Colleen Murray

I first tested my father’s Y-DNA back in 2014- and it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, five years later, that he finally received a match who shares his surname. This issue is more common than you might think- and it isn’t necessarily a warning sign of illegitimacy in the family (although that’s always a possibility to keep in mind too.) Until this new match was received, of the three unrelated Y-DNA kits I manage, only one tester had any matches sharing his surname, although he

Photo we took of Adare Manor during a visit a few years ago. Tonight, I am giving a talk at the Alberta Genealogical Society, at the meeting of the Irish Special Interest Group. My topic is the Irish Palatines. The Irish Palatines were a group of refugees from the Palatinate in Germany, who fled the area in 1709. A few thousand settled in Ireland- many staying only a year or two, but with others settling permanently, with descendants living in Ireland today. Many Irish Palati

I will admit that I had no knowledge of The Catholic Register newspaper prior to learning that they were offering free access to their publication to mark their 125th birthday. As it turns out, this is an excellent resource for Catholic-Canadian Genealogy. I was uncertain as to whether The Catholic Register would offer only news of the church, and therefore whether it would be useful in finding genealogical information on my family. Although there are plenty of details on chu

This week I have been preparing for a talk that I am giving on the Royal Irish Constabulary (the RIC). The talk will be on September 12 at 7:30 pm for the Irish Special Interest Group of the Edmonton branch of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Special Interest group meetings are generally for branch members only, however, if you are considering joining the Society, you can attend a few trial meetings. Photo credit: National Library of Ireland, public domain photo from Flickr

Researching Armagh Ancestors: A practical guide for the family and local historian. By Ian Maxwell. Published by Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast, 2000. Paperback, £11.99 from the publisher, ISBN 978-1-901905-89-5. 180 pages, index and 7 appendices: (Sample 17th century records, Repositories, Administrative Divisions, List of unofficial placenames, Table of archival references for tithe and valuation records, Map of Civil Parishes, and map of Roman Catholic Parishes.) We

The National Library of Ireland offers an excellent service- they have genealogists available to answer your questions on family tree research, for free, when you visit them in Dublin. These genealogists are very knowledgeable and can give you about ten or fifteen minutes worth of advice to get you started. But every year the lines grow longer, and I am astounded by how many people have flown all the way to Ireland, without having done their proper homework back in North A

Today I watched a webinar found online on the Youtube channel of the Hamilton Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society. It was entitled “Researching family history from this side of the pond” by Ruth Blair. Ruth was one of my former instructors at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies, so I was excited to see her presentation. You can view it here for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrSURf4LPAI It was a presentation after my own heart, since it incorp

I have been working steadily on getting a presentation ready for an upcoming Alberta Genealogical Society meeting for the Irish Interest Group. I decided to speak on the topic of the Cancelled Land books, because I think this is an underused Irish source, and because I have been lucky enough to have found useful evidence in these books. The talk is this Tuesday at 7:30pm in Edmonton at the AGS offices. Still have some "tweaking" to do but I'm looking forward to it! #cancel