Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 10

The first resource for tracing your Irish family is – your family! Telephone, email or meet your immediate relatives and ask for their stories and copies of any old family photographs and papers, especially family bibles, old birth, marriage and death certificates, or memorial cards, which were especially popular amongst Catholics. When I traced my Irish roots, my late grandmother’s old address book led me to relatives in England, Ireland and America, all of whom gave me more information to extend my family tree.

It’s best to structure your questions by asking the person about themselves, then:

 their siblings (brothers and sisters)

 their parents and their siblings

 their grandparents and their siblings

…and so on. Then, ask about any known descendants of the siblings in each generation. The key questions to ask about each relative are:

 full name

 date and place of birth

 date and place of marriage (if applicable)

 occupation(s)

 place(s) of residence

 religious denomination – for Irish ancestry this is of course of key importance

 any interesting stories and pictures

Next, ask for addresses of any relatives, contact them and repeat the process (which will result in some repeated information, and some contradictory details: write it all down and check it in original sources later). And don’t neglect the Irish in Ireland. Once you have traced Irish ancestors, it is worth tracing down other branches of the family who remained there, to find cousins who may know much about your earlier ancestors. Sometimes, they’ll even have tales about relatives who emigrated.