November events at PRONI in Belfast

The following events will be taking place at PRONI (www.nidirect.gov.uk) in Belfast in November. For further details click on the following links:

Western Front Association 2016 monthly program and Conference ‘The Year of The Somme: 1916 in perspective’
https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/western-front-association-201617-program

The history of Mew Island Lighthouse optic & it's restoration
https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/history-mew-island-lighthouse-optic-its-restoration

Launch of Presbyterian Children’s Society exhibition
https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/launch-presbyterian-childrens-society-exhibition

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Beginner's Guide to British and Irish Genealogy, A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

PRONI summer and autumn talks schedule in Belfast

The summer an autumn schedule of events at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (www.proni.gov.uk):

LUNCHTIME TALK: Eastside Arts Festival; Belfast Blitz by Brian Barton
When: 20th August – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME TALK: Eastside Arts Festival; East Belfast First World War soldiers by Jason Bourke
When: 25th August – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Pure Water for a thirsty Belfast: the need for a reservoir in Silent Valley by Philip Donald
When: Wednesday 26th August – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME TALK: Eastside Arts Festival; East Belfast Industry by Ian Montgomery
When: 27th August – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. Describing the Ards in 1683: the William Montgomery manuscript revisited. By Ian Montgomery
When: Wednesday 2th September – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. Building the Silent Valley Dam, 1923 to 1933: Setting the Record Straight. By Phillip Donald
When: Wednesday 9th September – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: SS Nomadic – A Titanic Restoration, by Graeme Moore
When: 12th September – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. A favourite watering place’: the development of Bangor as a Victorian Seaside Resor. By Sadra Milsopp
When: Wednesday 16th September – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

EVENING LECTURE: 'The rise and fall of the Irish Manor Courts 1785-1859' by John Larkin QC
When: 17th September – starting at 7pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. Another time: photographs of the Stewart family, marquesses of Londonderry. By Lorraine Bourke.
When: Wednesday 23rd September – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. The rising of 1798 in County Down. By Allan Blackstock
When: Wednesday 30th September – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Pushing the Boundaries; 19th century Prison Records by Chris Colvin
When: 1st October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. Nendrum Mill, Strangford Lough (619 AD): the oldest excavated tidal mill in the world. By Tom McErlean.
When: Wednesday 7th October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Pushing the Boundaries; The Women’s Suffrage Campaign by Margaret Ward
When: 8th October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. The Family Plot: Historic Graveyards of County Down. By William Rouslton
When: Wednesday 14th October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Pushing the Boundaries; Female Political Imprisonment during the Irish Civil War by Laura McAtackney
When: 15th October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

CONFERENCE: The Golden Age of Steam
When: 20th October 2015
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE: Up Down: Stories that make a County. ‘The tune we played was the Protestant Boys’: songs and the battle of Dolly’s Brae, 1849. By John Moulden.
When: Wednesday 21 October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Pushing the Boundaries; DeLorean: Back to the Failure by Graham Brownlow
When: 22nd October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Pushing the Boundaries; NIGRA & Decriminalisation by Jeff Dudgen & Richard Kennedy
When: 29th October – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME IRISH CLASS in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Caoimhe Ní Chathail
When: 3rd November 2015
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Irish Culture and Language in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Dr Fionntán de Brún
When: 4th November 2015 – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

CONFERENCE in conjunction with Western Front Association: The Greater Game: Sport, Ireland and the Great War
When: 5th November 2015
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME IRISH CLASS in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Caoimhe Ní Chathail
When: 10th November 2015
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Irish Culture and Language in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Gearóid Mac Lochlainn
When: 11th November 2015 – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME IRISH CLASS in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Caoimhe Ní Chathail
When: 17th November 2015
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Irish Culture and Language in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Professor Micheál O Mainnín
When: 18th November 2015 – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME IRISH CLASS in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Caoimhe Ní Chathail
When: 24th November 2015
Where: PRONI

LUNCHTIME LECTURE SERIES: Irish Culture and Language in conjunction with Foras na Gaeilge: Dr Marcas Mac Coinnigh
When: 25th November 2015 – starting at 1pm
Where: PRONI


Western Front Association talks at PRONI
Although not organised by PRONI, the following talks are hosted at PRONI on behalf of the Antrim & Down branch of the Western Front Association at 7pm and any interested visitors are welcome.

13th August 2015: Recording Ireland’s First World War Landscapes: by Heather Montgomery, Queen's University Belfast

10 September 2015: Spirit building training or morale sapping slaughter?: Raiding on the Western Front by Tom Thorpe, King’s College London

8 October 2015: Royal Naval Armoured Cars in Russia by Ian Montgomery, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

12 November 2015: Researching East Belfast and the Great War by Jason Burke, Project Co-ordinator: East Belfast & The Great War

10 December 2015: The Ulster Division (tbc) by Dr Timothy Bowman, University of Kent

(With thanks to the PRONI Express)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Ireland and Gallipoli Conference in Belfast

From the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (www.proni.gov.uk):

Ireland and Gallipoli Conference - A joint conference by PRONI and Antrim and Down Western Front Association branch
When: 30th April 2015 10am to 4pm
Where: PRONI

PRONI is pleased to invite you to a joint conference on Ireland and Gallipoli with Antrim and Down Western Front Association branch. Supported by Living Legacies 1914-18 engagement centre.

