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Family Tree Magazine Podcast
Discovering Your Irish Heritage with RootsIreland.ie – An Interview with Dr. Brendan Scott
00:13:35
In this episode, Dr. Brendan Scott, manager of RootsIreland, discusses the importance of the RootsIreland.ie website for Irish family history research.
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- [00:01]
A
The next generation of family history is here. Storied is taking family history to new and exciting places with AI Storied books and more. With billions of historical records and exclusive newspaper publications, you can build and expand your family tree with ease. Collaborating with your family has never been easier or more affordable. Don't let your family's legacy go untold. Preserve these memories in a beautiful interactive form format that will be cherished for generations. Turn your family's journey into a stunning storied book, a keepsake to pass down to your children and grandchildren. Visit Storied today and get started for free. That's storied. S-T-O-R-I-E-D.com welcome to family Tree magazine's Best Websites Podcast. This is the podcast devoted to finding the best websites to help you with your genealogy research. I'm Lisa Louise Cook. One of the best websites for Irish family history research is RootsIreland, ie. And here to tell us more about it is Dr. Brendan Scott. He's the manager of Roots Ireland, the Irish Family History Foundation. Welcome to the show, Brendan.
- [01:24]
B
Hi Elisa. Thanks very much for having me on.
- [01:27]
A
Oh, I'm so glad you could be here because this is a terrific website, one we want to make sure is on the radar of people who are trying to do Irish research. And that's the challenge is genealogy covers an awful lot of ground. I'm sure it's impossible for anyone site to do everything. But tell us, what is it that you specialize in and that you can do for researchers at Roots Ireland?
- [01:50]
B
I suppose our specialization is Catholic records, Roman Catholic records, although we have plenty of other non Catholic records as well. But I suppose that would be probably one of the things that people would associate with us more so are the strength of our Catholic records. The way that our website works is we have over 30 centers, genealogy centres around Ireland, both north and south of the border, and those centres would have worked with their local parishes, with their local diocese, would have gotten the registers, the baptismal marriage, burial records, and transcribed them and then send them to us, which is the central sort of thing, and then we upload them onto the website. And so that's really our kind of our raison d'. Etre. Now we have over 23 million records online and even though, like I say, there's probably a good percentage of those would be Catholic. But as I say, we have plenty of civil records, census records, census substitutes, Church of Ireland records, Presbyterian records, Methodist records. In fact, when the website was launched in 2007, I think or 8. It was launched by the four leaders of the main Christian denominations in Ireland. So it's very important that we have that spread across the board. And so that's kind of our, our, our big, our big selling point, I suppose. And what's good as well is that if you can't find the answer on the website itself, the center can normally provide you with some sort of an answer or guidance. So if you go onto the website and go and it says, you know, John Murphy was born in the parish of so and so in the townland of wherever, and you sort of go, well, where's that townland? I don't know. I don't know that townland. You can contact the center and they will know where that townland is and they can bring you out to that townland and even sometimes to the actual house or what's remaining of the house as well. Like, I've. I've heard many people talking about how they've brought people out and done that kind of thing. So it's a lovely thing to be able to do that. We have the local knowledge across the country, across the island, north and south.
- [04:15]
A
Yes, absolutely. In fact, I remember because I started podcasting right around that 2007, 2008 time frame. And Roots Ireland was one of the first websites that we featured and we interviewed somebody from the organization at that time. And I remember how the excitement around it, I imagine that the amount of records and information, and I can just tell from you describing it, has really expanded. So if somebody hasn't been there for a couple of years, would I imagine that they would find a lot more than they did even just a couple years ago?
- [04:48]
B
Yeah, every year there's probably up to 200,000 new records being added, sort of between 150 and 2,000 new records being added all the time. There was a. Like, we didn't have Kerry records for a long time. Now we have, I think about 300,000 Kerry records. There are new Kerry records. Actually, the parish, the Roman Catholic baptisms of Kilcommon parish in Kerry just went online yesterday. So there's about five or six thousand of those went on from about 1810 to 1900, something like that. So new records have been added all the time. So I would always really recommend that when you go to the website, you can go to. One of the options is online sources, tap on that and you can click a county, any particular county, and then it will bring up exactly what records we have for that county. So the religious records, the civil records, the census records, the census substitutes, all Those sort of things we will have the list of exactly what we have and the years that we have them for. So it's a great little. I would recommend to anyone who looks at Roots Ireland for the first time or who hasn't been there in a while, go look at that first and then work from there because it's a very good heads up.
- [06:04]
A
That's a great recommendation. And it's so funny. We get excited and sometimes that's not what we do. But knowing what you have and what you don't have is just as important. So I noticed that we can set up an account. Tell us, do we need an account? Do we need to pay for access to any of this?
