Tracing Emigrants from Ireland
3:00pm Friday 22 August 2014
STRAND HOTEL - Shannon Suite
WWW version:
Outline:
Why trace the emigrants in your family?
Are their descendants tracing you?
Emigration routes and associated genealogical
sources
Examples
- Most researchers are just as interested in collateral branches as in
direct ancestors.
- A family tree is never finished.
- A professional genealogist is a genealogist who hasn't time to research
his or her own family.
- An amateur genealogist is too busy researching his or her own family to
take on paid commissions.
- Government policy
includes "longer-term plans for a National Diaspora Centre" and generally
boosting the economy through roots tourism.
- Organisations like Ireland Reaching Out are trying to
make contact with the Irish diaspora and inviting them to reconnect with
their place of origin.
- You might want to organise a family reunion or gathering, like the Waldron "Clan"
Association or Marrinan Family
Reunion.
- Where might your DNA matches fit into your
family tree? Are they genetic cousins or false positives?
- As the producers of TV shows like Tar Abhaile and Who Do You
Think You Are? know, there is a feelgood factor from helping the
descendants of emigrants to find their ancestral homesteads and reunuite
with distant cousins.
- Getting around roadblocks in Irish research often involves going
sideways in order to go backwards: overseas records often contain
information which has never been recorded at home, or has been lost.
- Check for them in online family trees
- e.g.:
- The above sites are unmoderated user-submitted databases and
everything that you find must be verified, verified and verified again
in primary sources.
- A good, user-friendly, easy-to-use, online site must have
single-click family
group sheets, pedigree
charts, and linear, scrollable descendancy
charts.
- A bad site will have two clicks to a family
group sheet, three more clicks back to a pedigree
chart, and descendancy
charts that assume a 20-foot wide screen with page-right and
page-left keys.
- A bad site will have no built-in error-checking for children born
before parents and such blatant errors.
- One particular site is irredeemably infected with the "shaky-leaf
virus", so that errors go viral via hints
- Check for them in genealogy query websites, e.g. for Clare:
- Just Google
- Throughout the English-speaking world (Britain, U.S.A., Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, India, etc.)
- Argentina, Chile, Austria, Spain, France, Russia, Poland, Belarus,
etc.
- U.S.A.:
- via Ellis Island (1892-1954; records up to 1924 are online; probably
90% of U.S. immigrants in that period)
- (Please help to complete the Clare
Past Forum Emigration List Project (1892-1924).)
- via Castle Gardens (pre-1892)
- via up to 30 other ports (Philadelphia, Boston, etc.)
- via Canada
- American records online:
- Official Ellis
Island search
- Better
Ellis Island search
- Ellis
Island manifest image (sometimes two
images per page)
- Manifests became more detailed over time.
- Look especially for column 11 `The name and complete address of
nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came' and for column
18 `Whether going to join a relative or friend; and if so, what
relative or friend, and his name and complete address'
- Federal Records:
- Social
Security Death Index (SSDI) (deaths from 1962-date)
- (no longer available on
Rootsweb)
- Obituaries at legacy.com
- U.S. Public Records Index, Volume
1 and Volume
2
- U.S.,
World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 (males born
1872-1900)
- 1880
census (free)
- Other
censuses (1830, 1840, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930,
1940 on subscription sites such as ancestry.com historical
records)
- 1950 census will be released in 2022 (72-year rule)
- year of arrival in census returns tends to be even more
inconsistent than age, so check multiple years
- U.S. Research generally must be continued in state, county and city
records, e.g.
- naturalization records (head of family only)
- births, marriages and deaths
- online archives of individual newspapers (esp. death notices and
obituaries; main papers allow one-day subscription)
- online archives with multiple newspapers, e.g. genealogybank.com
- especially Irish
American Weekly and other Irish-American papers
- missing friends columns;
- etc.
- Phone books online:
- A short phone call can still provide more information than multiple
e-mails.
- Australian
newspapers (free)
- New Zealand
newspapers (free)
- Almost everyone is on facebook
- Facebook FAMILY
MEMBERS section can allow you to build a family tree
- Facebook doesn't make any distinction between first cousins and fourth
cousins
- But beware of people with fictitious
facebook families
