An Irish Day

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Standing on my local train station, in the coolness of a late autumn morning I watched a very cheeky sulphur-crested cockatoo, harass two magpies. Where they went, it would follow, this happened several times and then my train arrived for my day of Irish Genealogy.

Hosted by The Society of Australian Genealogists, Fintan Mullan and Gillian Hunt,  below, presented five wonderful talks on Irish Family History.
 

 
Held in Glover Cottage, adjacent to Richmond Villa (home to SAG), the day was an Irish researchers dream.


                              A different view of Richmond Villa, from Glover Cottage.
 
 
The range of talks covered everything from an Introduction to Irish Family Research, Using land records, Census substitutes and Different Church records. It was information overload and I came away with my head spinning and my notes dotted with comments like, look for Samuel, check Tithe records for Thomas and work out the correct townland for my family.
 
Fintan's talk on Understanding Irish townlands, was a highlight for me as I had never heard it explained so well.
 
I splurged with these two books and have found several useful websites, in the Tracing Your Irish Ancestors book. I can see my weekend will be an Irish research one.

These are how handouts and while I've still to fully read all of mine, the peaks I've had at some have been interesting.
 
Fintan and Gillian belong to the Ulster Historical Foundation.  Established in 1956, the Foundation's aim is to encourage the interest in the history of Ulster.
 
Ulster Historical Foundation  This will take you to their website.
 
Dinner with Jennie Fairs at the Glenmore Hotel, in The Rocks and a sneak peak at Vivid Sydney, (it starts tonight 26th for 23 nights), rounded out a wonderful day.
 
Many thanks to the crew from SAG, for organising and running the day.
 
Happy Researching,
Lilian.
 

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