IRISH NEWSPAPER RECORDS
Not all Irish records were destroyed in 1922! Chris Paton identifies newspaper offerings to help fill the record gap
When the Public Records Office in Dublin burnt down during the Irish Civil War in 1922, a great deal of genealogical material was lost including 19th century census returns. However, Irish newspapers can offer a way to overcome the various failures of vital records and censuses that can so often frustrate researchers. As in Britain, the public increasingly began to use newspapers in the 19th century to announce various life events occurring from the womb to the tomb, but even before this they can be very useful, confirming a family’s presence in an area as far back as the early 18th century. A useful guide to understanding what has been published and what is available for consultation in Ireland is the Newspaper Database on the National Library of Ireland website ( www.nli.ie), but increasingly a vast amount of titles are finding their way online in a searchable format.
First steps
There are two huge online sites that offer worthwhile starting points for newspaper research. The Irish Newspaper Archives site ( irishnewsarchive.com) contains many digitised titles, mainly from the Republic, though with some from Northern Ireland. Its most historic title is the Belfast News-Letter, which commenced publication from 1737, making it the oldest English language newspaper in the world still in print, and for which the archive holds a complete run from 1737-1938, and recent titles from 2013 onwards. Note that if you have a subscription to Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk), the title is hosted here from 1737-1925, but mostly in browse-only format – a free index for 1737-1800 is online at www.ucs.louisiana.edu/bnl which can help (there are gaps in the coverage, however, particularly from 1737-1750).
Of the 75 titles available on the Irish Newspaper Archives, additional significant holdings include the Irish Independent, Freeman’s Journal, The Nation, the Anglo- Celt, the Connaught Tribune and the Munster Express.
The British Newspaper Archive ( britishnewspaper archive.co.uk) has recently added a huge amount of content for Ireland, much of which is also on Findmypast ( findmypast.co.uk). Several titles are available for Belfast, Dublin, Cork, and Galway among others, including some hidden gems. If you have Protestant ancestors who moved to Scotland, for example, the Belfast Weekly News (1857-1914) printed reports from Orange Lodge meetings in Glasgow, sent ‘ home’ by ex-pats, as featured in Lulu’s episode. Another great resource is the official paper of record, the Belfast Gazette, and its predecessor, the Dublin Gazette. The Belfast title, first published on 7 June 1921 to cover
TheBelfastWeeklyNews (1857-1914) hosted monthly news reports from Orange Lodge meetings in Glasgow
proceedings of the new Northern Ireland state, is freely available at www.thegazette.co.uk. The Dublin-based edition, which existed from 1706-1921, is not so easy to access. Almost 60 years’ worth of the title, from 1750-1809, are hosted at the Irish Parliament’s Oireachtas Library website at opac.oireachtas.ie/liberty/libraryHome.do. These can be downloaded free in PDF files, covering about a year each. Some further editions from 1708-1712, 1724-1725 and 1797 are hosted on the British Library’s 1700-1800 Burney Collection, available through subscribing academic institutions and libraries. The Dublin Gazette’s replacement for the Republic of Ireland, Iris Ofigiúil, is online only from 2002 at irisoifigiuil.ie.
The Irish Times offers a subscription-based archive at irishtimes.com/search, which covers from 1859 to the present day. The British Newspaper Archive has begun to add this paper and will have partial coverage from 1859-1947.
There are many local transcription and indexing projects which can also help. Glenravel Local History Project in Belfast, for example, offers a ‘timeline’ at glenravel.com, reproduces newspaper stories from the 1830s up to 1941 in PDF-based summaries, while Eddie Connolly’s Eddie’s Extracts, is well worth bookmarking at freepages. genealogy. rootsweb. ancestry.com/ ~econnolly, for newspaper announcements from titles such as the Belfast Telegraph, The Witness, and The Banner of Ulster. Findmypast’s Tipperary Clans Archive provides a similar offering on an all-Ireland basis, while Nick Reddan’s site at members.iinet.net.au/~nick red/newspaper holds similar offerings for Dublin and Limerick. The Ireland Old News site is hit and miss in its coverage, but is worth a look at www.irelandoldnews.com. Some items from the Connaught Journal (1823 and 1840) are at celticcousins.net/ireland.
Local archives
The website of local studies libraries and archives are worth checking. Several titles have been digitised by Waterford City and County Libraries and made freely available online in browse-only format at waterfordcouncil.ie/ departments/library/localnewspapers.htm, including the Dungarvan Leader (1943-2007), the Dungarvan Observer (1918-1979) and the Waterford Chronicle (1811-1872). Where titles have not been digitised, information on local holdings can be found. Cavan’s county library, for example, offers a guide at cavanlibrary.ie/ Default.aspx? StructureID_ str= 32, Cork Past and Present has a list at bit.ly/corkpast, while Tipperary Studies has details of its collections at tipperarystudies.ie/news papers. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast has a guide to newspapers available on microfilm at bit.ly/ PRONInews. Another useful resource for newspaper extracts is the Documenting Ireland: Parliament, People and Migration (DIPPAM) project at dippam.ac.uk.
Finally, the Irish Military Archives website has lots of newspaper coverage on the Easter Rising from 1916 at bureauof militaryhistory.ie/1916press cuttings.html and past editions of the Irish Volunteers publication, An t-Óglach, available at bit.ly/AnToglach.