Anyone starting to research their Irish heritage has heard the story: ‘all of their records were destroyed in 1922’. The destruction of the Four Courts on 30 June 1922, which housed the public records office, was a huge loss… but! with digitisation, Irish family history is getting easier by the day. Sites like our sister site Findmypast are opening up new avenues of research by digitising a wide variety of sources, and many of their Irish collections are free! Newspapers …
Irish genealogy
Emma Willis explored the back streets of Birmingham, uncovered a violent ancestor, and revealed magnificent Irish craftsmanship in her family tree. In this week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, we followed the lives of three of Willis’ ancestors: James Gretton, Richard Fowler, and Michael Kirwan. We will take a closer look at the newspapers and explore what more we can discover about the stories and lives revealed. James Gretton Emma Willis found out that her three-time great …