Irish History, Memory and Genetics

Paddy Waldron

Tralee Library

1:15 p.m. Thursday 19 May 2022

WWW version:

http://pwaldron.info/WSU2022/

Introduction

• folklore - oral
  
• heritage - built
  
• tradition - activities
  
• local history - places
  
• genealogy - people

The stories of these components can be thought of as micro-history.

I once thought of my mother's stories as history. I thought memory was history. Then I became a historian, and after many years I have come to realize that only careless historians confuse memory and history. History is the enemy of memory. The two stalk each other across the fields of the past, claiming the same terrain. History forges weapons from what memory has forgotten or suppressed. Few non-historians realize how many scraps a life leaves. These scraps do not necessarily form a story in and of themselves, but they are always calling stories into doubt, always challenging memories, always trailing off into forgotten places.

• History
• take notes
• keep contemporaneous journals/diaries/blogs
• listen to Mike Lynch this afternoon
• Memory
• interview your elders
• record oral histories
• use your smartphone (voice recorder, video recorder, camera)
• ask them:
• tell me about your parents
• tell me about your grandparents
• tell me about your greatgrandparents
• etc.
  
• Genetics
• swab or spit for DNA comparison databases
• encourage previous generations to do likewise

Irish examples

• Oral history and tradition was passed on at regular social occasions:
• cuaird
• creamery
• forge
• pub
• church, especially weddings and funerals
• Oral genealogies were written down by
• Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh (Leabhar na nGenealach)
• John O'Hart (Irish Pedigrees)
• Nollaig Ó Muraíle (Leabhar na nGenealach)
• Burke (Peerage, Landed Gentry of Ireland, Irish Family Records)
• More general folklore is being preserved by
• Schools’ Folklore Scheme (1937-38)
• part of the National Folklore Collection
• Cuimhneamh an Chláir, the Clare oral history & folklore group
• Irish Life & Lore
• The tradition includes:
• genealogy
• local and general history
• music
• superstitions, e.g. holy wells
• cures
• farming practices
• boat-building techniques
• etc., etc.
• Digital technologies are allowing the tradition to be preserved, researched and interpreted in innovative and more efficient ways.
• The online release of Civil Registration indexes of births, marriages and deaths was controversial.
• Birth, marriage and death records have been public records since civil registration began on 1 January 1864 (1 April 1845 for non-Catholic marriages).
  
• Data Protection is threatening the transmission and preservation of personal histories.
• A compromise was reached whereby birth records can be placed online after 100 years, marriage records after 75 years and death records after 50 years.
  
• DNA analysis, like the oral tradition, can go back before the written record to circumvent brick walls.

Genealogy

1. assuming that two records referring to different but similarly named individuals both refer to the same individual; and
2. assuming that two records referring to the same individual, but with slight differences, refer to two different individuals.
   

• Names
• Dates
• Places
• Sources
• Family history

Names

• Ireland adopted surnames before almost anywhere else.
• Most of them are patronymics.
• Further patronymics and nicknames (cognomen) were required where one surname became predominant (e.g. Ryan, O'Sullivan, Durkan).
• In theory, the surname Ó Briain (in Irish) or O'Brien (in English) refers to descendants of Brian Ború (d.1014).
• Y-DNA always follows the male line; surnames and grants of arms almost always follow the male line.
• Mitochondrial DNA follows the female line; surnames almost always change in every generation in the female line.
• Names in Ireland were spoken and written in three languages
  • in Irish by the ordinary people;
  • in Latin by the church authorities;
  • in English by the civil authorities.
• There were no computers insisting on consistent spelling of names before the late 20th century.
• Different anglicisations of Irish surnames should not be singled out as "real" or "correct" or "an error" or "wrong spellings".
• Names from one language are often replaced with similar sounding names from another language:
• Waldron as I spell it is the name of a family from England who were planted in County Cavan as part of the Ulster Plantation in 1609;
• the Irish surnames Mac Bhaildrín and de Bhaldraithe in nearby Counties Mayo and Roscommon appear to have become Waldron some time later.
  
