hatherly of the parish of St. Olave, Southwark, whereby John, described as a laborer, agreed to "dwell, serve, remain & abide with the said Timothy Hatherly or his assigns at the town of Plimouth called New England from the day of the date of these presents unto the end & term of five years from thence next ensuing."* The birth year given for him is an estimate based on the assumption that he was about 18 at the time. The indenture stated that John was "of the parish of Clisdon in the county of Summersett." Unfortunately there is no Clisdon in Somerset according to scholars who have unsuccessfully tried to locate John's birthplace for a very long time.

[Britannia Depicta or Ogilby Improved. Being a Correct Coppy of Mr. Ogilby's Actual Survey of All ye Direct & Principal Cross Roads in England and Wales ... By Ino. Owen ... Maps of All the Counties of South Britain ... By Eman Bowen, Engraver.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

Experts agree that John Irish arrived in Plymouth in 1630 although it's not certain what ship he arrived in. He is undoubtedly one of "Mr Hatherlie's two men" not otherwise identified in Plymouth tax lists in 1633 and 1634. In 1637 John volunteered to fight in the Pequot War.

[The south part of New-England, as it is planted this yeare.... William Wood, London, 1634.

Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University]

According to the terms of his indenture, John was to receive 25 acres of land and 12 bushels of wheat at the end of his service. Records show that he owned 5 acres by Stony Brook in Duxbury in 1639 and doubled his holdings two years later through an agreement with a neighbor that the survivor of the two would get both plots. As part of a deal establishing a grist mill on the brook, John traded his land for a house and land in Duxbury in 1641, where he was listed as a man able to bear arms in defense of the colony. He married a woman we know only as Elizabeth by about 1644 and over the next five years they had three children (that we know of), two boys and a girl.**

About the time of his marriage the court ordered that he was to have his land from that around Duxbury but I'm not sure what came of that because he was given permission to choose again in 1658 apparently in the same area. There is no record of John Irish ever becoming a freeman of Plymouth Colony.

In a 1659 land sale John described himself as a "roper" which my source tells me is a person who makes ropes or nets. Otherwise he was called a "planter" meaning that he was a farmer unlike in Virginia where the word had more grandiose connotations..

In 1662 John Irish  on the list of "servants and ancient freeman" was given permission to seek out land at Saconett Neck (now Little Compton, Rhode Island) or some other place and he did move to Little Compton where he died March 5, 1677/8. His wife, son John and daughter Elizabeth survived him, his second son Elias having predeceased him, leaving a widow and child.

*This quote and most of the information above is from the profile of John Irish published on pages 1065-1068 in The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volumes I-III. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2010), (Originally Published as: New England Historic Genealogical Society. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Volumes I-III, 3 vols., 1995).
**I am descended from their oldest son, another John Irish whose granddaughter Rebecca Richmond married Peter Worden IV.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.