The OGS Ireland SIG Newsletter

Transcription

1 July 2013 (Volume 4, No.3) TABLE OF CONTENTS Articles and Features Editor s Message 7 From the Chair 2 Page How Turner Came to be an Irish name Gayle Fisher 4, 5 Recent Book Releases 6 Miscellaneous Update Items Irish Info at the Archives of Canada 8,9 10 Queries 12 Website Links 3 Contacts 13 Newsletter Dates 13 Remember to check out Richard Doherty s monthly articles - Our Celtic Quest Available in the Members Only Section

2 Page 2 From the Chair... As you read this, summer has finally arrived not as warm as last year but at least better than our spring! At Conference 2013 in Oshawa, once again the Ireland SIG had a table set up. John Collins and I took care of welcoming those who stopped by to chat. It is always enjoyable to see those with such an interest in Irish ancestry. As a bonus this year, the Ireland Tourism Board supplied us copies of Ireland Vacations and copies of Calendar of Events to celebrate the Year of the Gathering in Ireland. These were free handouts to whoever wanted them. Along with these came a slide show of pictures of Ireland which we ran continuously through the hours of Marketplace. Our 4 th AGM on the Saturday proved to be very well received. Our financial report was given along with other reports. Membership stands at 362 an 11% increase over last year. Thank you to all members! Our website continues to evolve as Brian Elliott is continuing to keep it up to date with the latest standards. There were few queries last year as reported by Judith Hayman and Gayle, our newsletter editor is always looking for stories, articles, etc. for our newsletter. Copies of the Financial Report and the AGM minutes are in the Members Only section of our website under SIG Business. Now the exciting news! We have a Facebook presence - The link to the group is or you can also find it by searching within Facebook for 'Ireland SIG Ontario Genealogical Society'. If you want to post anything you must join the group and either Nancy Vaillancourt or Cindy Robichaud, the group s co-moderators will notify you when you are actually in the group. Please avail yourself of this group as it provides another tool for your research. This link is on the website and will appear in each newsletter as well. It was also decided to look into having Webinars in the future to be able to bring some speakers on Irish related topics right into your home. Fraser Dunford and Guy Lafontaine will be investigating this tool. Also added as a result of the AGM under Other in the Members Only area is a link to the Stormont, Dundas, Glengarry Historical Society s Cornwall Emigrant Hospital Admission and Discharge Book which lists fifty-two out of 234 Irish emigrants who died in Cornwall Ontario s typhoid quarantine sheds between June 14th and October 18, 1847.

3 Page 3 Discussion about looking into advertising our SIG took place as well and we now have a Publicity Coordinator Annie Rodgers! The Contacts page on our website has been updated with the new additions. So as you can see the SIG is thriving and with your on-going support it will continue to do. Enjoy your summer and hopefully you can find some time in your moments of relaxation to do a little research! Sláinte John Noble, Chair

4 Page 4 How Turner came to be an Irish Name When I began to research the background of my great grandfather, Henry Turner, I was told he was either Scottish or Irish. It didn t take very long to confirm that he in fact had arrived from Ireland in Further digging found that he was born on September 23, 1876 in Lislea, County Cavan, Ireland. But I couldn t help thinking that Turner wasn t a very Irish sounding name. When I asked an Irish friend of mine about family names in Ireland (her last name is O Donnell now that was the type of Irish name I was expecting!), she reported that she could tell if someone was Protestant or Catholic, and sometimes even their county of origin, by their last name. So what could she tell about the family surnames I had uncovered on my Irish branch? Turner, Fanon and Scott were the names uncovered so far and while Fanon, made her pause, Turner and Scot were clearly Protestant. Although I haven t been able to trace that far back, it does seem very likely that my protestant Turner ancestors were part of the wave of English and Scottish families who settled in Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster. King James I believed that by moving families over the influx would help to quell the Irish rebellions. There three broad time frames when these families came over: 1605 to 1625 when initial land leases were granted; after 1625 and the end of the Irish rebellion; and in the decade after Many of the families settled in the Province of Ulster with the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Tyrone (in today s Northern Ireland) and the counties of Cavan, Donegal and Monaghan (in the Republic of Ireland). The BBC has a very interesting account of the Plantation of Ulster planters/index.shtml As part of the account, there is a review of the settlement patterns and maps provided. I found the following quite interesting about Londonderry, as written by RJ Hunter: The Scottish and the English undertakers - were grouped together in sub-divisions of counties known as baronies and this gives the Ulster plantation its regional character. The Londonderry Plantation embraced one newly-created county, granted to the City of London which, through a committee known as The Irish Society, built the two towns of Coleraine and Londonderry, and which allocated the rest of the land in estates to the London mercantile organisations - the twelve livery companies, such as the Grocers, Fishmongers etc - who were themselves undertaker equivalents. In fact Londonderry is celebrating the 400 th anniversary of the building of its city walls. Having just restored its Guildhall, the city is hosting an exhibition featuring original archives relating to the plantation period plus other events. More information can be found: But back to my Henry Turner. Was Turner the family name back generations? There was a tendency during this tumultuous period to anglicize Irish names or translate the traditional name into an English version. The use of Mac, Mc or O (son of or descendant of) was sometimes dropped in areas where the Scottish or English were settling. For example, McGowan (originally Mac an Ghabhann, meaning son of smith) could become Gowan or be translated into English Smith.