• M', Mc, Mac, O' prefixes (often dropped when names were anglicised in the 19th century, but often restored in the 20th century) indicate Gaelic surnames.
• de and Fitz prefixes indicate Norman surnames.
• Matheson's 1901 Varieties and synonymes of surnames and Christian names in Ireland : for the guidance of registration officers and the public in searching the indexes of births, deaths, and marriages gives a wonderful collection of examples of variations
• These spelling variations in Christian names (first names) and surnames (last names) are inevitable due to:
• evolution of language
• anglicisation: Nóra/Norah/Nora/Honora/Hanora/Hanoria/Hanna/Hannah/Hanah/Ann/Anne/Johanna/Josie/Josephine/Siobhán/Susan/Judy/Judith/Julia/Sheila/Síle
• nicknames, e.g. Paddy for Patrick, Peg and sometimes Daisy for Margaret, Delia for Bridget, Jack for John, Lillie/Lily for Elizabeth, Thady for Timothy, Darby for Jeremiah, Minnie or Molly for Mary, etc.
• poor handwriting
• illiteracy
• present-day transcribers from foreign cultures
• two continents separated by a common language: Mahoney, Costello, Doherty, O'Dea/O'Day, etc.
• the Ellis Island myth
• Middle names did not exist in ordinary Catholic Ireland; migrants to the U.S. frequently turned a patronymic into a middle name to conform.
• Naming conventions: first two sons and first two daughters generally named after their grandparents.
• Namesakes of similar age often turn out to have been first cousins named after a shared grandparent.
• These naming patterns were not universal, but are always worth looking out for.
  
• If the children of one individual follow the pattern, then check whether the children of the spouse and/or siblings might also follow the pattern.
• For example:
• my GGgrandmother Catherine Parker called her second son and first daughter Thomas and Mary after her parents
• were her first son Edward and second daughter Jane called after the parents of her husband Thomas Waldron?
• Edward Waldron and his wife Jane Hogg lived in the right place at the right time.
• All published pedigrees show that they had only one child, Francis.
• Thomas and Catherine called their own third son Francis.
  
• I have tiny DNA matches with relatives of Edward, but have not found any DNA match with any relative of Jane.
  
• The jury is still out on this one until I obtain DNA samples from descendants of Francis and/or find archival evidence that Francis had a brother.
  
• Witnesses at marriages and sponsors/godparents/gossips who stand for newborns at baptisms are generally relatives or neighbours.
• Marriages took place in the bride's parish, and often the birth and baptism of the first child also did, often with the maternal grandmother as baptismal sponsor.
• Older siblings (after Confirmation) were often sponsors for younger siblings.
• Infant and maternal mortality were high (and accepted as "the will of God") and deceased children's names were recycled.

Dates

Birthdays

• Most of our ancestors neither remembered, nor knew, nor cared when they were born.
• Even if they did know their birthdate, they did not have pocket calculators to work out their current age, and, like many of their present-day descendants, may have lacked the mental arithmetic skills to do so without a calculator.
  
• Ages didn't matter until 1909 when the Old Age Pension was introduced.
• Birthdays didn't matter until Hallmark Cards was founded the following year.
• Babies were baptised as soon as possible after birth to avoid eternity in limbo.
• There was no rush to register births with the civil authorities, so dates on civil birth records are often wrong:
• because the informant had already forgotten the precise birthdate; or
• to evade fines or surcharges for the late registration of births.

