Today was another Researcher's Choice Day. People were at all of the repositories today, and I took a small group to the Registry of Deeds. We had an appointment for an "Introduction to Registry of Deeds & How to Do a Search Tour." This is the first time this has been offered and it was great. It's also the first time I had an opportunity to see the vaults where original Memorials dating back to 1708 are kept. After the tour we had a presentation, followed by an example of how to use the various Indexes and Deed books (referred to as Tombstones because of their size and weight).
After about 1.5 hours, some of group returned to the Valuation Office, the National Library and two went to the Dublin Library and Archives. Three researchers remained to research. When you make an appointment at the Registry you do need to let them know what you plan to look at. Since COVID, researchers have been allowed to take photographs of the Memorials (with staff permission), but you can also access some of the material through the Registry of Deeds Project, an independent volunteer indexing project out of Australia. You can also access some of the Memorials online at FamilySearch.
Tomorrow will be the last day of research, so people will be scattered, finishing up their research and in the evening we'll have our final dinner.
Some comments from today.
Kelsey
Today a small group of us toured the Registry of Deeds. It was fascinating. I really appreciated how knowledgeable our guide was on the history of the Registry. Later in the afternoon I walked over to the Valuation Office again to collect more townlands for my cluster research.
Kira was one who stayed at the Registry to research.
Got to tour the Registry of Deeds Office today! My mind couldn't absorb all the info fast enough. In the afternoon, had an appointment there where I just tried my best at understanding how to use their indexes properly. In the last half hour before the end of the day, squished in a visit to the Family History Room at NLI to search through their eResource of Irish newspapers to study up on a murder my family could be tied to back in the 1820s.
Anne returned to the Valuation Office (and provided pictures)
My return trip to the Valuation Office today was fruitful! I switched families to my mother‘s Rahelly ancestors from Tipperary and found the relatives from all four sides of that family living and working next to each other along Main Street in Tipp Town!
I then had a little extra time so got to revisit the books from County Leitrim that I had perused on Tuesday. This time I checked the dates of the revisions very carefully and broadened my sites to include all 14 families in the Townland. Hopefully, some of the more unfamiliar names will lead me to additional Meehan connections. And I’m hoping that using the Full Text Search feature on Roots Ireland that Kayleigh showed me can help sort some of it out.
Bill took his annual pilgrimage to the Guinness Storehouse along with Drew and Jeff.
Happy Hunting!