17 December 2016

North Irish Roots: Vol 27 No 2

As a new member of the North of Ireland Family History Society, I joined in October at Back to Our Past in Dublin, I recently received my first mailed issue of the Society semi-annual journal. The format is similar to Anglo-Celtic Roots except printed on metric size paper. Being semi-annual rather than quarterly it contains not quite twice as many pages but with smaller font probably as much content. It's full colour.
With exceptions the articles are shorter than typical in ACR. I was surprised at the variety, starting with finding a mention of my home town, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, on the first line of the first article about the brig Trusty. NIFHS has many associate members from outside Ireland.Other places mentioned in the Trusty article are Archangel, Belfast, Carrickfergus, Crookhaven, Hayti, Leith, Liverpool, London,  Saint John,  Richibucto, and Valparaiso.
Another article Greyabbey Roll of Honour has a list of 68 men from that parish who served in the First World War. It includes the following with a Canada connection.
SurnameForenamesNavy or ArmyServiceRemarks
CraigJosephArmyCanadian ForceKilled in Action
GeorgeRobertArmyCanadian Force
MacdonaldJohnArmyCanadian Force
MurphyAlfredArmyCanadian Force
HillArthurArmyCanadian Force
HamiltonAlfredArmyCanadian Army Medical Corp.
TaggartSamuelArmyCanadian Army Medical Corp.
FisherWilliamArmyCanadian Force
HamiltonSamuelArmyCanadian ForceKilled in Action

The longest article, The Story of George and Eliza McClelland describes their origins in Monaghan, departure in 1864 from Britain, landing in New York and time in Fall River, Massachusetts. They went at a time when steam was supplanting sail, but they chose the latter. Conditions were a lot better than those of the coffin ships just a few years earlier.

1 comment:

John McConkey said...

I've been a member of NIFHS for a number of years and have a couple of comments. Compared to another UK Family History Society I belong to, the subscription is expensive for "Associate" (non-local) members. I think they could easily reduce this (and I have suggested they do so) by adding a membership which does not receive a paper copy of the journal. In fact electronic copies are readily available although not for some strange reason via their website. Each member receives a free subscription to JSTOR which contains archived copies of the journal (along with many other periodicals of course). You can even find a couple of articles written by me if you dig deep enough!