Religious history

• The dark 18th century
• Penal Laws
• Catholic Emancipation 1829
• Devotional Revolution

Famine

• Stories of the Great Famine of c.1845-52 are scarce in the oral tradition.
• The Illustrated London News sketches of Kilrush Poor Law Union during the famine illustrate every published work on the subject.
• The National Famine Commemoration has been held annually since 2008, rotating between the provinces.
• 
• It was held in Kilrush Poor Law Union in 2013: facebook blog links
• The logo was the ILN sketch of Elizabeth Henrietta Kennedy (1842-1925), later 4th Countess of Clanwilliam, distributing clothing at Kilrush.
• The heroic role of her father, Captain Arthur Edward Kennedy (1810-1883), had been forgotten until he was rediscovered by local history students in the 1970s.
• The 1740 famine (caused by Arctic winter weather) was proportionally more severe on the Irish population than the 1845 famine (caused by potato blight).
• Kilcasheen Grave Yard "was a deserted burying place in the year 1739 ... in the ensuing year ... famine and pestilence raged through the country and dead human bodies were to be met with by the roads and ditches".
• Today's Irish are the descendants of survivors of the Great Famine.
• Many victims of the Great Famine have no living descendants.
• The victims' surnames are still our surnames.

The revolutionary period 1913-1923

• Ulster Volunteers and Irish Volunteers founded 1913
• Irish Volunteers split in 1914 over WWI into pro-war National Volunteers and anti-war so-called Sinn Féin volunteers
• 1916 Easter rising was the high point
• 16 leaders executed by firing squad, including Con Colbert
• 1918-1919 influenza pandemic
• general election 14 December 1918
  
• the Anglo-Irish Treaty ended the War of Independence, but started the Civil War
  
• Public Record Office destroyed on 30 June 1922 at the start of the Civil War
• Beyond 2022 | Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury
• hostility to government remained and remains

Places

• For many centuries, the smallest units into which Ireland was divided (and the most precise addresses available) were townlands (searchable index here and on several other websites)
• These were formally mapped by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland (1824-46)
• These historic maps were formerly available, permalinked and bookmarkable: http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,484097,614169,7,10
• The next generation of hyperlinks has also now apparently evaporated from the so-called "cloud": http://bit.ly/2JH4yK4
• As better map websites have come and gone, the least worst currently available is: https://maps.archaeology.ie/HistoricEnvironment/
• Since around 2015, townlands have been supplanted a more precise system of Eircodes: unique but meaningless identifiers for every letterbox (mailbox) in the country.
  
• Townlands have been combined in many different ways for many different purposes over the centuries into larger administrative units of different sizes (parishes, etc.).
• All levels of subdivisions are included in the Placenames Database of Ireland, including previously unrecorded fieldnames and minor placenames below the townland level.
  
• Irish people also have a special attachment to their county and parish - the next step up from the townland, used in various ways as the basic organisational unit for everything from Catholic church to Anglican church to Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA, est. 1884) to Ireland Reaching Out (Ireland XO)
• There is an even stronger attachment to family farms
• ambition to keep the farm in the family name often realised for six or more generations
• Thomas Lynch Booking Passage
• inheritance, subdivision, primogeniture and emigration
• Land Acts 1870-1903: tenant purchase
• Land War 1879-82: Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale
• Land Commission 1881
• turnover - 0.3%/300 years
• smallholdings consolidated
• a stick in a gap in a bog
• Gaelic Athletic Association
  
• attachment to farm, home, property, ownership, tenancy, Celtic Tiger, property bubble
• a grave or family burial ground in a nearby cemetery generally went with a farm
• Graveyards
• Kilcasheen later became one of countless cillíní.
• Unbaptised infants, strangers, bodies washed ashore, and those who committed suicide were denied Christian burial in consecrated ground.
• Historic Graves is one of many projects recording old graveyards using new digital technologies.

Sources

• Verify the work of other genealogists using primary sources.
• Learn to reconcile the sometimes conflicting evidence of history, memory and genetics.
  
