Webinar Resources

Recording no longer available for viewing, at presenter's request.

Artificial intelligence can assist you in analyzing your personal archives, as well as online sources. Whether you need to summarize large documents to easily identify names and relationships, or to develop a "cast of characters" or timeline in complex documents, AI tools can make your research more efficient and effective. Get familiar with terms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and more. We will discuss how to use some of the most powerful AI tools available to genealogists today, such as transcription and translation, being mindful of accuracy and sourcing. We will also explore how the major research websites are providing new tools for us, using related technology.

Recording views free to members - visit Webinar Recordings and click the link provided.

Dr Thomas Finan is a professor of medieval history and archaeology at Saint Louis University is a scholar of medieval Ireland. For over 20 years he has led a "dig" in County Roscommon to examine the site of a medieval castle (of the MacDermot lords of Moylurg), unearthing mysteries of 13th century rural Ireland. A proud descendent of Roscommon Irish, Dr. Finan is also active in several digital projects analyzing collections of medieval genealogical material. Hear and see of the ancient Irish world they are revealing.

From Counties Galway and Mayo, they were some of the poorest in Connemara.On the 11th of June 1880, over thirty families and dozens of single men and women waited by the Galway city docks. Their parish priests had brought them to the city the day before. From County Galway came twenty eight families, including the Currans from Carna in Moyrus civil parish. In their hands were tickets to America. New suits of clothes awaited them onboard the steamship. Their destination was the plains of western Minnesota and a chance to restart their lives on their own 160 acres of farmland near a town called Graceville.

Censuses are the bread and butter of genealogical research. A census enumeration anchors your ancestors in a time and place, but also offers clues to family migrations and family dynamics. Be alert for blended families, clues to migration routes, and nearby relatives. Expect census errors and double enumerations. Make sense of pre-1850 tick marks.

You have reached a point in your research that you can't seem to get beyond. Is it truly a brick wall or… is it a difficulty that might be overcome with more learning and insight, or possibly professional research? Let’s discuss the differences. How might you move forward, or identify a way to do so? This session will help you to distinguish between a true “dead end” and a temporary intermission to reflect on new strategies and tactics. Examples galore will be provided to illustrate key points.

Michael introduces major land and property valuation record sources from 19th-century Ireland, including Tithe Applotment Books, early townland valuations and notebooks compiled as part of the valuation process, Griffith’s Valuation (valuation sheets and corresponding maps), and Revision Books.

An Irishman from Cork, born about 1845, settled in Wisconsin. Learn the records and methods we used to identify six of his eleven siblings in America, then trace the family back to Ireland, where we learned about his other five siblings and his parents.

Understanding the context of your ancestor's departure from Ireland can help you with ideas for finding more information about them.

Information about our Irish ancestors is exploding on the internet. The best websites for Irish research will be explored and analyzed. Landmark additions of Catholic Church records and vital records are presented. Finding aids for further Irish research are assessed and critiqued in this tour of all that is happening with Irish re-sources in cyberspace.

Some ancestors can be so elusive, it almost appears that they have vanished intentionally. Exhaustive research can uncover indirect evidence to compensate for missing and incomplete records in an ancestor's life. The speaker will review some alternative methods for breaking down that brick wall using indirect evidence.

Placename and surname are two of the most important pieces of information for researching Irish family history. Prominent scholar John Grenham returns to explore ways to visualize Irish locations in your record searching by utilizing his newly added map overlays with various record sources: households of surnames in Catholic records, Griffith’s valuation, Irish census records, as well as local records of birth-marriage-deaths. You will learn how the maps were created, and their use and importance to us now in shedding light on Irish ancestral places, surnames, and families.

Understanding the folklore of Ireland is key for researchers to understand the lives of our ancestors. The National Folklore Collection is a record of Ireland’s oral traditions and material culture. It holds one of the largest archival collections of its kind, recognized in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register for its significance in world culture. The collection reveals the texture of daily life in Ireland during the 19th and early 20th Century that we do not find in history books. Fiona will introduce this remarkable collection and show how it will help us to interpret ancestral evidence.

Jen works for findmypast as Research Specialist and North American Content Manager. Her presentation will help you to make the most of the site's resources by learning best practices and seeing different ways to search the site. She is a renowned presenter who will help you to leverage the site to your greatest advantage in your reseaarch. The newest site features will be highlighted. To quote Family Tree Magazine: Findmypast’s core content is for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, with some coverage of places settled by British Isles emigrants. If you’re researching in these regions, Findmypast is a must-use resource.

Ethnicity estimates from DNA testing companies are intriguing, frustrating, and often misunderstood. As genealogists, we often have a love/hate relationship with them. We love to complain about them but we also reap the benefits of their advertisements' appeal to our cousins perhaps less interested in genealogy than we are. They can be especially helpful to those with a recent unknown ancestor but can also be informative to the rest of us. 

