14:00 – 15:30 Exhibitor Connect
An opportunity for participants to visit breakout rooms hosted by conference exhibitors to learn more about their products and services.
16:00 – 17:30 Rentals as a Source for Irish Family History
with Dr. Jim Ryan
Rentals are the records kept by landlords or their agents; they may include information on tenants’ names, rental income and payments, property, and dates, though they are hugely variable in their format. They exist from the 1600s to the 1900s and are important in Ireland, where land ownership was legally and economically restricted and tenancy was the norm for the vast majority. This talk will review the history, formats and availability of surviving rentals and what they offer as family history sources. Jim will outline the historical reasons for most land-occupiers being tenants; the 300-year evolution of the estate system and of landlord-tenant relations, along with their effects on the nature and survival of rental records; the nature and range of rentals, their formats and content; and where they are to be found. The talk is fully illustrated with examples of records and their content, along with the consequent difficulties presented for scanning and on- line availability.
18:00 – 19:30 The Secret Lives of Women: Research Female Ancestors Using the Sources They Left Behind
with Gena Philibert-Ortega
Why is finding a female ancestor so difficult? One reason is the way we research their lives. Successful research must combine familiar genealogical sources and sources that women left behind. In this lecture we look at the women-specific sources including signature quilts, community cookbooks, and diaries.
20:00 – 21:30 Jumping the Pond to Northern Ireland
with Mags Gaulden
Genealogy and genetic genealogy can team up to help a family discover its way to Ireland; not an easy feat when the family believes itself to be Scottish, having lost the knowledge of its origins. Follow along as Mags, using this case study, reveals how discoveries turned a North American family’s beliefs into an exceptionally large leap onto a small Northern Irish peninsula in the Irish Sea. Ireland is a place where records have burned and insights are hard to come by. But recent discoveries, using DNA and DNA group projects, have focused the research and placed the family’s origins across the pond and squarely on a specific point in Northern Ireland. Mags will explain how answers to genealogy questions in the face of the lack of available documentation can identify specific locations. Jumping the pond is possible.