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RTÉ News
30-06-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
'New lease of life' - Project digitises archive documents
175,000 new historical records lost during a fire at the Four Courts during the Civil War in 1922 are being made available online from today, including 60,000 names from the Irish 19th century censuses. Since it was launched three years ago, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland has been tracking down copies of documents lost in the blaze from archives across the globe. Seventy-five institutions in Ireland and abroad have contributed digital images of transcripts and duplicates of documents that were destroyed when the Public Record Office was burned to the ground. The documents are now available online as part of the project led by Trinity College Dublin and supported by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport. The 60,000 names of Irish families from a number of censuses - from the 1800s - were painstakingly compiled from transcriptions of documents in the National Archives of Ireland and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Among them are extracts from the journals of two genealogists, who copied the censuses as part of their work. Dr Brian Gurrin of Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, who is also a population and census specialist, said they reveal the ordinary lives of people in the decades before and after the Great Famine. Dr Gurrin said: "When the Record Office was destroyed the personal notes of those genealogists and records agents suddenly became the only census records that were surviving or were available. "So many of those genealogists submitted their personal notes into the Public Record Office after it was re-established after the destruction." He said those collections have been retained in the National Archives and "they're available to the public but they're very difficult to access because they're not really catalogued in any great way". Dr Gurrin said census information "is scattered throughout the collections", adding it "can be very difficult to access". "So, what the Virtual Record Treasury project has been doing is going in and accessing those individual notebooks and individual pages, looking through them, trying to find census material that was transcribed and is now destroyed," he said. "This is the first time it's all been in one place," he added. He said the census details provide some "gems" of information about Irish lives, including the size of families, the occupations of women aswell as colourful notes of some census entries. He said: "One genealogist, Gertrude Thrift, who transcribed many thousands of names from the census, transcribed material from Carrickmacross from Humphrey Evans who was the agent to Lord Shirley. "He put a little note against the transcription in the original volume, which is now destroyed, but Gertrude conveniently transcribed a note for us and what it basically says is 'that Humphrey Everett when I asked him his age and the ages of his daughters, he refused to give me the information and chased me away'." Dr Gurrin said another interesting insight comes from Philip Crossley, a genealogist. "He notes John Morriss, who owned a hotel in Headford in Co Galway, describes his eldest son as his son and heir and in the occupation," he said. "He puts down 'walking about', which seems to express some of the frustration that he felt at his son who wasn't pulling his weight in the business," he added. Documents telling the story of the 1798 Rebellion, life in Anglo-Norman Ireland from the 1100s to the 1500s and State Papers from 1660 to 1720 that document the governing Ireland following Cromwell's death are now also online. Ciarán Wallace, Deputy Director of Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, said the documents have come from all corners of the globe. Mr Wallace said: "All the originals are lost, but these duplicate documents are from London, from Belfast, from across Ireland, north and south, from North America. "We got records from Australia. Basically, it's like a documentary diaspora. Wherever the Irish went, the records went with them and very often, wherever the English went, Irish records went with them as well." He said the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland now have "75 archives and libraries who share their records with us and share their expertise with us". He added that sometimes the records are "already digitised, and other times, we can identify a record and say that's really significant, and we'll arrange to have it digitised and then bring it onto the virtual treasury". "The Norman era papers, the Medieval era papers, some of those on the face of it, sound quite dull," he said. "They're Exchequer records like taxation records, but in those taxation records you see people who are paying their taxes, disputing their taxes, who are paying fees and fines for inheriting land, who are writing to appeal about ownership of land," he added. "You have women and men disputing with the Government." Mr Wallace said when the documents move into the Cromwellian era, "the State Papers Ireland collection from the National Archives UK, we've nearly 28,000 pages of records from the collection". "They are the view from London, looking at Ireland and trying to decide how to govern this colony and you have people again fighting over land ownership, a constant theme of Irish records and intelligence gathering of suspect people," he said. Mr Wallace said there is "an amazing story" of a letter seized in the 1660s written in Irish and "the local government official who gets it can't understand the Irish and he tries to get it translated in the locality and nobody would translate it". He continued: "So he's actually panicking, saying 'is this some secret code about another rebellion?' "In fact, when they do get it translated, it is the Franciscans talking about reorganising the Franciscan Order in Ireland because Cromwell is gone. "This letter ends up on an intelligence file in London and now it's available in Australia for people to see. "We can look and try our hand at reading 17th century Irish." Zoe Reid, Keeper of the National Archives of Ireland, said the project makes documents that have been sitting in archives for decades accessible to new audiences. She said the National Archives has a collection of over 60 million records, adding "our role is to preserve, collect and maintain those records for public access". "What's really exciting about this project is that we're bringing our archival knowledge and expertise along with the historians and their knowledge," she said. "We're bringing the two together and we're learning more about our collections, and we're making our collections even more understandable and accessible for people, and we're bringing them to new audiences and giving them a new lease of life," she added.
