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The William Smith O' Brien
Petition
Compiled and edited by Ruth Lawler
Irish Records Vol. 2
•Elizabeth
Kelly Kerstens , GC Extra, 24 November 2001
Review of the William Smith O’Brien
Petition CD
Anyone who has tried to research their ancestors
in Ireland during the nineteenth century is painfully aware
of the lack of records for this time period—only fragments
of census records exist and civil registration for the majority
of the population didn’t begin until 1864.
Eneclann conducts professional research services and electronic
publishing for Irish history. The company is based at Trinity
College in Dublin and is staffed by academic historians, archivists,
and genealogists. They have recently released their second
CD-ROM publication: The William Smith O’Brien Petition,
compiled and edited by Ruth Lawler.
According to the promotional material, this petition, signed
by over 80,000 people from every part of Ireland and from
Liverpool, Manchester, and other parts of England, between
1848 and 1849, is a unique historical and genealogical source
from the period of the Famine.
Following the failure of the 1848 rising, O’Brien was
sentenced to death, and this petition was collected to gain
clemency for the rebel leader. As a consequence his sentence
was commuted and O’Brien was transported to Australia
for life.
The CD consists of more than 80,000 names, 10,000 of which
are from England and the rest are from Ireland. Installation
is easy. You are asked first to make sure that you have a
live connection to the Internet. If not, you are given an
alternate choice for installation. The Internet connection
is used when you click on a link that shows you the headers
of the various petitions. Once installed, you open the program
by double clicking on the icon placed on your desktop.
There are three different search forms: Expert, Soundex,
and Standard. I was unable to get the Expert search to work.
It kept giving me an error message. However, the Soundex search
worked very nicely and I recommend this for Irish surnames
that could be spelled a variety of ways. I used the Soundex
search for Doherty and came up with some by that spelling
and one spelled Dohirty. I then used the Soundex search for
Dougherty and came up with several matches under that spelling
and others under Dogherty. I think I found a match for my
husband’s ancestor John Doherty, but it’s hard
to be sure because the only information given for the address
is “from Golden and Cashel direction,” in County
Tipperary.
Once you find someone that might be your ancestor, the information
you’re given consists of surname, forename, address,
page, place where signed, remarks and occupation, and date
signed. You can then click on the link for the header for
the document that contains that signature. You won’t
be able to see the signature, though. You’ll need to
contact Eneclann or another researcher if you’d like
to obtain a copy of the petition with your ancestor’s
signature.
The CD contains an extensive history of William Smith O’Brien
written by Ruth Lawler, the compiler. Included in the introduction
are also statistics from the petition and a bibliography.
This publication should be considered another census substitute
for the nineteenth century, but one that is limited to the
famine years. Like other census substitutes, not everyone
living in the country that was of age is included in these
petitions.
System requirements for the CD are Windows 95, 98, 2000,
NT 4.0 or higher, Pentium 90 Mhz with 16MB RAM. The CD sells
for $39.95 (U.S.) plus $5.95 shipping. Order from Eneclann
at its Web site www.eneclann.ie.
Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, CGRS, CGL, is the managing editor
of Genealogical Computing, editor of the Board for Certification
of Genealogists’ newsletter OnBoard, the creator of
Clooz—the electronic filing cabinet for genealogical
records, co-creator of the new family health history program
GeneWeaver, and a frequent contributor to Ancestry. She can
be reached via e-mail at liz@ancestordetective.com or gceditor@ancestry.com
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