Irish Census wars...!

[Chris Paton]

For some time I, along with others, have been campaigning to get the Irish Family History Foundation and the Ulster Historical Foundation to lower their grossly inflated prices for access to online records. We've had some success in that they recently dropped each record price from 10 Euros per transcription to five Euros per transcription (though what the UHF is playing at with two different price structures for the same records through different online portals is still way beyond me!). For what you get, it is still my assertion that this is far too high.

However, just to warn you that the IFHF has started to hurriedly (and in my opinion cynically, in light of an announcement made by the National Archives of Ireland on Monday) make their transcriptions of the 1901 and 1911 census records available online, at a premium of five Euros per entry. They released North Tipperary 1911 last Wednesday, and today have released Mayo 1901 and 1911 (partially). All of these records are going to be available online for free by this time next year, via the National Archives of Ireland and their Canadian partners, and these will be the actual digitised images of the original household schedules for 1911.

Honestly folks, if you can wait a bit longer, save your hard-earned money.

Chris

[sheilajim]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the info. Five Euros seems very expensive to me to look at a record. In fact looking at any records from Ireland seems to me to be very expensive. I wonder why they can't be more like SP?

Regards

[Chris Paton]

I once asked Feargal O' Donnell of the Ulster Historical Foundation that very question, why can't they charge a much more reasonable rate in line with suppliers such as Scotland's People! The response? "GRONI and other repositories are open for Public use"....!

Considering one of the English equivalents, the FFHS's Family History Online site, charges about 8 pence per look up from their equivalent system of online entries for births, marriages, deaths, burial, monumental inscription and probate records, you do have to wonder....!

It's sad really, the IFHF and its associates are going to price themselves out of existence.

Chris

[LesleyB]

It's sad really, the IFHF and its associates are going to price themselves out of existence.

It's difficult enough at times getting a handle on those Irish relatives, with record availability being patchy both in the original and online types without the added hassle of paying through the nose. It does make you realise how very lucky we are to have SP, where not only post 1855 BMDs, but OPR records and wills can be downloaded. I know they don't cover absolutely everything (she says, with Wee Frees in the mix!) but they do a pretty good job... You'd think, given that the population of Eire and NI combined is not much greater than that of Scotland, that some kind of similar project(s) would not be impossible to achieve. One day....

Best wishes
Lesley

[Chris Paton]

Absolutely. In 1999 I made a TV series in the States called Celtic America, for STV, and as a part of this we filmed at Ellis Island. There's a map in there where you can type in a number for an ethnic minority, and up comes a digital number showing the the numbers of Americans who claim to be of that heritage. For Scots, there were two million Americans. For the English something like 5 million.

When you typed in Ulster Scots, you got 2 million, and for Irish Catholic Americans, a whopping 38 million people. That's 40 million Americans claiming some form of Irish heriatge. In my book, that is a client base worth tapping into.

Chris

[wini]

It seems someone is being very short sighted, with that amazing number of Irish descendents in the U.S

From afar it seems to me that the American Irish are very proud of their ancestry and someone is missing out on a treasure trove.

wini
Who has almost given up on my lot.

[Liz Turner]

Chris

I'm so glad that you keep us up to date with this kind of stuff!! I'm going to wait patiently until the end of the year .....

I've got Irish ancestors of my own (who in the west of Scotland doesn't) and I've deliberately avoided doing more searching because I think the cost is pretty high.

Liz

[Chris Paton]

Virtually all my lines from Fermanagh and Derry had converged on Belfast by 1911, so I for one cannot wait until October when records for Antrim and Down will be up and running!

Chris

[Andrew C.]

I have read in several sources that the biggest ethnic grouping in the United States is the Scots (combining those leaving from Scotland and the Ulster Scots) A lot of people I believe are registered as Irish because the last port before crossing the Atlantic was in "Ireland" however ethnically most of them where Scots or Ulster Scots. When you consider that most of these people started to emigrate West in the early to mid 17th Century where as the Irish Catholics did not move on mass until the mid to late nineteeth century then the Scots had a two hundred year start on them in multiplying.

[Chris Paton]

There were some Irish Catholic settlements long before that though, Maryland being a prime example (Charlestown etc).

The first ten presidents were of Ulster Scot stock though, including Andrew Jackson, whose parents came from just outside of my home town of Carrickfergus, in the same village where my father went to school. I actually tracked their graves down in 1999, in the Waxhaws region of North Carolina, and wrote an article on their story for the Gaelic magazine Cothrom shortly after (entitled "Ceann Suidhe nan Staitean Ceilteach"). I've actually heard the Revolutionary War described as a Presbyterian uprising, and the Presbyterian influence was obviously there for the duration of those early presidencies - "manifest destiny" being one policy example.

On the down side, whilst filming a TV series in the States in 1999, I met the head hippy, or the grand pixie, or dark lord of the sith, or whatever he was, of the Ku Klux Klan, in Pulaski, Tennessee. Prior to a "white pride" march that he was leading, he gave me a booklet on how the KKK derived their authority from the Declaration of Arbroath. The confederate flag, whch they use, is apparently a hybrid of Saint Andrews Saltire and Saint Patrick's saltire.

I guess with any culture, you'll always get the good with the bad!

Chris