5 Page 5 And of course, like any family tree research during this period spelling variations can arise as literacy was not common. In my family tree, my Fanon branch in Cavan has had their name spelt Fannon, Fanin, Fannin, Fannen, Fanning sometimes with multiple spellings in the same document! The Fanon name seems to be either Irish Gaelic that has been anglicized from O fionnain or Norman but in either case probably a longer history in Ireland. Turner is probably English although it is possible that there could be a Scottish connection and most likely came in the 17 th century. While I don t think there is a lot of doubt about the surname Scott! In fact one reference said there was no recorded reference to a Scott surname in Ireland prior to the 17 th century. For further reading on Irish Surnames: The Book of Ulster Surnames, by Robert Bell (Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1988) Irish Families by Edward MacLysaght (Irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1985) The Surnames of Ireland by Edward MacLysaght (irish Academic Press, Dublin, 1978). VIRTUAL LIBRARY AND OTHER RESOURCES There is an additional resource section in our Virtual Library in the Members Only section of our web site ( that outlines areas of interest and where members can provide assistance. If you have any Irish/Ireland genealogical resources that you own and would be willing to do lookups in such for members, then we invite you to send in your list. The list should include the name of the resource, author, publication date, short description, your name, and your address. Send your list to our webmaster, Brian Elliott (brian.elliott@rogers.com)

6 Page 6 Recent Book Releases North America's Maritime Funnel: The Ships that Brought the Irish, By Terrence M. Punch Published by Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 2012 ISBN: The Maritime Provinces of Canada--New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island--were a convenient destination for tens of thousands of Irish immigrants between 1749 and Functioning as the narrow end of a funnel through which thousands dispersed widely across the North American continent, the Maritimes offered easy access and cheap fares, beckoning emigrants from Ireland s catchment areas along the waterways of Dublin, Londonderry, and Cork. In all, there is documentation on about 1,050 voyages between Ireland and the Maritimes, and in this book Mr. Punch provides a chronological list of the voyages, gives the names of the vessels, their port and date of departure as well as their port of arrival, indicates the number of passengers and sometimes their names and destination, and adds a great variety of information concerning passengers and crew and the voyages themselves. Supported by a history of Irish emigration, with an account of the economic and social causes of this historic upheaval, the book is built around a year-by-year listing of known voyages between an Irish port and a harbor in the Maritimes, with maps showing the movement of population from specific areas in Ireland to the Maritimes, and tables providing port-by-port statistics. But this is not just a list of the 1,050 voyages from Ireland to Maritime Canada. Scattered throughout the list of voyages are the names of passengers--some gleaned directly from passenger lists, others from related sources such as land records and newspaper accounts that by chance connect passengers to the ships, while in other cases references are given to previously published passenger lists. Only 123 passenger lists of the 1,050 voyages survive, but by dint of groundbreaking research, Mr. Punch has managed to fill in many of the gaps. To add to the layers of detail, the book further contains several useful appendixes, including: (1) Irish among the Founders of Halifax; (2) Ulster Irish Arrivals before 1773; (3) Irish Emigrant Petitioners for Land in Nova Scotia; and (4) Emigrants in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs, 1830s. These four appendixes alone contain the names of 1,523 people, and the book concludes with a ship index and an index of surnames. Accolades are due the author of this reference work, Terrence M. Punch, who in 2011 was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada for his outstanding work in genealogy. I'm Sending a Shamrock to Remind You of Home: Roscommon Families and the Irish Diaspora By Thomas Callahan ISBN-13: Publisher: Jion Consulting, 2013 Three decades ago a chance meeting brought the author to the isolated Roscommon cottage where his grandmother, Kate McCormack and five of her siblings, over a century earlier, had bid tearful farewells to their family and sailed off into the west to new lives in America. This book follows their journey to a new land and the author's quest to come to know two generations of a family divided by an ocean and nearly forgotten by time. Along the way, the dramatic history of late-19th and early-20th century Ireland and America comes alive as the McCormack family and their neighbors struggle with the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by those turbulent times. The book demonstrates how the "big picture" of history can be viewed through the individual portraits of those who make it and also addresses the difficult problems facing those who undertake such a project - to rescue the history of average people from obscurity by using the scattered remnants of their past. The McCormacks who made the long journey to America and the loved ones they left at home are long dead, but family photos, letters, oral histories, public and parochial records reveal the lives they lived.

