August Record Collection Updates
22 Aug 2026
No Comments
Calendar Add to Calendar Add to Timely Calendar Add to Google Add to Outlook Add to Apple Calendar Add to other calendar Export to XML
Irish Family History Society
Connecting People With Their Irish Roots
IFHS: Conference: The Story Of The Irish Diaspora – Emigration and Immigration
The theme of this year’s conference is Emigration. We will hosted at The Fumbally in Dublin. The day will include 5 talks plus lunch and will be available to attend both in person or via Zoom.
Topic and speakers include:
Cathy Scuffil: Reverse Emigration – Residents of Dublin’s South Circular Road before the First World War
Cathy Scuffil’s work on the South Circular Road is one of the most detailed social histories of the area. Her book, The South Circular Road, Dublin, on the Eve of the First World War, is based primarily on the 1911 census, which combined street directories, parish records, valuation records and other archival sources to reconstruct who lived along the road and how the neighbourhood functioned. One of the most interesting findings was that the South Circular Road was far less “local” than many people assume, the road attracted migrants from across Ireland and much further afield. Among the many Dublin-born residents, large sections of the population had been born elsewhere. The road acted as a transition zone between the city centre and the suburbs, attracting people who had moved to Dublin for work and education purposes reflecting the city’s role as the country’s administrative and commercial centre in the decades before independence.
Brian Donovan: Title: Finding the Irish in Australia and New Zealand
Brian Donovan is an academic historian and digital heritage leader with more than 25 years’ experience in family history, archives and historical publishing. He has worked with local and national cultural institutions to initiate and manage major digitisation projects that helped bring millions of Irish records and newspaper pages online. He is currently Strategic Growth Lead for the History division of DC Thomson (owners of Findmypast). He holds a PhD in History and is passionate about creating user-focused, sustainable historical products and resources.
Talk description: Discover how Irish migrants settled in Australia and New Zealand, and how different records can help you rebuild their stories across generations.
Mel Howes: UK records and Irish immigration
Mel is Chairperson of the IFHS and works with technology in her day job. She first became interested in genealogy 20 years ago and has been compiling an ever-growing family tree with roots spread across England, Ireland and Scotland. More recently she has completed the Intermediate and Advanced Family History Skills and Strategies certificates from Pharos Tutors and the Society of Genealogists.
Talk description: This short talk will provide a quick overview of key resources in England & Wales and Scotland that are of use to the Irish researcher following families who emigrated from Ireland.
Gerard Moran: ‘In Search of the Promised Land’: Family Emigration to North America in the Nineteenth Century.
Gerard lectured in the History Department at NUI Galway and Maynooth University. He has published extensively on 19th-century Ireland, including Sending Out Ireland’s Poor: Assisted Emigration to North America in the Nineteenth Century (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2004), Fleeing from Famine in Connemara: James Hack Tuke and his Assisted Emigration Scheme in the 1880s (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2018) and joint editor of Mayo: History and Society (Dublin, Geography Publication, 2015); and the Famine Heroes of Ireland’s Great Hunger series with Christine Kinealy. His most recent publication is Children in the Workhouse: Following the footsteps of Mary Fielding (Galway County Council, 2026).
Talk description: Throughout the nineteenth century Ireland’s greatest export was her people with an estimated eight million leaving the country between 1815 and 1914. The majority leaving during this period were young and single, primarily aged between 16 and 24 years emigrating in search of a better life for economic and societal reasons. Between 1847 and 1848, 45 per cent of those leaving were in this age cohort and in 1881 the figure was 57 per cent. North America was the main destination for the Irish emigrant with 5.3 million leaving between 1845 and 1914. Families who wanted to leave found it difficult pay for the passage fares across the Atlantic and large numbers depended on friends and relations already settled in North America to provide the money. However, there was another group who did not have this option and were assisted by the government, the Poor Law, landlords and philanthropists. There is a great contrast between those assisted by landlords and the families helped by philanthropists. Landowners saw families with small holdings as a deadweight and while they paid for their passage, made little or no provision for when the families arrived in North America. Those assisted by philanthropists like James Hack Tuke and Fr. John Nugent planned and provided help from the time they left Ireland till they reached their destinations in North America. These tended to have a better life in their new homes.
Raymond M. Keogh: Cognidem & Complementarity of Men & Women in Emigration.
Raymond is the director of Our Own Identity. His approach to family history combines his scientific background with decades of work in international forestry and developmental organisations. He has engaged with family history and identity research societies and spent more than 50 years researching his own complex family story. He is author of Shelter & Shadows (2016).
Talk description: In his presentation, he dives into the relationship between cognition and identity (i.e., ‘Cognidem’) through the ground-breaking Southeast Ireland & Newfoundland Identity Project (SINIP), which uses Big Y-DNA-700 testing to uncover remarkable links between families in southeast Ireland and Newfoundland.
Timeslots to be confirmed. Both members and non-members must buy tickets for this event in the Shop.