Irish Times
30-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Worldwide interest expected as 19th-century Irish census records recovered and put online
The fire that destroyed the Public Records Office during the Irish Civil War also destroyed 700 years worth of records. Chancery records detailing British rule in Ireland going back to the 14th century and grants of land by the crown along with thousands of wills, title deeds and parish registers were incinerated when a fire broke out in the grounds of the Four Courts, which held the PRO, on June 30th, 1922. By common consent the worst loss of all was the pre-famine 19th-century census records. In an act of unparalleled archival vandalism the British authorities had destroyed the 1861 and 1871 census records so that they could not be used for the 'gratification of curiosity'. The 1881 and 1891 censuses were pulped during the first World War because of the shortage of paper. The British saw the censuses as purely a numbers game, not a valuable archive for future research. That left the pre-famine censuses of 1821, 1831 and 1841 still intact, but these were almost entirely destroyed in the fire. READ MORE The Virtual Treasury project was set up to try to recover as many of the lost documents as possible. Hundreds of thousands of documents have been retrieved where copies have been found in archives elsewhere, but the census records were always the priority. Thanks to years of work on the part of Brian Gurrin, the treasury's population and census specialist, some 60,000 names and counting have been recovered from 19th-century censuses. Four volumes from the 1821 census survived the fire, including the entire records for the Aran Islands, and have been in the National Archives of Ireland since. The Aran Islands was entirely Irish-speaking at the time, but the names are all recorded in English. They were available previously on microfilm, but that necessitated a visit to the National Archives. 'Brian's detective work has given them a whole new lease of life,' said Zoë Reid, the keeper of manuscripts at the National Archives of Ireland. They have now been digitised. Other copies have been found from diligent genealogists who would copy census records for research purposes. 'We talk about 60,000 names, but there are many, many more to go in. We haven't finished the process,' said Mr Gurrin. Virtual Record Treasury co-director Ciarán Wallace added: 'When we go to county libraries as part of a roadshow, the first question is, 'have you found the census yet?'. We have put a huge effort into finding anything we can of the censuses,' he said All the census names have been looked at individually and entered by hand. No machine learning or AI was used. All the census data has been consolidated in the population portal. Everywhere that a name or names have been recovered is denoted with a pin where users can zoom in to reveal the details. The interest is not only within Ireland. Tens of millions of people, especially in the United States, are descended from 19th-century Irish emigrants. Half of all visitors to the virtual treasury come from abroad. The census records are part of 175,000 new historical records that will be available from Monday, June 30th, the 103rd anniversary of the Public Records fire. The project has been led by Trinity College Dublin and supported by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport and the National Archives of Ireland. Also included in the release is the Age of Revolution portal which includes contemporary accounts from the Irish House of Commons about the American revolution and the 1798 rebellion, five million words of Anglo-Norman (1170-1500) Irish history translated into English and more than 10 million words on governing Ireland in the dramatic years following Cromwell's death. Virtual Record Treasury academic director Dr Peter Crooks described the recovery of 60,000 census names as a 'tremendous achievement. What we have uncovered after years of painstaking archival work will help families across the world trace their story deeper into the Irish past.' He added: 'The scale, scope and significance of these materials is remarkable. They will be of huge interest to anyone exploring Ireland's story as a global island.'
