“Your Great-Great-Granny’s Birth Cert?”

at

This afternoon.

Trinity College Dublin Alumni Office tweetz:

“Might this (above) be your great-great-granny’s birth certificate?

“The destruction of seven centuries of Ireland’s recorded history in the Four Courts blaze of 1922 (top) was one of the great tragedies of the Irish Civil War.

“The day after, charred documents salvaged from the wreckage were packed into 300 boxes and sent to storage for 100 years.

“Now, a Trinity team is using technology to decipher records once thought lost forever, gather copies from around the world, and create a Virtual Record Treasury to open 30 June 2022, centenary of the fire.

In fairness.

Watch video here for more.

Pics: TCD Alumni; South Dublin County Libraries

Sponsored Link

10 thoughts on ““Your Great-Great-Granny’s Birth Cert?”

  1. Cian

    Well, no, cause we didn’t lose the birth certs contrary to popular belief and all the >100 year old ones are viewable online. But it could be your great great grannies townland in the 1851 census or similar (the 1881/1891 ones had already been destroyed for recycling during WW1 in the belief there was a copy! – and the 61/71 ones weren’t even kept)

  2. Slightly Bemused

    I have family who were quite literally on both sides if that occasion. Sometimes family stories can be history!

    1. Slightly Bemused

      Same here. My granddad and great uncle (married to my granddad’s sister) were on opposite sides. They continued a friendly rivalry right up until their deaths – made family get-togethers very interesting, especially after I learned the context.

      My great uncle was the Lieutenant Liam Neeson turned to as Michael Collins in the film, and ordered the first shot on the GPO. Contrary to how it was depicted, they did not hit the cupola on the first shot – they hit the Liffey wall. Previously on the ‘Sheet photos of his position were posted – must try to dig them up again.

      For those interested, I do recommend a visit to the Military Museum in the Curragh – they have a great presentation on events of the time, from the War on Independence and the Civil War.

  3. Truth in the News

    How exactly can you reconstruct an image from ashes……?…..the digital records
    of telephone traffic data by the two previous Commissioners on their mobile phones
    can be recovered if there was a will to do it

  4. Steve White

    Somebody made a complete index of all files in 1920 and they are working off that to find the local copies of the destroyed files

  5. Iwerzon

    My parish of Forkill, Co Armagh was the only file that was checked out on the day of the fire and survived destruction.

Comments are closed.

Sponsored Link
Broadsheet.ie