7 Page 7 Editor s Message BY GAYLE FISHER Hi there, It is a beautiful hot, sunny day in Toronto. The kind of day I pay good money to find in February! It is been a busy time of year with the end of school year activities for my daughter and work pressures, but I have been slowly working away on family tree information. I have really enjoyed the new Ancestry.com app for the ipad. It doesn t completely replace what I can see on my desktop but is far more mobile! As John referenced in his message, I am looking for articles, information and ideas for the newsletters, Even pictures if you have them! Have a great summer... Gayle Recent Book Releases, continued The Plantation of Ulster, Ideology & Practice Edited by Micheal o Siochru and Eamonn O Ciardha Published by Manchester University Press, October 2012 ISBN : This book is the first major academic study of the Ulster Plantation in over 25 years. The pivotal importance of the Plantation to the shared histories of Ireland and Britain would be difficult to overstate. It helped secure the English conquest of Ireland, and dramatically transformed Ireland s physical, political, religious and cultural landscapes. The legacies of the Plantation are still contested to this day, but as the Peace Process evolves and the violence of the previous forty years begins to recede into memory, vital space has been created for a timely reappraisal of the plantation process and its role in identity formation within Ulster, Ireland and beyond. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field offers an important redress in terms of the previous coverage of the plantations, moving away from an exclusive colonial perspective, to include the native Catholic experience, and in so doing will hopefully stimulate further research into this crucial episode in Irish and British history.

8 Page 8 HistoryIreland Hedge Schools move to itunes If you've missed one of HistoryIreland's Hedge Schools, you can now download recordings of them via itunes. There are now 22 of these recordings available, and they cover a wide range of history and genealogy themes. There's often some stirring debate in these discussions, too, so they're well worth listening to. And they're free. Additional 2.5million court records added to FMPie FindMyPast Ireland had added another tranche of records to its Irish Petty Sessions Court Registers collection. This collection exposes the 'petty' crimes many for drunkenness and anti-social behaviour of our ancestors and covers the period With the latest additions, it now totals 12 million records. The additions feature 44 new courts in 19 counties around Ireland. Among them are Limerick City Children s Court and two courts with pre-famine records: Moynalty in Co. Meath and Nenagh in Co. Tipperary. County Longford is also represented for the first time in the online collection, with seven courts adding a total of a quarter of a million new records for the county. New courts have also been added for Counties Laois (five) and Cork (four) and, with at least one each, for Clare, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Louth, Mayo, Monaghan, Offaly, Sligo, Waterford and Westmeath. The collections of a further 55 courts have been supplemented with records from additional years. The Irish Petty Sessions Registers collection (which covers only those courts now in the Republic of Ireland) is included in the World subscription package available through each of FindMyPast's international sites: FindMyPast.com, FindMyPast.ie, FindMyPast.com.au, and FindMyPast.co.uk.

9 Page 9 New US collection will help find Irish emigrants Ancestry is going to be launching a new USA collection of interest to researchers looking for Irish family members that emigrated. Promised for June, the new collection includes state-wide indexes to birth, marriage and death records from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Within this, the records for Massachusetts is likely to be of most interest to those with Irish heritage, since Boston was the destination for so many Irish emigrants. Pages 8 & 9 from Irish Genealogy News, Clare Santry

