Many years ago as a fresh-faced young graduate working for a tech firm in 1980's London I was tasked with learning about ORACLE relational databases.  I didn't study computer science and didn't know anything about writing code but that was fine because ORACLE used SQL - Structured Query Language. 

This consisted of English like instructions like the very simple one in this post's title.  Yes, there were more complex instructions and I learned how to use those to basically shove data into tables and drag it all back out again in lists and reports as required. 

What's all that got to do with this website you ask?

I use Weebly to build and maintain my website and cannot write HTML to save my life.  However, I did manage to work out a way of generating a little bit of HTML and embed it in various pages in order to make my many spreadsheets available.  Sadly, this no longer works for some reason for most but not all of the embedded spreadsheets and I have failed to find a solution.  Therefore, I have made the decision to remove all references to the Special Ingredients that used to be available - namely the finding aids I called Church of Ireland Parish Records Finder and Townland Indexes Timelines.

If I ever find a way to reinstate them I will, but for the time being, please enjoy the feast of other Irish and Scottish advice I serve up on all the other pages.

The Scotland's People website has rebranded this month, with a new Celtic-inspired logo and a much "chunkier" page design, liberally splashed with "look at me!" orange bars. 

The vapid accompanying press release promises easier searching, more streamlined certificate ordering, quicker, faster, blah, blah, blah... are you spotting a theme?!  It's all a bit breathless and gushing in my opinion.  Since when was family history a sprint?  We all know it's a marathon - go too fast, without taking time to reflect on what you've found risks drawing the wrong conclusions.  Have users really been clamouring for speed?  With no user forum where we might put forward ideas and suggestions or any communication from the National Records of Scotland on what the strategy and priorities are for developing the site, we will never know, I suppose. 

As Chris Paton has already commented, it all feels a bit like a corporate re-branding exercise, with no new functionality or improved indexes.  Also, as far as I've been able to determine with a very brief look through the search screens, all the same problems with place data are still there as documented on my Searching Scottish parishes on Scotland's People page. 

Which rather begs the question, why did the NRS feel the need to do this rebrand?  The previous interface did the same job and now there's much more tedious scrolling to construct searches.  If there was money to spend, I would have put my vote to incorporating a way of using the feast of meta-data that the NRS have to actually help us construct valid searches. 

​What do I mean by this?  The NRS know whether they have any data at all for specific searches.  So instead of that really annoying instruction to keep refining your search when you return no results, tell us that there are NO records of that type for that parish.

Equally, the NRS know the years that the records of any type span.  But the year range fields are always defaulted as illustrated.  How much more useful would it be if these fields were automatically populated with the oldest and newest available record years for the parish you have chosen.  Or were greyed out if there were no records?

Quite frankly, I'd take this sort of enhancement over speed any day.

Most of us probably use some sort of software package to record our family history.  I use Family Tree Maker (FTM), and like all the other packages, it has links to maps.  Modern maps.  The sort of map that your sat nav uses to send you off into the wide blue yonder when there's a snarl up on the A303.  Look closely at the image to the left and you can see that clearly - copyright Tom Tom! 

Trying to find things on these maps can be challenging, especially if you have an historical name, possibly in Irish and the modern name is very different.  You are going to have to work hard, cross-referencing with other websites such as the excellent Placenames Database of Ireland or historic OSI maps (see my Irish Maps and Gazetteers page.)

​FTM also has something that was called the Place Authority - a database of "standardised" place names that I believe was inherited from Ancestry when Software Mackiev bought the software. Given that pedigree, it's fine if you have forgotten which modern county an American town is in.  However, there are problems with other countries.

So, genealogically speaking, the mapping functions in FTM often don't help me navigate back to the past.

Ok, why does this matter?  I get that repurposing georeferenced modern sat nav maps is a cheap way of including mapping functionality into family history software. But when that is all that is being offered, I think, as diligent historians, we are being short-changed.
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I don't think I need remind you that place names in Ireland have had multiple spellings over time and have even been expressed in different languages. Your ancestor most likely set sail from Kingstown for America not Dun Laoghaire, or Queenstown and not Cobh.  Whilst you would really want to record the former names to keep the historical context, you will be forced to use the modern name if you want to make use of the geographical hierarchy features of the package to aid your research. 

You can get round this to an extent when compiling reports by using the short name field to record the place name you actually want, but it may not be historically correct for all the facts that use it and it's not what you see when you are working with places within the main screens.

