Irish Genealogy on Geni

Annemarie Healy

Geni projects are a fantastic tool to collaborate with other genealogists who are working in the same genealogical area. We recently interviewed Annemarie Healy, a Geni user since 2009, who recently created the Irish Portal project. The project is the perfect place to collaborate, find advice and assistance when researching your Irish ancestry.

Can you give us a brief overview of the Irish Portal project and what goals you hope to accomplish?

Overview in brief: The Irish portal is a gateway  for people who are interested in researching their Irish roots,it will provide tools advise and will function as a meeting point for researchers

Goal: One of the goals is to reach not only Irish researchers in Ireland but also the many descendants of Irish emigrants world-wide. Other goals are, to create a treasure of information that can be used when tracing Irish family-trees, create a meeting point where people can discuss and share findings  and other useful information and where they can collaborate on their research.

The project already has 216 collaborators. Have you found success connecting and engaging with other Geni users?

Surprisingly we recieved comments and feedback on some posted material within the first day, but it needs to build up a small bit more. 216 collaborators but more followers who need to be pulled in to the project.

What is your most exciting discovery so far? Have you connected to Geni’s World Family Tree?

They are all exciting but no discovery made yet trough the use of Irish portal.

What do you think are some of the biggest challenges in researching Irish ancestors?

We are dealing with a lot of serious challenges when it comes to researching Irish ancestors

1. Lack of documents and records in Ireland compared to the United Kingdom, we have no 1841, 1851 ect census records and a lot of original records were burned in Dublin in the old days.

2.Emigration, half the population of Ireland left for a better life in the Irish famine, and  also before and after this. By arrival in the new countries they surnames where often spelled incorrectly and often it was not recorded where in Ireland the people came from.  This results in a almost impossible quest to find the families back in Ireland

3.Ireland can be a very difficult country to do research, when looking for your Irish roots take note that just as in England, full records did not become available till 1864. Most record registration before this time was only a church registration and often it was up to the priest what information was supplied on the records.

How can projects like this help those who have hit a brick wall?

We can help by helping. We can supply sources, advise, tools, information and guidance, and work together.
But helping eachother is just as important as anything else above.