The Gallipoli Campaign, known to the Turkish as the battle of Canakkale, still remains controversial. France, Britain and its dominions fought to eliminate Turkey from the Great War by landing on the northern bank of the Dardanelles, marching on the Ottoman capital Constantinople to open the Dardanelles sea channel to Russia. A brilliant strategic plan was marred by tactical failure and poor execution. The initial naval attack was repelled and subsequent land campaign also failed at a cost of 250,000 allied casualties which led to the invasion force being evacuated in January 1916 after 8 months of fighting. This conference seeks to examine this campaign 100 years on with special focus on the experience and role of Ireland and Irish people.

Speakers will include: Dr Timothy Bowman (University of Kent); Dr Myles Dungan
(Historian and broadcaster); Professor Keith Jeffery (Queen’s University Belfast); John
Lee (author and historian); and Tom Thorpe (Kings College London)

Contact PRONI to reserve a place

(With thanks to the PRONI Express)

Chris

For details on my range of genealogy guide books please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. To commission me for genealogical research, please visit my research site at www.scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk.

Western Front Association announces pension cards look-up service

The Western Front Association has announced a new look-up service for the 6.5 million First World War pension records cards that it rescued not too long ago in November (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/world-war-1-pension-cards-saved.html).

The cost per first look up is £25, plus £5 per successive look ups - with a maximum of five per request. If no records are found, you can get a refund of £15 for the first lookup and £3 per each of the following. It gets a bit complicated though - if your first lookup isn't found, the first £25 charge will be transferred to a successive lookup.

From the site, the following restrictions on access have been announced to comply with data protection and the basis under which the records have been given to the association:

"...if anyone is named on the card or ledger who may be have been born less than 100 years ago, then you must have a genuine reason for such a request, ie the persons you name on the request form must have a valid connection to you (eg a relative). You cannot use this form to undertake lookup requests for third parties where the card content will compromise the 100 year rule."

The full announcement on the look up service is at www.westernfrontassociation.com/about-the-wfa/175-pension-records/2961-pension-record-cards-manual-lookup-request.html - and for details on the cards themselves (and make no mistake, this is a major new WW1 resource) are available at www.westernfrontassociation.com/great-war-current-news/pension-records.html.

(With thanks to Ken Nisbet of SAFHS)

UPDATE: note the following also

"The WFA intends to determine the best methods of digitisation with archiving organisations, and to discuss potential partnerships to undertake the work. We also intend to seek out sources of grant and other funding for the task, and we will soon launch a fund-raising campaign to help preserve the records in the meantime. Prior to the records being digitised and made available online, we will offer a manual look-up of records through application via this website, in the near future."

Chris

My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.

MAJOR NEWS: World War 1 Pension cards saved

Thanks to Simon Fowler & Ken Nisbet for flagging up the following major news announcement from the Western Front Association (www.westernfrontassociation.com), which shows that for family and military historians interested in the First World War, Christmas has most definitely just come early.

The Western Front Association has announced that it has saved some six million Great War soldiers' pension record cards from destruction, which were previously in the hands of the Ministry of Defence.

The cards detail the dependants of each British soldier, sailor, airman and nurse who were killed, as well as those injured or incapacitated, all of whom were entitled to a pension. The following qualified:

• Other Ranks Died (almost a million individual records)
• Widows and Dependants of Other Ranks Died (over a million records)
• Other Ranks Survived: Requested/Rejected/Receiving Pension (over 2.5 million records)
• Officers Survived and Officers' Widows (approximately 150,000 records)
• Merchant Naval Cards (about 5,000 records)

From the Western Front Association's news release:

Originally, the cards were maintained regionally and it was only much later that they were collected into a single group. The Pension Records cards were held regionally because many claimants - especially those who were wounded or suffered ill-health aggravated by their service in the conflict - had to attend regional assessment boards to ensure their entitlement remained valid. These assessments created a further invaluable archive, known as the Army, Navy and Air Force Registers, all of which are held in ledger books. These ledgers also record the outcome of assessments.

The records contain a mixture of genealogical and military information, and constitute a major new resource that was hitherto unknown to exists before. The WFA plans to digitise the records and make them available online. The full announcement is at http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=b727059489ecdacccf6340260&id=eac21e0db4&e=6faecadd26 and contains several detailed examples of the cards.

Many of us are conditioned to look only for records that have been digitised and placed online for world war research, but a great deal more exists offline. I confirmed last week, for example, that a service record for a member of my family in the Royal Marines Light Infantry during the Great War exists at the National Archives. On the pensions front, it's a good opportunity to flag up a discovery also by a reader of this blog some time back, made at the National Records of Scotland. Tunji Lees wrote a guest post on his discovery, which detailed his find of localised military pension appeals tribunals records held in Edinburgh - read his account at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/guest-post-scottish-ww1-pensions-appeal.html

Chris

Scotland 1750-1850 - 5 weeks online Pharos course, £45.99, taught by Chris Paton from 2 NOV 2012 - see www.pharostutors.com
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)