Sunday 22 April 2012

Alumni records from Ulster Historical Foundation

The Ulster Historical Foundation has released an Alumni Dublinesses database on its site at www.ancestryireland.com, detailing graduates of Trinity College Dublin from 1593-1860, with 32,345 entries.

The same collection has been previously released on FindmyPast Ireland (www.findmypast.ie), though the coverage given there is stated to be from 1560-1843, where it is noted that it "is especially valuable for its list of over 32,000 names from 1593-1637, a period for which no registers survive". I suspect despite the year coverage listed that these are likely to be the same collection in scope, if the numbers of entries stated to be given are correct.

The UHF has also published another database entitled Royal Belfast Academical Institute Alumni 1814-1875, with 5136 entries.

The UHF databases are not free, and to access them you need to pay an annual fee of £31, one of the reasons I seldom use the site, though they do have an increasing range of material available. One free collection they host which may help if you have trouble trying to connect to an origin point in Ireland is the Distribution of Surnames in Ireland in 1890 (Matheson's special report). This details the frequencies of names recorded in birth registrations from 1890, and can be helpful if you have absolutely no idea were to start with your Irish ancestor's location on the island - especially if it is quite a rare name. To access it directly visit www.ancestryireland.com/database.php?filename=db_mathesons.

The original report itself, first published in 1894, is available via the Internet Archive at http://archive.org/details/cu31924029805540.

(With thanks to Bobby Forrest)

UPDATE: The UHF collection looks to have been sourced from the second edition of the Alumni Dublinenses publication, with the FindmyPast collection taken from the first edition, hence why the UHF database extends to 1860. The first edition of the work is also found on Family Relatives (www.familyrelatives.com)

Chris

British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton

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