Most annoyingly though, there does not appear to be any logical consistency to this issue.  Most Irish towns are in the database in English but some fairly substantial ones are not.  Some are perhaps recognisable and you will find them - Ros Cre for Roscrea, but others less so unless your grasp of Irish is good - Cill Mhantain for Wicklow for instance.  You'll have to remember to choose these labels too every time you create new facts associated with that place, thereby destroying an accurate transcription of the historic record, unless you also record that information elsewhere.  I know lots of people use the Description field to do just that, but it's a clumsy workaround in my opinion.  I also think it's really important to record the actual names of places that our ancestors used at the time - that is after all the crux of their stories told in their own voices.  My Protestant Irish ancestors would have called their town Wicklow.

There is a much bolder and creative solution - treat place names as a fundamental genealogical subject to which you could attach facts, notes and media, just like people e.g. alternative spellings, different names, pictures, photos, historical map fragments, all qualified by date etc.  This information could also be used intelligently to verify new data that you might add later e.g. alerting you to the fact that you might be trying to assign a baptism to a church that was demolished years before?  I have lobbied hard for this treatment of places to be included in FTM via the Facebook forum for FTM suggestions and I have emailed Software Mackiev directly - all currently to no avail.  I have even bent the ear of several Software Mackiev representatives on stands at family history fairs, who quite frankly couldn't have been less interested.  Maybe, I'm just rubbish at explaining the concept...

Sadly, I think the reality is that there is no money to be made in addressing these shortcomings in the software.  Instead development effort is being focused on add-on subscription options like Tree Vault or additional products that generate extra revenue.  Personally, I think they are missing a major opportunity to create a significant point of difference between themselves and their competitors in the way that they handle spatial data and structure it to really help fuel good research.

What are their competitors doing in this space I wonder?  Maybe it's time to take my ideas to RootsMagic and see what they think.

I love maps and think that they are one of the best resources you can consult when searching for your ancestors and their ilk.  So, I was really pleased to see 2 announcements this month that brought me great joy.

Firstly and most recently, the National Library of Scotland have added Ordnance Survey Ireland - Six-inch, 1829-1842 maps to their freely available cartographical collection.  You may find it easier to use the simple functionality on this website to initially view the maps, but I do recommend that you progress on to mastering the OSI's own Irish Townland and Historic Map Viewer.  I've put together a page of instructions for you, which you can access here.

Secondly, John Grenham has taken a step closer to creating my kind of "catalogue".  He updated his civil parish maps in July of this year by integrating them with the townlands data available from Open Street Map to create some beautiful multi-coloured parish-townland maps.  He has now worked some more magic by creating links from these maps to the huge wealth of information about records he has elsewhere on his website.  Take a gander at his joyful blog piece - "A circus-full of maps" - to learn more.  Now if only he (and maybe Shane Wilson?) could find a way of pinning all the churches, graveyards, schools, workhouses etc. on to those same maps, with links to the available records, then we would be getting closer to my initial dream of a whole new way of exploring past landscapes.

Seriously, it is when you see wonderful innovations that knowledgeable genealogists are making to support us better on our quest that you get more and more frustrated with the paltry map offerings the we have to put up with from the family history software vendors.  However, that rant ought to be the subject of another blog ...

Along with the rest of the Irish genealogical community, it was with great sadness that I recently learned of the sudden death of Roz McCutcheon.  She was an esteemed Irish genealogist, both a fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society and the Society of Genealogists (read Claire Santry's news story on the announcement last year.)  What Roz didn't know about the Registry of Deeds wasn't worth knowing and I learned so much about this resource from her.

She was extremely generous with her knowledge and, as a talented actress with a wicked sense of humour, she was a wonderfully entertaining speaker.  I manned stalls and helpdesks at family history fairs with her a couple of times and fondly remember her spontaneously breaking into song whenever the notion took her.


​Her passing leaves an enormous hole in our community and our hearts.  She truly was an inspiration and will be sadly missed by her many friends. My deepest condolences to her family.

Continuing with my gastronomically genealogical theme, I've created a couple of new pages to add to my Scottish advice.  Like my Snacks page for a quick reference to all those useful Irish links, my Scottish Tuckbox page is a similar concise list of my favourite Scottish links.  If you are new to Scottish research, do consult the other pages on Scottish History, Geography and Records for more context about these sources.

Also taking inspiration from my Midnight Feasts for those times when you are hunting a specific Irish vital event, I have stocked my Scottish Larder with a similar set of ingredients. There is always more than one place where you can hunt for certain Scottish records online and it can be useful to see exactly what your choices are before you spend your money.

​By the way, don't you just love this picture?! I can't decide if he's blowing on his porridge because it's hot or he has paused with spoon mid-way to have words with that cat!​

You may have heard of the term "gateway" ancestor i.e. usually someone aristocratic through whom you can link in to documented pedigrees going back many generations.  Several of the stories that have featured on Who Do You Think You Are revel in connecting the most unlikely people to royalty in this fashion - who can forget the Danny Dyer episode?!  However, it may not always be a noble ancestor that provides you with a glorious gateway to your past.

