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I have posted this note with permission from Maureen Gallagher who runs a web site dedicated to Griffintown - an old Montreal Irish district.....
In Griffintown@yahoogroups.com, "Maureen Gallagher" <maureeng@...> wrote:
Online map archive: An Irish genealogist's pot of gold
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff | August 29, 2006
Ireland's past will come to life tomorrow when the Irish government plans to unveil an online map archive with details of every town, street, and farm on the Emerald Isle dating back nearly 200 years -- an unprecedented achievement expected to be a treasure trove for those tracing their Irish ancestry.
For 5 euros a day, roughly $6.40, computer users can access visual images of more than 30,000 maps of Irish localities dating back to 1824, a database cobbled together from the vast archival holdings of the government and universities in Ireland. Users can search the database by zooming in on maps, or using key terms, to pinpoint where their relatives once lived, eliminating often fruitless searches in Ireland's aging paper archives , which are spread out among several facilities and often consume time that could be spent visiting ancestral hometowns.
And for those not inclined to travel, the database alone offers rich details about 19th century life in Irish neighborhoods: individual plots of land, cemeteries, schools, hospitals, businesses, factories, wells -- even trees and bushes are mapped out.
The first public demonstration of the project will occur at a reception tomorrow evening in downtown Boston at the outset of a four-day genealogy conference. Free demonstrations will occur at the Hynes Veterans Convention Center during the run of the conference, which ends Saturday.
``These maps represent the world's first large-scale [historical] mapping of an entire country," said Malachy McVeigh , senior operations manager at Ireland's Ordnance Survey Ireland, akin to the US Census Bureau, which owns and operates the database.
Example of an Irish map
Irish government officials said they expect Massachusetts to be a source of enormous traffic on the Web portal to the maps, www.irishhistoricmaps.ie. About 23 percent of the state's population has Irish roots, the heaviest concentration in the United States.
Michael P. Quinlin of the Boston Irish Tourism Association said lack of preparation often leads to absurd results: ``You have Americans showing up in an Irish city and asking if there are any O'Learys living there. Well, that hardly narrows it down."
Even with the new on line historical maps, tracing roots to Ireland requires a fair amount of sleuthing.
Mary E. Choppa , president of The Irish Ancestral Research Association, based in Boston, said the search often begins with the county in Ireland, which many families know or can easily find out. Then, they must narrow the search using US immigration records, church records, and other data to locate an ancestral town or, better yet, a neighborhood or a street. But often, old addresses and farms, and even streets, no longer exist on current maps.
The online maps, however, can lead people to the locations of their ancestors' dwellings and provide details about the life they might have led.
``The maps are so detailed, you can see where their church was, where their house was, what their surroundings were," said Choppa, who last year used just such a map to trace her family to the town of Carriv in County Armagh. ``It's sort of an emotional connection. . . . It's a connection with the past."
Richard Kirwan , a management consultant to Ordnance Survey Ireland, said the on line map project began in 2003 after government officials noticed two trends.
``The maps were starting to deteriorate," he said. ``At the same time, we saw a huge expansion of people who wanted to trace their Irish ancestry."
The survey team painstakingly scanned the maps, most of them in storage at Trinity College, the National Library of Ireland, and the Royal Irish Academy, all in Dublin.
The maps span two eras, from 1824 to 1847, and from 1888 to 1913.
``This could save you a lot of money if you're going to come to Ireland to search for your roots," said McVeigh.
The unveiling will occur during the national conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. But it was the conference's setting that prompted Irish officials to make their announcement this week.
``Where better than Boston?" said Quinlin. ``It is the capital of Irish America."
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/29/online_map_archive_an_irish_genealogists_pot_of_gold/?p1=MEWell_Pos1
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