Exciting News About Irish Records in Ireland!

Most people who can trace their ancestors back to Ireland learn quickly that a terrible fire at the Public Records Office (PRO) during the Irish Civil War destroyed about 700 years' worth of records. Documents that went back to the fourteenth century when the British ruled in Ireland plus "thousands of wills, title deeds and parish registers" went up in flames on 30 June 1922. According to an article recently published in The Irish Times online, the 1861 and 1871 census records had been destroyed by the British, and during World War I, the 1881 and 1891 censuses were repurposed because of a lack of paper, as it wasn't deemed necessary to keep the data. What did remain in the PRO were the censuses of 1821, 1831, and 1841—all particularly valuable because they were created in the years before the Irish Potato Famine. These records also burned in that disastrous fire. However, Irish historians, archivists, and genealogists are making a concerted effort to rebuild what was lost and make as much as possible available to researchers. They have created a website called "Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland," and it's growing all the time.

Veterans Day and Genealogy

Happy Veterans Day! If you, your children, or other living family members have served in the military, we thank you so much for your service. If your parents, grandparents, or any other relatives in the past have served, this day commemorates them as well, and this holiday Monday, we are reminded of their commitment to our country and everything it stands for. Veterans Day, once called Armistice Day, is often confused with Memorial Day. The latter honors our fallen heroes, whereas Veterans Day was created as a way to say thank you and to honor living veterans. It is a fairly new holiday which began early in the twentieth century, when President Woodrow Wilson called on Americans to “remember the armistice,” signed on 11 November 1918, that ended World War I. His intention was to emphasize peace and to honor thousands of men who served in the war.

August Genealogy Meetings and Classes

In spite of the disruption at our office caused by ongoing roof and ceiling leaks, we continue to carry on with our scheduled meetings and classes. (If you didn't read about our water woes, be sure to take a look at last week's post.) We are excited about the grand opening of the Emerson History and Genealogy Center at the new Clark Family Branch that opened on 9 July, and we have already begun to avail ourselves of the library's new meeting spaces. Our friends there came to our rescue in providing space for the Irish SIG meeting on 27 July, and our first monthly meeting will be held at the Clark Branch in August. You are invited to tour the new facility, if you haven't already done so, this coming week. Read on for more information . . .

October StLGS Genealogy Meetings and Events

We hope our recent post on pumpkins got you thinking of autumn, even if it still feels summery outside. (Did you miss that blog? You can find it here.) We thank everyone who helped make our Fall Speaker Series so successful, and we look forward to welcoming all of you to some upcoming meetings and classes. Our October monthly meeting will be at the Grant's View branch of St. Louis County Library, but it will also be livestreamed for those who can't attend in person. We have an Irish SIG meeting in October, and some great classes are coming up. More information about everything is below.

Hidden Genealogy Treasures on the StLGS Website

(Thanks to StLGS member, Marsha Clark, for writing the beginning of this week’s post.)

Marsha writes . . . Doing a little digging last night, I thought I'd try one more time—after many years of having just put it aside as a lost cause—to find my father's mysterious uncle who was adopted at a young age by a family in St. Louis. He was in rural Illinois as a child, and he and his siblings needed to find homes to live in when their last surviving parent, their father, died. Supposedly this youngest son died as a boy due to an accident; that's how I remembered hearing the story.  As it turned out, however, this uncle did not die young after all. 

Understanding Obsolete Occupations

Did you have an ancestor who was a milliner? You probably know that was a hat maker. And if you have been doing genealogy for a while, you undoubtedly have come across coopers (barrel makers), fletchers (arrow makers), or fishmongers (fish sellers). As you examine pages of the U.S. federal census for early years or read through old county histories, perhaps you have come upon more confusing occupations, such as a catchpole or a huckster, a webster or a peruker, and wondered just what those folks were doing.

A few years ago, the London (England) Genealogical Society published an intriguing list of occupations from the 1881 British census that included, among others, "colourist of artificial fish," "examiner of underclothing," and "turnip shepherd," the latter still not fully understood!

It does help to have a few resources at your fingertips for making sense of some of the unusual terms for the jobs our ancestors held. Here are a few websites that might be useful:

 Olive Tree Genealogy: Obsolete Occupations in Genealogy
(Be sure to scroll down to mid-page for the actual information on this page. And click on the related links under the title for more.)
https://www.olivetreegenealogy.com/misc/occupations.shtml

"75 Names of Unusual or Obsolete Occupations" by Mark Nichol
https://www.dailywritingtips.com/75-names-of-unusual-or-obsolete-occupations/

Dictionary of Old Occupations
(This is a British website that includes more than 2,000 old occupations listed alphabetically. If you prefer to have an offline resource, you can purchase a copy as a digital ebook for Kindle for $4.)
https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/glossary/Dictionary-of-Old-Occupations-Index.html

"Deciphering Codes Appended to 1910 to 1950 Census in One Step" by Stephen Morse, Joel Weintraub, and David Kehs
(If you come upon an occupation in the U.S. census and aren't sure what it means, find the code that was added to the census page. Then, just click on the appropriate link on this web page. On the page that follows, use the little up and down arrows to enter the code numbers, and the rectangles will fill in with the possible jobs in that category.)
https://stevemorse.org/census/codes.html

 Perhaps you would prefer to read about what jobs were available in 1837? Check out the Panorama of Professions and Trades by Edward Hazen which you can read online or download as a PDF at the Hathi Trust: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433089737872&view=1up&seq=5


By the way, a catchpole was an official pursuing those with overdue debts; a huckster, before it took on the meaning of a con artist, was simply a peddler; a webster was a weaver, and a peruker was a wig maker in the 17th and 18th centuries when men wore perukes, wigs with long hair on the sides and back.