​Meet Arabella Charlotte Kneeland, nee Fishbourne.

Arabella was my 4th cousin 4x removed, baptised in Tullow Parish Church, Co. Carlow in 1844.  I found her by exploring forward one of the more distant twigs of the Revell branch of my family.  However, if I was one of her American descendants just beginning my research and happened across her will proved in Queens County, New York in 1925, I would have considered it my lucky day.

New York, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1659-1999 on Ancestry claims to have over 5 million records - people or images?  The bundle of papers relating to Arabella's estate amounted to 145 pages (albeit with some duplication.)  Arabella was relatively wealthy when she died in 1924 so there is a great deal of due legal process drily documented in those pages.  This was mainly to both ensure that her will and codicil were lawfully enacted and that every last dime of her wealth was properly accounted for and taxed accordingly.

Now this is where it gets interesting as when Arabella married American John Henry Kneeland in 1871 in Ireland, there was an Irish marriage settlement that referred to that of her parents, Edward Eustace Fishbourne and Elizabeth Revell, when they married in 1841.  Elizabeth's father, William Revell had settled interests in lands on both her and her sister Mary and the leases referred to go back to the late 18th century.   By the time of Arabella's marriage, we also sadly learned that she had had 2 other siblings who both died as infants and her mother was also dead, leaving her as the sole beneficiary.  Arabella and John Henry, who predeceased her, had at least 2 sons, Charles Eustace Kneeland and Frederick Revell Kneeland, who were both executors and the main beneficiaries of her estate.  A stray reference to Frederick being her "4th" child also hinted at perhaps a set of intervening twins who died as infants?

All of this information was meticulously recorded in the form of copies of the marriage settlement, littered with other names e.g. trustees, that will have you off hunting for more family connections.  4 generations of one family from one source is pretty good going.

It took me ages to transcribe and cross-reference all the information in those 145 pages, but the lesson here is that the old adage of "following the money" in genealogy is especially true when it comes to wills.  So, with the oft-lamented dearth of surviving Irish wills, be sure to follow up any other relatives especially if they passed in away in jurisdictions that were likely to record as much information as these extremely diligent American county clerks. 

100 years to the day of the Four Courts fire in Dublin that destroyed the Public Record Office of Ireland, the Virtual Treasury of Ireland has been launched online.  This makes freely accessible the first of what will hopefully be many digital resources that seek to fill in some of those terrible gaps in Ireland's documented history that were incinerated that day.

Like thousands of other people, I am still exploring the site myself but I can see the potential for some great genealogical evidence being published on here in the future.  Tempting as it is to dive in, searching willy-nilly for names and places (Yup, I did too!), I recommend you take the time to peruse the User Guide, which you can find on the Help page.  This will help you understand the significance of the coloured dots in particular.  The Help page also has the beginnings of some good research background advice too.

I like the idea of an "Inventory of Loss" (largely based on Herbert Wood's 1919 guide) and an "Inventory of Survival", created by the project team to describe the replacement documents in context.  The concept of Gold Seams is also an interesting one, whereby major archive series are presented as a whole and presumably, we are invited to mine for treasure.  The 1766 Religious Census is one of the first ones given this treatment under the Genealogy tab and I welcome the ability to access and learn about this material through a well written historical background and varied illustrative images.  Under the Researchers tab, you will find the Cromwellian Surveys, which I can't wait to get stuck into properly to solve some place puzzles.  It's important to note that much of this material is also available elsewhere but in perhaps a more fragmentary format, so this way of presenting the material could prove to be much more accessible.

As this is the launch version, there are many pages that are underdeveloped, so you may find yourself running into quite a few dead-ends.  I found this a lot in the proto-catalogue that appears under Browse the Treasury.  Lots of partners, many teasing you with labels to content but no links as yet.  Be sure to check out the Partners via one of the white on black links at the bottom of every page and there are lots of useful contact details there.

I've blogged enthusiastically before about the Beyond 2022 project, which is the driving force behind the creation of the Virtual Treasury.  The team drew together experts in emerging digital technologies and archiving, who are both prone to talking in their own languages.  And therein lies my only niggle of criticism about this launch version.  The current site copy seems to be liberally peppered with technical jargon and the Glossary has a smattering of terms -  "Chunking"? "Stitching"? - that I just know where invented by programmers in a project management meeting and stuck (I know, I attended enough in an earlier life.)  One to look out for though as it hopefully becomes a more frequent label is Born Digital i.e. a record created in an electronic format that has never existed in printed or physical format.  I look forward to seeing what appears under this category in the future.