• The 1901 and 1911 census website is the most used Irish genealogy website.
• (More to be added)

Family history

• Flesh on the bones
• Reading between the lines
• Go sideways in order to go backwards
• Don't believe everything you are told
• Verify the family legends, using online records, offline records and DNA

Families and Communities

• Tanistry
• marriage prohibitions, forbidden degrees of kindred, recessive genes, dispensations
• An tAthair Peadar
• Catholic v. Anglican
• marriage within social class, religious group and geographical area
• The ne temere decree implemented by the Vatican at Easter 1908 had far-reaching consequences:
  
• mixed marriages became more complicated - instead of raising children of one gender in the father's religion and children of the other gender in the mother's religion, all children had to be raised in the Catholic religion;
• each spouse's home parish had to be notified and provide proof of baptism and freedom to marry;
• consequently, unintended archives documenting migration patterns now remain forgotten and neglected in many parochial houses and parish offices.
  
• relatives, relations, friends
• degrees of consanguinity
• third cousins
• five-a-kin from col cúigear
• implications of large families and limited travel
• see Arensberg & Kimball

Mathematics

• Simple mathematics shows that we are all much more closely related than many realise.
• 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 greatgrandparents, ..., 2ⁿ ancestors on generation n, 1024 ancestors on generation 10
• Do you know your 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, 4th cousins, 5th cousins?
• Do you know how many 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, 3rd cousins, 4th cousins, 5th cousins, you have?
• I have documented 40 relatives out to 1st cousins (grandparents' and their descendants), 721 greatgrandparents + descendants, 3232 GGgrandparents + descendants, 9051 GGGgrandparents + descendants, 13795 GGGGgrandparents + descendants.
• These numbers grow as time passes and as more records and more DNA comparisons become available.
  
• We share autosomal DNA with most of these.
• Autosomal DNA is still being used disproportionately by adoptees and descendants of adoptees in search of their biological relatives, e.g. Jim Palmer, Anthea Ring.
• We all descend from Brian Ború.
• So we all have royal descents.
• Probability of relationship: I estimate that there is a 95% chance that any two people of Irish ancestry are 12th cousins or closer.
• The second in line to the English throne has fifth cousins living in county Clare, where their common GGGGgrandmother died on 21 January 1862.
• If a slightly questionable family tree is correct, then the present English monarch is my own 11th cousin.

Ethnicity

• The peddling of estimated ethnicity percentages by DNA companies perpetuates ethnic and racial divisions.
• The percentages are no more reliable than opinion polls before elections, and therefore should be treated with the same scepticism as struggling politicians treat opinion polls.
• Is ethnicity determined by
  
  • where people were born?
  • where people lived?
  • what language they spoke?
  • where your cousins three times removed whose greatgrandchildren form the reference populations lived?
    

• What ethnicity labels should be assigned to
  

  • ancestors who intermarried?
  • ancestors who migrated?
  • ancestors who were not restricted by today's (or any) international borders?
  • ancestors who spoke languages that are no longer spoken where they lived?
  • ancestors who have left no trace in written, or even oral, history?

• If ethnicity is geographically based, does it depend on where one's ancestors lived:

• 1 generation ago?

• 5 generations ago?
• 25 generations ago?
• 125 generations ago?
• If ethnicity is linguistically based, does it depend on what language one's ancestors spoke:

• 1 generation ago?

• 5 generations ago?
• 25 generations ago?
• 125 generations ago?
• Should the labels assigned be based on today's geographic boundaries and languages or on those of the generation at which ethnicity labels became fixed?
• What were the ethnicity percentages of our ancestors in the generation in which ethnicity labels became fixed?
• If the "Out of Africa" theory is correct, should we not all be labelled "100% African"?
  
• If people in place A share DNA and common ancestors with people in place B, those common ancestors could still have lived in place C.

• The emphasis on ethnicity hampers both

  • the far more productive use of DNA analysis to break down brick walls in individual family trees; and
  • the message that we are all related.
• WikiTree.com currently has 30,591,536 profiles of which 25,963,635 are connected to each other by blood or marriage.
• Two people are one degree apart if they are parent/child or husband/wife or siblings or half-siblings.
• It appears that no two people who have lived within the last 100 generations are more than 100 degrees apart - see the 100 Circles Project.
• You are all connected to people who have lived on this island and to people who lived elsewhere but spoke the language from which today's Irish language has evolved.