Free Digital Access to The Irish Times, 1859-2009!

The Irish Times is celebrating their 150th year in circulation by allowing the public free access to the newspaper’s digital archives, going all the way back to March 29th, 1859!

This free access won’t last long, though–it expires on April 5th, 2009, so do your genealogical/historical searching NOW, folks!!!

The URL is:

http://www.irishtimes.com/150/
Happy Searching!

Jim Garrity

Second Annual Irish- and English-Language Mass a Rousing Success!

On March 14th, an Irish- and English-language Mass was held to

St. Patrick's Old Cathedral

celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, New York’s first Cathedral. This Mass, just like the first one, held in March 2008, was extremely well-received by the Irish-American community. The 2009 event brought even more people into the historically-significant edifice, as it was filled almost to capacity.

This event was co-sponsored by the New York Irish History Roundtable, Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, and by Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral.

Washington Square Harp & Shamrock Orchestra

As our guests filed into the church, piper Lisa Farber played the bagpipes. The readings were done in both Irish and English. Father Andrew O’Connor and Professor Padraig O Cearuill of Glucksman Ireland House-NYU handled the Irish readings. Irish-language vocalists Patrick Connolly and Dawn Doherty sang beautifully, and Jared Lamenzo played liturgical music on the church’s historic pipe organ, built by Henry Erben in 1868.

After the Mass, a party was held in front of the church, complete with traditional Irish music played by the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, refreshments, and camaraderie.

Father Andrew O’Connor of Holy Family Church in The Bronx, Monsignor Donald Sakano, pastor of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, and Father Gavin Reilly were concelebrants of the Mass.

Google Your Family Tree – Unlock the Hidden Power of Google

Google Your Family Tree

On Saturday, March 21, at 2 p.m., in the McNally Amphitheatre at the Fordham University Law School at Lincoln Center (at 140 West 62nd Street, Manhattan), technical guru and professional genealogist Dan Lynch will present a lecture on unlocking the hidden power of the Google search engine, based on the material in his new book, GOOGLE YOUR FAMILY TREE. Copies of this book, highly-praised by reviewers, will be available for purchase. Details about it are at: http://googleyourfamilytree.com/index.html

Dan’s PowerPoint presentation will include examples from his own Irish research and provide tips for use in genealogy, history, and additional fields. He is a former vice president of business development for Ancestry, Inc. Dan Lynch now runs Mattatuck Consulting, a firm specializing in Internet marketing solutions. He is a frequent lecturer at local and national genealogy conferences.

This program is free and open to all. There is a suggested donation of $3.00 for refreshments.

For more information on this program, visit: http://www.irishnyhistory.org/announ.htm

Come to the Irish-Language Mass at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral – Saturday, March 14th, 2009, at 12 Noon!

Old St. Patrick's Cathedral

Come celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick at New York’s First Cathedral!

In honor of St. Patrick, an Irish- and English-language Mass will be
celebrated at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott Street in Manhattan,
between Prince and Houston streets, on Saturday, March 14th, at 12:00 p.m.

Father Andrew M. O’Connor of Holy Family Church in the Bronx will
celebrate the Mass, with Msgr. Donald Sakano, pastor of the Old Cathedral,
as a concelebrant. Readings will be done in English by Father O’Connor and in Irish by Padraig O’Cearuill, Language Lecturer of Irish Studies, NYU. The Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, led by Mick Moloney, Global Distinguished Professor of Irish Studies and Music, NYU, will perform traditional Irish music. Jared Lamenzo will play the beautiful and historic 1868 Henry Erben pipe organ. More information and photographs of this organ are online at http://www.jaredlamenzo.com/erbenrenewal.

After the Mass, a party celebrating the Feast of St. Patrick will be
held in front of the church, with traditional Irish music and refreshments.

This event is co-sponsored by the New York Irish History Roundtable, Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, and by St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral.

There is NO CHARGE to attend the Mass or after-party!

The historically-significant Old Cathedral was the seat of the Diocese (and then the Archdiocese) of New York from 1815 to 1879. The architect for this Gothic building was Joseph-François Mangin, who also designed Manhattan’s City Hall.

For more information, visit: http://irelandhouse.fas.nyu.edu/object/ne.oldstpatricksmass

Give the Gift of Roundtable Membership!

Do you know someone who is interested in the special history and experiences of the Irish in the New York-New Jersey area?

For $25 you can give a gift membership to anyone! These are special memberships that include a holiday card sent by the Roundtable to the gift recipients on your behalf.

Each card will name you as the presenter, and each membership will include full benefits of the Roundtable, including newsletters, the next issue of New York Irish History, (our annual scholarly journal) and all special notifications we send out. The card will include information about our website and our weblog.

To send a Roundtable gift membership to someone, just click on the link below and follow the instructions on that page:

www.irishnyhistory.org/giftmember.htm

For memberships ordered before December 15, cards will be mailed out before Christmas. For memberships ordered later and before December 25, cards will be mailed before New Year’s Day.

And thank you for your past support of the Roundtable.

We send best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to you.

Hugh O’Rourke, President
John Ridge, Vice President for Local History
Jim Garrity, Vice President for Family History
Nancy Shea, Treasurer
Bob McGrath, Membership Secretary
Frank Naughton, Recording Secretary

IAJGS AWARDS STERN GRANT TO ITALIAN GENEALOGICAL GROUP

For Immediate Release

IGG Will Create Online Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930

NEW YORK CITY – October 16, 2008 – The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) has awarded the 2008 Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant to the Italian Genealogical Group (IGG). The $2,500 grant will be used to create, computerize, and place online an index to the names of women who got married in Brooklyn from 1910 through 1930.