Celebrate American Archives Month with us, reflecting on the goal of a "reasonably exhaustive search." Where can we find collections to provide sources for genealogy research? Public and private repositories, and digital collections will be considered. What’s online and what isn’t? Jill will introduce us to places we may have overlooked in our research efforts, and help you understand how many places hold pieces of our history. Online and in institutions, so many collections may tell a story about the lives of our ancestors.

From 1801 to 1922, the modern Republic of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with Northern Ireland remaining a UK member to this day. Various repositories contain material that can help to flesh out the stories of those seeking work in Britain which may, in some cases, plug gaps resulting from missing records in Ireland. These include census substitutes such as the Ulster Covenant, British poor law records and removals back to Ireland, civil registration records in Britain. For British-administered territories overseas, censuses and other documentary sources can be valuable in your research. Chris explores the records of the Irish in Britain and shows how they can help you in your Irish family history research.

The Periodical Source Index, or PERSI, is the largest subject index to genealogy and local history periodical articles in the world, created by the staff of the Allen County Public Library Foundation and the ACPL’s Genealogy Center. PERSI indexes articles in periodical titles (including defunct titles) published by thousands of local, state, national and international societies and organizations. It is arranged by surname or location and also by basic subject headings. Since PERSI is created at the ACPL, the Genealogy Center has a copy of every periodical issue covered by the index.

Lisa takes you through the records found in the Emigrant Savings Bank of New York collection, as well as the Order of Foresters in Massachusetts. While these are based on the Atlantic coast, their records penetrate deeply in the immigrant communities of colonial America.

The annual session is an IGSI member favorite. Brick wall queries were submitted by members in advance and are used by the panelists to offer specific research suggestions. This is one of those precious opportunities to "look over the shoulders" of an experienced research team as they tackle ancestral mysteries.

This session gives an overview of Australian records available, both online and in repositories, to help researchers find the stories of these people. It also shows how DNA results can help you discover more about your ancestors, as well as connect to your Australian cousins.

Movement from the United States to Canada was unrestricted and unrecorded until April 1908. The U.S. only began recording the entry of Canadians along its northern border in 1894. Before that, many thousands of people, including our Celtic ances-tors, lived cross-border lives without visas, work permits, passports, or immigration records. Learn how to find these elusive ancestors.

Researching the specific location of Irish Ancestors is challenging. The creative use of online databases, coupled with free software, affords researchers the opportunity to pinpoint townlands and the locations where distant ancestors actually lived and worked.

Our Irish ancestors did not immigrate on a whim. They often followed in the foot-steps of other family members or their neighbors and friends. Learn about the history of chain migration including well known routes from specific Irish locations to cities and regions in North America. Discover strategies for recognizing and exploring chain migration in your family. This program is presented by IGSI in partnership with the Yankee Genealogical Society (yankeegs.org).

Church records offer some of the earliest evidence we have for Irish family history. Using the records of the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, this talk explores what records were made, what survives, and where and how to access them. Irish church records are an indispensable source for social history and allow us to trace a rapidly changing Irish society.

Millions of U.S. passenger arrival records are available online; even more are not yet indexed from ships’ passenger manifests stored on microfilm at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. How can you tell when your ancestor came to the North America? Searching ship’s manifests and other historical records may provide you with clues about an ancestor’s date and ship of arrival in the U.S. Major resources for finding U.S. (and some Canadian) immigration information are discussed and listed in the class handout with links to online repositories and helpful online how-to reading materials.

Are you new to Irish genealogy or perhaps it has been a while since you dug into your Irish family roots? This is the webinar for you! Tom Rice will provide an introduction to the key tools for finding your ancestors in Ireland: most important record types, Irish geographic terms, Irish names, key Irish genealogy websites and books, and much, much more.

Rita Davern is a Minnesota woman who searched for the place and people her grandmother left behind. The quest took her to the Burren: a beautiful, windswept region of County Clare, Ireland. There she found a clan - and its medieval legacy - that were scattered and lost during some of the most difficult centuries in Irish history. 

Free for all to view.  Click on the title to view the webinar (opens in a new browser window). Note we no longer have viewing rights to the film itself.

FamilySearch is the largest genealogy organization in the world - and it's over 4+ billion records are available to you for free! Tom Rice will help you navigate among the FamilySearch website. For beginner or experienced researchers. Find tips and techniques to help fill in the branches on your tree.

For most family history researchers, parish registers provide the earliest direct source of family information, providing evidence of direct links between one generation and the next (baptisms) and one family and another (marriages). These may be the only record of existence for most Irish who lived during the 18th - 19th centuries.