- [06:24]
B
Yeah, well, it's a subscription site. So you need to have a site to see the records. You can have an account and never buy a subscription again. What I would recommend, it's no harm. Maybe people wouldn't like to do this, but it's no harm. If you want to keep up to date with what's going on. You can have an account, never buy a subscription, be added to our mailing list. Just put yourself on onto the mailing list and then you. And then you'll get emails whenever. Like we don't pester people, you know, we're not bugging them every week or anything like that. Just whenever new records come up or something like that, we will, we will send a message out to our, our mailing list so people will know, okay, there's new records come up. And so that's the sort of thing that happens sometimes. You can see sometimes because I'm always sort of lurking in the back end of the website sort of seeing, you know, you know, just how many more people have signed up or have the taken out subscriptions and so on. And you may actually find people who opened up the account in 2000, say, and didn't do anything and then suddenly bought a subscription this week. And so you sort of think, well, why did they buy a subscription this week? And then you might look, oh, well, new records went up this week that obviously must interest them. And so it's a good way of keeping up with what's going on. Even if you don't buy a subscription, you can still see what's happening and you can always look on and see exactly what records we hold and that kind of thing anyway, so you can still be have a presence on the site anyway and you can always ask us a question at any time that doesn't cost anything.
- [08:00]
A
Oh, that's great. So when Somebody is new to Irish research and they come over to your website, RootsIreland, ie. Or where do you say they should start? Particularly if you know they know something. Let's say they're in the United States, they know something about the family here, they've found their way back. What do they need to know in order to be able to be successful on your website?
- [08:27]
B
Well, again, it all sort of depends on how much information they have. Names, rough dates, things like that. Like if they have a name, an age when they go through Ellis island, for example, or whatever it may be. And even better if they have even a county, you know, then, then, then you can search because you can cast your net very wide. Like if you're looking for Paddy Murphy in Ireland in 1850, well, best of luck to you if you don't have any more information than that. I mean, sorry, you know, there's any amount of them, take your pick, you know, and whichever one you like the look of. But, but so really what you need to be doing coming in is realizing that even though Ireland is a small country, it's still, you know, you have quite a lot of homogeny in terms of names and things like that, you know, and so you have to just be aware of that. And if you, if you have any information that might be able to tighten that up a bit, sometimes you can take a guess. Like if the name of a person is O'Reilly or Brady, for example, more a chance that they'll be from County Cavan, which is where I'm from, because they're the big names in County Cavans. If they're o', Rourke's, you might say, well, they're possibly from County Leitrim. If they're McMahon's, they're possibly from County Monaghan, possibly, but these are inexact. But they might help you along the way. So sometimes, you know, to find out where a name originates from or where it's most popular in an area can be a useful guide as well. But again, that's kind of. You're kind of clutching at straws at that point. If that's what you're relying on, you're kind of clutching at straws. The other thing to be aware of as well is that Catholic records sometimes don't go back as far as Church of Ireland, Protestant records. Church of Ireland records could go back to the 17th century. Catholic records mightn't start until the 19th century because the Catholic Church was essentially an underground organization throughout that period. And, you know, you weren't going to Keep records of an underwritten records of an underground organization. So although by and large the chance was you were probably Catholic, but, you know, they didn't write them down. And the priests, unlike now you didn't have a house, so they didn't keep records because they could be moving from place to place and where to keep their records. So by the 19th century, certainly the records are coming in and you might be lucky and you might get 18th century Catholic records, but pre 18th century Catholic records, gosh, they'd be thin on the ground. But Church of Ireland ones are much more likely, or Presbyterian ones are more likely. So, so sometimes people can come in and think, I'll be able to trace my people back to the, you know, to the Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169 again. Well, best of luck to you if you can, you know, but I, I, I doubt it. I mean, my own family, I could only ever get them far as far back as the 1850s or 40s. That's as far back as I could go. And Scott would be a relatively unusual name in Cavan, but that's still only as far as I could get back because the records weren't there, you know, because sometimes people can be a bit frustrated by that. And I understand that frustration because it's the same for me. But at the same time, you can't make up records, you know, and, you know, people go, oh, where's that record? You don't have that record. Oh, I'm furious. And, well, you know, the priest, when he was making, he didn't keep them or he didn't record them or whatever, you know, I always think if any records survive at all, it's a miracle, you know, like, it's incredible that, like, I was holding a register the other day yesterday actually, and there were, there were, it was from the early 19th century up to the late 19th century. And I just thought, God, what, what an incredible thing that it survives, you know, Incredible. So the fact that there's anything there at all, I think we have to be grateful for that, you know.
- [12:26]
A
Wonderful. Well, Dr. Brendan Scott, thank you for introducing us and encouraging us to go visit Rootsireland ie. It's a pleasure talking to you.
- [12:35]
B
Thank you very much. Lisa.
- [12:39]
A
Thanks so much for joining me for the Family Tree Magazine Best Websites podcast. You can find a link over to this month's best website@familytreemagazine.com podcast also, while you're at the website, I would encourage you to sign up for our free email newsletter. It's the perfect way to stay in touch with everything we've got going on at Family Tree Magazine, including our other podcast, the Family Tree Magazine Podcast. I'm Lisa Louise Cook and you can find me at my website, genealogygems.com where you'll find links to my Genealogy Gems podcast and our YouTube channel. Until next time, have fun climbing your family tree.