RePost: Out Sick: Playing Hooky at the Movies 100 Years Ago

"Superba," advertisement, Evening Tribune (San Diego, California), Wednesday, 6 Oct 1915, page 3, col 1; digital image, GenealogyBank (http://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 6 Oct 2015).

I'm feeling under the weather and brainless, so I'm off to the movies.

The Superba.  Opened as The Mirror in 1911, then was later called Majestic, Grant, and then Superba (all in 1914).  Building was demolished in the 1930's.

Right behind the Grant Hotel, the old location now appears to be a parking structure.

Copies of "The Quest" apparently no longer exist, so I'll have to miss this storyline:

Millionaire bachelor John Douglas, disillusioned with vapid society girls, muses of a "dream girl." To avoid the coming social season, John sails to the South Seas, and after surviving a shipwreck, he reaches an island inhabited by a white race descended from shipwrecked English emigrants. He falls in love with Nai, the harp playing daughter of Chief Naeto, who also resembles his dream girl. When Nai's fiancé Kaura, the sub-chief, demands that they marry, John and Nai escape and are married by a sympathetic priest. After Kaura is killed by lightning while pursuing them, Naeto sends the priest to persuade Nai and John to return and rule the tribe. Spying a yacht offshore, John attempts to signal it until nightfall. He falls asleep guarding Nai, and starts to dream. The next day, the couple is rescued. In New York, Nai awkwardly adjusts to society's conventions and clothes. In a struggle with De Villiers, John's friend who flirts with Nai, John shoots Nai, but the shot awakens him from a dream. Influenced by his dream, he decides never to return to civilization and goes back with Nai and the priest to the tribe.

Okay then.

At least "Mabel At the Wheel," a Chaplin film, is readily available.




© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.



© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

RePost from 2015: Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland

A post this morning by the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) brought this to my attention. The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has just put its microfilm collection of Catholic parish registers recording baptisms and marriage from most of Ireland's parishes in Ireland and Northern Ireland up to 1880 online for research and download. Starting dates for these records vary from region to region and parish to parish.*

[National Library of Ireland on The Commons, photostream on flickr]

Read what the NLI says about its mammoth project:

Church registers of marriage and baptism are considered to be the single most important source for family history researchers prior to the 1901 census. In many cases, the registers contain the only surviving record of particular individuals and families. With growing numbers of people engaged in family history research and limited on-site facilities at the NLI in Dublin, the decision was taken in 2010 to digitise the parish register microfilms. Following a tender process, the contract for digitisation was awarded to AEL Data who converted 550 microfilm reels, containing over 3500 registers into approximately 373,000 digital images. These images correspond to a page or two-page opening within a register volume. 

Of course since these records are organized by parish within each county, searching for your Irish ancestors will be easiest for those who know where to start. The NLI has a useful section on its Help page on finding the right parish with links.**

[St Saviour's Church and the Tait Memorial Clock in Limerick. National Library of Ireland on The Commons, photostream on flickr]

The NLI site is well-designed and easy to use. Best of all, it's FREE!

*The several counties (Meath, Armaugh and Galway) didn't have anything earlier than the very late 18th century.
**For more information about Irish genealogy in general, this link is a very good place to start.

© 2015 Copyright, Pat Hartley, All Rights Reserved.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.