Bid to brush out danger
QUESTION Do some countries paint their wildlife with reflective paint to prevent traffic accidents?
AROUND 300,000 reindeer wander freely in the wilds of Lapland, sometimes described as the last wilderness in Europe. Every year, about 4,000 of these lose their lives on Finnish roads in car accidents, causing around €15million of damage.
Most collisions occur in November and December when roads are icy and it gets dark earlier. July and August are also bad, as mosquitos keep deer on the move.
Various attempts have been made to prevent this. Reflectors and reflective tape had proven unsuccessful as reindeer chewed them off – and road signs warning drivers of roaming reindeer were stolen by tourists as souvenirs.
In 2014, the Finnish Reindeer Herders Association tested out painting their antlers with reflective paint. Unfortunately, the harsh Arctic conditions mean even this experiment has largely failed.
A new tactic is an interactive reindeer warning app. Drivers can tap their phone screens to register reindeer they see and get warnings if they are approaching an area where reindeers have been spotted.
Domesticated reindeer have been kept as livestock in northern Scandinavia and Russia for thousands of years, perhaps since the Bronze Age. In Finland, Sweden and Norway, the indigenous Saami people make up a majority of reindeer herders. The animals are prized for their meat, fur and milk. Hugh Ritchie, Douglas, Isle of Man.
QUESTION How is it possible to trace a person’s Irish ancestry accurately given the destruction of key records during the Civil War?
THE destruction of the Public Records Office at the Four Courts in Dublin on June 30, 1922, meant the loss of a huge amount of documentation about people in Ireland.
Despite that loss many other archival sources are still available, so people’s Irish ancestry can be traced relatively easily.
In April 1922, a couple of months after the Irish Free State had come into being, 200 anti-Treaty men took over the Four Courts. By the end of June, they had been dislodged by soldiers loyal to the new State, helped by British forces.
Before the anti-Treaty soldiers had been forced out, they had placed more than a dozen boobytrapped mines around the Public Records Office. Free State soldiers managed to dismantle them all, but another cleverly concealed mine was accidentally triggered. When it blew up, it maimed 20 soldiers and completely destroyed the strongroom in the Public Records Office.
Over the previous 20 years, many county records from around the country had been centralised in the Public Records Office, a unique record of the social life of the country over many centuries. A vast amount of legal judgments made over centuries, as well as local government records, all went up in flames. So too did most of the wills that had been prepared before 1922 and half the records of the Church of Ireland. Most importantly, the Irish census records for 1821, 1831, 1841 and 1851 were also largely destroyed.
For many years after the Four Courts were burned down, it was widely believed that all the records of people and their lives in Ireland for centuries past had gone up in smoke – but that wasn’t true.
Many other records still survive, although they are very disparate and are dispersed among different locations.
Some records of the four censuses held between 1821 and 1851 do still survive. Griffiths Valuation, a mid-19th century record of property throughout Ireland, yields lots of information.
Many different sources of Church records still exist, such as Catholic parish registers. All kinds of work records survive such as those of people who worked in the police and military as well as innumerable school records. The records of many different institutions such as workhouses and orphanages are still intact, even the longstanding register of dog licences.
Lots of very detailed directories were published during the 19th century while newspapers from the early 18th century onwards are an invaluable source of births, marriages and deaths.
With all these records still intact, it’s comparatively easy to trace ancestors in Ireland going back over the past 200 years.
But records from before then, which were lost in 1922, are far harder to replace and it’s for the centuries leading up to 1800 that the loss of the Four Courts records is still so keenly felt.
Despite all those losses, there are lots of ways in which people can trace their Irish ancestry.
The National Library of Ireland runs a free genealogical service that helps people track their ancestors. The National Archives are another very valuable resource while the General Register Office in Dublin holds the files of all births, marriages and deaths from 1864 to the present day.
In addition, several well-organised genealogical companies organise family history research. The National Library has a list of well qualified and competent individuals in every county who will do the same.
Thanks to the internet, too, and the present-day genealogical researchers, it’s now far easier to fill in the huge gaps left by the destruction of the Public Records Office in the Four Courts in 1922.
Pat Murphy, Dublin.
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.