Genealogical Society of Ireland

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends Four Courts Press

We're having a SALE! 🤗

and you're not going to want to miss this one …

There will be 50% off different titles each day next week. To find out what those titles are, all you have to do is sign up to our mailing list, keep an eye on your inbox, and we'll do the rest 😎✅

Head to the Four Courts Press website to join our mailing list: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/contact/mailinglist 🔗

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends The New York Genealogical & Biographical Society - NYG&B

Join us (in person or online) on December 2, 2025, 6:30-7:30 p.m. EST for the free program "Discovering Another Chapter of Immigrant History at Castle Garden."

Guest speaker Stephen Lean of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation will share resources and tips for researching immigration history and how you can preserve your own New York family stories. This is a free program, but registration is required: https://www.newyorkfamilyhistory.org/events/preserving-your-new-york-story-discovering-another-chapter-immigrant-history-castle-garden

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

20/11/2025

Posted by our long-time friends Botany Bay Family History Society

There is a wealth of family history information available in the NSW State Archives Collection at Museums of History NSW.

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends Society of Genealogists in the UK

📣 The December issue of Genealogists’ Magazine is now live!

We’re delighted to share that the latest edition is uploaded and ready to read.

In this issue:

• Patronage and the Priesthood in Bishop’s Cleeve (1754–1815)

• He’s NOT our John Donne! – tracing a non-famous namesake

• Daniel Mardell – But Which One?

• James Neil Campbell – Bigamist?

• Two new “Curiosities from the Great Card Index” profiles

• A Life in Cuttings: Frances Anna Sophia Colchester

• Pirates and Patriots: a family’s early military record

• Beyond Booth – other early 20th-century British social studies

• Book and event reviews, correspondence, Society news, festive opening hours, and more

Explore the new issue here: https://www.sog.org.uk/dfw4543gfdw4f

Happy reading—and happy researching!

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends Dublin City Library and Archive

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends GPO Museum

Today's prompt for is 'Diary'.

Among the artefacts found within GPO Museum's collection is the diary of Bridget McKane, fifteen years old in 1916. Her diary doubles as a scrapbook and is filled with newspaper cuttings relating to the Great War and the service of Irishmen in it, indicating a strong interest in current affairs and international politics.

Living at 10 Henry Place during the 1916 Rising with her family, rebels evacuating from the GPO broke into her home in an effort to evade British forces. They shot the lock on the door to the home and forced their way in. Upon entering, they found they had not only wounded Bridget's father, but had killed Bridget herself by accident.

Patrick Pearse was present and reportedly distraught over the tragedy. This likely played directly into the rebel leaders' decision to surrender the following the morning. Artefacts like this can shed unique insight into a perspective that can easily be overlooked amidst the high politics and conflict of the period.

To learn more, visit our museum.

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine - the sources are also useful in researching the thousands of Irish who served in the British military, Civil Service or other roles during the British colonial occupation of the Indian sub-continent.

Families In British India Society

Were your ancestors among the thousands of Britons who lived in India during colonial rule? Here's how to research their lives online:

20/11/2025

Posted by our good friends North of Ireland Family History Society

Our research centre at Newtownabbey is a treasure trove of records, journals, maps, transcriptions and loads more. Everyone is welcome and we have volunteers on hand to help you find what you need.

Find out about opening hours, facilities and directions here: https://www.nifhs.org/research-centre-resources/research-centre/

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends Kilkenny County Council Library Service

Do you know the story of Nixie Boran? As written by his daughter Anne, Challenge to Power: Nixie Boran (1904-1971) / Freedom and the Castlecomer Coal Miners takes as its framework the life span of Nicholas (Nixie) Boran, born in 1904 in Massford, almost the centre point of the Castlecomer Coalfield, Co. Kilkenny. At the time the estate lands of the landlord family, the Wandesfordes, were being divided among small, formerly tenant, farmers. The book focuses on one man, but through him explores the world in which he lived as a coal miner, as a Republican freedom fighter during the Civil War, during his life on the run and his return to his roots in mining. It maps the tensions inherent in concepts of Irish freedom and charts Boran’s conversion to socialism as the path towards what he regarded as real freedom for the working class. The Castlecomer Coalfield was the context in which post-independence battles for a share of Ireland’s resources were played out. The miners challenged the powerful, whether they were the mine owner, the new Free State or the Catholic Church, to give them the social freedoms and conditions they deserved. Nixie Boran was at the heart of these struggles. He made history by being elected to the executive of the IT&GWU, a position that gave him automatic membership of the Irish Trade Union Congress, despite the fact that he represented a relatively small category of Irish workers. He was re-elected for 19 years. This gave him a platform to address workers’ issues at national level, most successfully in getting the miners’ disease Pneumoconiosis categorised as an industrial disease and successfully pushing for legislation for better working conditions. He was an internationalist and the first Irish worker delegate to speak at the International Labour Conference in Geneva. He was a radical pragmatist and towards the end of his working life he served on the board of Castlecomer Collieries alongside the landlord and mine owner with whom he had often clashed. The book makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of Irish political, social and labour history in the twentieth century. It looks at the complexities of people’s lives in the Castlecomer Coalfield as they were affected by the outside world at national and international level. It demonstrates how the miners, with Nixie Boran’s leadership, dared to challenge the powerful in Irish society. Above all, it presents evocative pictures of the man, his family, his working companions at the coal face and pithead, and his life of tenacious service to his own people.

Come discover this work and more at the Local Studies Department in John’s Green House!

20/11/2025

Posted by our friends folklore.ie