The IGG provides free access to the public to online databases it creates from print and card indexes. The databases serve as indexes to 19^th- and 20^th-century birth, marriage, and death records and naturalization records for New York City’s five boroughs, Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties, and some counties in northern New York State. Every name listed in the print and card indexes is included in the databases.

Nominated by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island, the IGG was chosen by the Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant Committee from among the nominations submitted by the IAJGS’s member societies. The committee submitted its recommendation to the IAJGS’s Board of Directors for its consideration and approval. The nomination was subsequently voted on and approved at the IAJGS membership meeting at this year’s IAJGS Annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy.

According to IAJGS, “The grant will make it possible for the IGG to create and computerize a Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930 from original records on 268 rolls of film from the Family History Library. There is currently no such index available for this period – a period of massive Jewish immigration. The Jewish genealogy community has greatly benefited from the 12,000,000 records computerized by earlier IGG projects, and it is most appropriate to support the 1910-1930 Brooklyn Brides project, one that will surely allow many researchers to identify the descendants of female relatives who have to date been untraceable.” This marks the first time that the IGG will create a database from the records themselves rather than from an existing index.

More than 500 volunteers from local genealogy groups-and individuals in Canada, Ireland, and England who learned about the IGG’s projects through the Internet-compile the databases under the leadership and supervision of the IGG’s Project Coordinator John Martino. The IGG first participated in an indexing project in 1999 when it partnered with New York City’s Jewish Genealogical Society to create a database of Kings County (Brooklyn, New York) naturalizations.

The grant honors Rabbi Malcolm Henry Stern (1915-1994), widely considered to be “the dean of American Jewish genealogy,” and his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research. The intention of the Stern Grant is to encourage institutions to pursue projects, activities, and acquisitions that provide new or enhanced resources to benefit Jewish genealogists.

About IAJGS: The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies is an independent, non-profit umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of more than seventy-five national and local Jewish genealogical societies around the world. The IAJGS was formed in the late 1980s to provide a common voice for issues of significance to its members, to advance our genealogical avocation, and to coordinate items such as the Annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. http://www.iajgs.org

About IGG: The Italian Genealogical Group, based in Long Island, New York, is dedicated to furthering Italian family history and genealogy. The databases it creates include every name listed in the indexes, without regard to nationality or religion. Volunteers from the IGG and other genealogy organizations in the New York area have been transcribing and indexing record collections held at local and regional archives. http://www.italiangen.org

Eileen Polakoff, Chairperson

2008 Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant Committee

###

Jay P. Dolan to speak at the American Irish Historical Society

 

On Wednesday, Novemeber 12, the American Irish Historical Society will present Jay P. Dolan– Professor Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, and a noted scholar in the the field of immigration history–speaking about his new book, The Irish Americans: A History (Bloomsbury Press) .

See the society’s site for details.

Irish Theater Festival in NYC

The 59E59 Theaters will host New York City’s first Irish theater festival, 1st IRISH 2008, featuring the New York City premieres of works by eight Irish playwrites.

The festival begins on Saturday, September 6 and runs through Sunday, September 28.  The 59E59 Theaters are located (not surprisingly) at 59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison  For more information check www.59E59.org or an article about the festival in Broadway World.

Researching Genealogical Resources in Ireland Long-Distance

SAVE THE DATE!!

SUNDAY, September 28, 2008, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m
Fordham Law School Auditorium
140 West 62nd Street, Manhattan

In their only New York City area appearance, two internationally-acclaimed experts on genealogical research in Ireland—Dr. William Roulston, Research Director of Ulster Historical Foundation in Belfast, and Dr. Brian Trainor, the Foundation’s retired Research Director and the former Director of the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland—will present an information-packed afternoon on researching genealogical resources in Ireland long-distance. The seminar is open to members of the New York Irish History Roundtable and the public.

Drs. Roulston and Trainor will give four lectures that focus on genealogical resources in a variety of repositories in the thirty-two counties of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They will introduce us to many of the lesser-known resources. The afternoon will begin with a general introductory lecture, followed by specialized talks. The lectures are “Introduction to Irish and Scots-Irish Family History Research,” “The Three Cs: Church Registers, Census Records and Civil Registration Records,” “Gravestone Inscriptions,” and “Not Always at the Bottom of the Pile.” Time will be allotted for questions after each lecture.

The seminar will take place on SUNDAY, September 28th, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., in the McNally Amphitheatre of Fordham Law School at Lincoln Center, 140 W. 62nd Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues. Take the A, B, C, D, or 1 subway line to 59th Street-Columbus Circle. The price of admission is $15 for members and $20 for non-members.

Ulster Historical Foundation, established in 1956, is one of the principal genealogical research agencies in Ireland and a leading publisher of quality historical, educational, and genealogical books.

Ireland GenWeb Project Website

The IrelandGenWeb Project http://www.irelandgenweb.com/ has a wonderful set of genealogical data that is constantly being updated by a group of dedicated volunteers. From the IrelandGenWeb site:

“Welcome to the IrelandGenWeb Project homepage. This site is part of the WorldGenWeb Project and is the local resource index page for Ireland research. To learn more about the history of this project or to contact us for more information, please visit our About This Project.

If you would like to know when any of the County webpages have been updated with new records or of any new projects going on at the IrelandGenWeb Project, join the IGW-L mailing list. This is just an announcement mailing list and will not create a lot of mail.

However, we have a wonderful genealogy list which covers the genealogy, history and the culture of Ireland. It covers all the counties and is a great place for you to learn new research methods and make connections. You can join the list at the Ireland GenWeb Project mailing list webpage.”