10 Page 10 Irish Genealogy from Archives of Canada Canada's most recent census returns list the Irish as the fourth largest ethnic group in Canada with almost four and a half million Canadians claiming either some or full Irish lineage. Indeed, this bond between Canada and Ireland has been in existence for centuries. The first known Irish-born immigrant to Canada was Tec Cornelius Aubrenon, who arrived in New France in 1661 and remained until his death in However the Irish presence in Canada can be dated even earlier than the arrival of Aubrenon. As early as the middle of the 16th century, Irish fishermen from the south of Ireland frequently traveled to Newfoundland for part of their catch. By far, the largest immigration of the Irish to Canada occurred during the mid nineteenth century. The Great Irish Potato Famine of 1847 was the cause of death, mainly from starvation, of over a million Irish. It was also the motivation behind the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Irish to North America. Because passage to Canada was less expensive than passage to the United States, Canada was the recipient of some of the most destitute and bereft Irish. Passage was difficult for those making the three thousand mile voyage from Ireland. Crammed into steerage for over six weeks, these "Coffin Ships" were a breeding ground for many diseases. The primary destination for most of these ships was the port of Québec and the mandatory stop at the quarantine island of Grosse Ile. By June of 1847, the port of Québec became so overwhelmed, that dozens of ships carrying over 14,000 Irish queued for days to make landing. It is estimated that almost 5,000 Irish died on Grosse Ile and it is known to be the largest Irish burial ground exclusive of Ireland. Many Irish immigrants played a major role in Canadian society. Perhaps one of Canada's more famous immigrants from Ireland was Canadian Parliamentarian Thomas D'Arcy McGee. [ &id_nbr=4583&&phpsessid=12ggrtfctvk244rd867hmklii5] Apart from the annual St. Patrick's Day parade hosted by numerous cities, towns and communities across Canada, the proud presence of the Irish in Canada today is also manifest in the myriad of Irish societies and associations spread across the nation. There are also several Canadian associations for Irish studies as well as university programs and courses devoted to this the same theme. Research at Library and Archives Canada Names of Irish immigrants can be found in different series of records, mainly passenger lists. For the years before 1865, we suggest that you consult first the following online resources. Immigrants at Grosse Ile This database includes information on 33,026 immigrants whose names appear in surviving records of the Grosse-Île Quarantine Station between 1832 and Names were extracted from different kind of documents. Immigrants to Canada Library and Archives Canada holds a number of lists that have been identified and indexed by name in a database, formerly known as our Miscellaneous Immigration Index. Many of the records relate to immigrants from the British Isles to Quebec and Ontario, but there are also references to settlers in other provinces. The database also includes other types of records such as lists of the Irish settlers brought to the Peterborough area of Ontario in the early 1820s, the declarations of aliens for Lower Canada and names of some Irish orphans.

11 Page 11 Montreal Emigrant Society Passage Book Upon their arrival, many poor immigrants had to rely on benevolent societies for assistance when they arrived in North America. The Montreal Emigrant Society was established in Its main purpose was to provide transportation for immigrants who had arrived at Montreal from Quebec and were destined for settlement in different parts of Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario). Library and Archives Canada holds one register of names of immigrants for the year 1832 from the Montreal Emigrant Society (RG 7 G18). The passage book has been digitized and is available online. The use of this digitized database is facilitated by a name index. The names of Irish immigrants coming to Canada after 1865 can be found in immigrations records. Consult Passenger Lists, Other series of documents Library and Archives Canada also holds some private fonds regarding Irish families such as: Heney Family collection, (MG 25 G 347)Collection consists of genealogical charts and information concerning the Heney Family of the Ottawa area, and related families. Radcliffe Family fonds, (MG 29 A 52)Letters written by members of the Radcliff family to friends and family in Ireland. Diary of an Irish immigrant woman, 1869 (MG55/29)Diary of an Irish immigrant woman which describes her experiences while travelling in 1869, from Dublin to Canada on the sailing ship Lady Seymour with her family. Don t forget to check our Facebook site!

12 Page 12 Queries Please remember to submit Queries to Judith Hayman at No recent queries have been submitted. How about submitting a roadblock to ask for assistance?

13 Page 13 CONTACTS Chair John M Noble nobility1817@gmail.com MAILING ADDESS: OGS Ireland SIG c/o John M Noble Chair 1199 Diane Street Sudbury ON P3A 4H4 Vice-Chair David R Elliott Dr.david.r.elliott@sympatico.ca Treasurer John Collins jmacollins@gmail.com Membership Coordinator Cathie Searle Cathie.searle@gmail.com Queries Judith Hayman jahayman@shaw.ca Newsletter Editor Gayle Fisher Newsletter.ogs.irsig@gmail.com Webmaster Brian Elliott brian.elliott@rogers.com WEBSITE: Ireland SIG Newsletter Dates This is YOUR Newsletter! If you have anything to contribute, please forward it to newsletter.ogs.irsig@gmail.com. PUBLICATION DATE January 1st April 1st July 1st October 1st SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE December 15th March 15th June 15th September 15th