Griping about language aside (but why all the American spellings?), this site is very exciting and has the potential to be a hugely valuable addition to the freely available online content that can solve your Irish people puzzles.  Bookmark it and keep up with the News page to learn about new content. 

I have been working on some fiendishly entangled Hopkins families that called the parish of Clonegal home in the early 19th century, and as part of this research was following up some later records in the Calendars of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1922.  If you want to know more about these records, then check out my page on Will Probate Districts & Records, 1858+. 

Now, we've all seen images of original documents that are festooned with various mysterious marks as enumerators marked up household returns perhaps or Griffith's field agents doodled in their field books.  Often, we get annoyed as something important may have been obscured or made indistinct.  Not so fast, I say, sometimes those extraneous scribblings might just help you.  Let me illustrate with the examples I found recently in those Will Calendars.

Sarah Jane Hopkins had been living with her widowed elder sister, Susan, when she died in 1914.  Susan had lost her husband, William Stevenson, 6 years previously.  Both William and Sarah had left wills that were proved in the Principal Registry in Dublin.  Here are the calendar entries for both of them.

Can you make out those pencilled numbers preceded by a "T" under their names (Click on the images to enlarge)? 
​If you've already perused my page of guidance on post 1858 wills referenced in green above, you will know that this code refers to a catalogue entry in the Testamentary series at the National Archives of Ireland.  This means that there should be a copy of the will lodged with them.  Sure enough, when I consulted the Index to Testamentary Records in the Public Record Office, Dublin, 15th-20th Century online, I found the following cards for each of these wills (click to enlarge.)

I then followed my own (excellent!) advice and consulted Testamentary Documents in the Public Record office, Dublin to see if there was an online image for either of them.  Sadly, those T reference numbers were not on the list for the various microfilms available online for this resource.  But if I desperately wanted to see those wills, I ought to be able to contact the National Archives of Ireland and request a copy.

Perhaps I just got lucky with these 2 calendar entries, but you never know what might turn up in your own research.  So, if you think you can detect a pencilled entry in the Will Calendars that look like these codes, then be sure to follow it up.

​Let me know if you get lucky!

If Irish geography is not your strong point, Logainm.ie is a great free resource for tracking down unfamiliar place names (see my Townlands page for more information.)

However, it is only the modern spelling of the name that is indexed for searching.  The problem is spellings have never been consistent over the years and there have even been complete name changes between English and Irish variants just confuse us all even more - Parsontown - Birr, I'm looking at you!  


​Older spellings or name variants were on the site but you had to click through on to another page ("Historical References") for each place name you thought might be relevant to see if you could find what you were looking for. 

I suggested to the Irish Government department that runs the website that it would be great if these older variants were also searchable, which they agreed was a good idea.  The site has recently been upgraded and whilst my suggestion has not exactly made it into this latest version, there have been some great improvements.  I have also been able to work out a way of trying to overcome that issue of hunting with alternative spellings.  Read on...

The historical references have now been placed on the landing page for each modern place name, so you can see straight away when a different spelling may have been in use.  Enlarge the screen shot to the right and you will see what I mean. 

There are also reference codes on the live pages (not active in this image) that tell you exactly where and when that variant was found to be in use.  Click on these to expand the reference and open up new avenues of research. Try cutting and pasting the names of any of those documents into your favourite search engine and you never know what you might find online to keep you well and truly diverted on a rainy afternoon!  
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Also prominently displayed on this page are the map co-ordinates for the place.  Cut and paste these into the relevant field in your favoured family history program and you will have mapped the place quickly and correctly, without having to zoom around a sometimes unhelpful modern map that may struggle with Irish townlands.

So, here's my new searching hack... by the power of Google (other search engines are available)!  Let me explain by way of the example townland in the images above.  Some months ago, after much painstaking searching and comparing of old and new maps and eventually landing on the right page on the previous version of Logainm, I had satisfied myself that an 18th century land deed reference to a Co. Wicklow townland called Ballykeroge was in fact referring to modern day Ballyherrig - check the second image above for even more spellings.  But how would I have been able to find that out much more easily with the new version of the site?

Because the spelling variants are now on the landing page, search engines will find them.  I tried this out by putting "Logainm Ballykeroge Wicklow" into the search bar and lo and behold this is what popped up as the first result!
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So, if you're struggling to find a place named in an old document, specifically direct your search to this new updated website with that first search term (Logainm), followed by your place name and ideally a county name (remember there are lots of common place names used across Ireland.)  You might not get as first time lucky as I did, but with a bit of experimentation and patience, you might just solve one of those infuriating place puzzles that might be stymieing your research.

Let me know if this works for you or if you come up with other clever tips for making the most of this great resource.