The following one-page history of the Carlin clan associated with County Donegal and County Derry is indicative of what the reader can expect to encounter with each of the 300+ histories of surnames compiled by Brian Mitchell in his book, The Surnames of North West Ireland: Concise Histories of the Major Surnames of Gaelic and[…]Read more
The vast majority of Irish census records prior to 1901 no longer exist. Consequently, as Brian Mitchell explains in his New Pocket Guide to Irish Genealogy, census substitutes are of great importance to Irish researchers. Perhaps the most important, and certainly the most famous, substitute is Griffith’s Primary Valuation. Conducted between 1848 and 1864, the[…]Read more
Several months ago, we announced that Genealogical.com had published the preeminent textbook for Scots-Irish genealogy: William Roulston’s RESEARCHING SCOTS-IRISH ANCESTORS. The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600–1800. This 2018 second edition is a massively expanded version of its 2005 predecessor. The new edition includes additional information on church records and landed estate papers,[…]Read more
Brian Mitchell’s New Pocket Guide to Irish Genealogy is a wonderful combination of how-to book, guide to sources, and case studies–in only 120 pages. It’s expert genealogist Mitchell’s contention that the most important sources for Irish genealogy are the civil registers of births, marriages, and deaths; church registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials; gravestone inscriptions;[…]Read more
Over the last year and a half, Genealogical.com has consolidated two series of books by Dr. David Dobson that were originally published in multiple installments. The first of these was Scots-Irish Links, 1525-1825: Consolidated and Indexed Edition. In Two Volumes, originally published in 15 parts but lacking an index. To rectify these shortcomings, we re-numbered[…]Read more
This consolidated edition brings together all ten Parts of David Dobson’s series, Irish Emigrants in North America. A comprehensive index of names has been added to facilitate the reader’s search through all ten Parts. Moreover, the index identifies the many other Irish persons named in the emigrant profiles who could be overlooked by merely consulting[…]Read more
The new consolidated edition of Scots-Irish Links [1575-1875], by David Dobson identifies over 15,000 Scots-Irish inhabitants of the Ulster Plantation, and the indexes to those two volumes name an astounding 33,000 people connected to those inhabitants. Of course, even those numbers cannot compare with the wave of Scots who transplanted to Ireland. In the 17th-century[…]Read more
As we have noted previously, the most important development in Irish genealogy since Mr. John Grenham published the fourth edition of his textbook has been the enormous strides in posting Irish family content on the Internet. This fact has guided the author in his preparation of the 5th edition of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, available[…]Read more
This new consolidated edition brings together all ten Parts of David Dobson’s series, Irish Emigrants in North America. A comprehensive index of names has been added to facilitate the reader’s search through all ten Parts. Moreover, the index identifies the many other Irish persons—wives, children, parents, ships’ captains, indenturers, etc.–named in the emigrant profiles who[…]Read more
Between 1717 and the beginning of the War of American Independence in 1776, 250,000 Scots-Irish, often referred to as Ulster-Scots in Ireland (i.e. Protestant settlers in the nine counties of the Province of Ulster) left Ulster, through the ports of Belfast, Londonderry, Newry, Larne and Portrush, for North America. The Scots-Irish tended to enter North[…]Read more
David Dobson’s Scots-Irish Links Consolidated Edition incorporates sixteen separate titles published between 1994 and 2021 and covers persons of known Scots-Irish heritage between 1575 and 1900. Scots-Irish Links Consolidation Edition improves upon the original, small books by adding a full-name index to the entire opus, thereby identifying every person named in the alphabetically arranged abstracts.[…]Read more
(The following essay is excerpted from pp. 39-40 from Mr. Mitchell’s book, New Pocket Guide to Irish Genealogy.) With civil registration of births and deaths commencing in 1864, and with the patchy survival of church records before this time, gravestone inscriptions take on a special significance. Many Church of Ireland burial registers were destroyed by[…]Read more
