The Irish Ancestor 1969-1986

Edited Rosemary ffolliott

•Sherry Irvine, CGRS, FSA (Scot), Ancestry Daily News, 10 May 2005

Three CDs About Ireland

Among items added to my Irish reference materials in the past twelve months ....
· The Irish Ancestor, a journal edited by Rosemary Ffolliott and published from 1969-1986. CD by Eneclann Limited, 2004. (www.eneclann.ie)

Old Journals
The records have not changed and indexers did not wait for computers. Older periodicals devoted to the publication of original source material, indexes, and articles about records and social history continue to offer relevant information regardless of their date of publication. The example here is The Irish Ancestor, which was issued two times a year from 1969 to 1986. The articles covered a wide range of records within Ireland and in places where the Irish settled. There are tombstone inscriptions, lists of marriages, family histories, lists of settlers in various places, army deserters and much more. In the first issue appears a most interesting article on Christian names in Ireland, potentially as much a source of name confusion as surnames.

Needless to say, many years of a respected publication on one CD at a reasonable cost is great value, not only in terms of cost, but in terms of space--one quarter of an inch for the CD box against a stack of journals.

Conclusion
Quite right, I am humming my favorite refrain, the one about background material and firm foundations. Resources such as these end up in my reference collection because they get used over and over again. With each new line, each new Irish county that enters into the story, each new record that seems to offer a worthwhile avenue for my research, I turn to sources such as these three Irish CDs. Family history is endlessly fascinating to me because it widens my horizons, presents new perspectives on history and has me digging for obscure details about records.

End

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