Hello I'm Terri from Skibbereen Heritage Centre and today I'd like to show you
how to access thousands of genealogy records relating to West Cork on our website
free of charge
so first thing to do is to just to a simple search
for our website Skibbereen Heritage Centre and it brings you up our
home page. There's lots of other information there but let's just start
today on the graveyards database. So if you go into the graveyards page there's
a lot of information here. Essentially there are two different
types of information - there's graveyard surveys and burial registers
graveyard surveys, as the term implies, is a full survey of the
graveyard including photographs of the headstone and so on. The burial
registers are another matter. So let's start with the graveyard surveys.
The list of the places we carried out the graveyard survey are up here at the
top of the page, and if you go down to the bottom of the page, here to this
blue button 'graveyards database page' you can do a search.
On the search page you can just use this pulldown menu here and you can see which
are the registers and which are the graveyard surveys, and where there's both
it just gives the name. So let's just pick Aughadown upper graveyard. Now let's
leave everything else blank because we're just going to do a little tour in
this graveyard. You just do search and this brings up everybody in Aughadown
upper graveyard and very large graveyard as you can see so let's just
pick one at random there - say Thomas Baldwin died 1817 click view and here is
his memorial. You can hold the mouse over it and you can magnify up to
see this beautiful chest tomb, the inscription is just over here, and the
information is below but you can also have a look at where
the graveyard Thomas Baldwin is buried. If you click here it brings you up the
approximate location of the tomb. And if you want to keep touring the graveyard
just click next result and it brings you on to the next one. Now this next one
there's no image available because when we carried out the graveyard surveys we
asked people to come forward with information about those interred in
unmarked graves or uninscribed graves so a lot of people came forward with
information and this is one of those now. So it's an unmarked grave with all of
these Barrys in it and we know that because somebody was kind enough to come
forward with that information. You just click next result and it brings you
Thomas Beamish and Dora Ann, Samuel and Thomas. And you can look at the
inscription here. So that's touring a graveyard virtually, let's go back to
the search menu and let's just do a search within the graveyards for a
specific name, which you can also do.
So we'll stick with Aughadown Upper
graveyard and we put in a common name in this area,
a very noble name but a common name - McCarthy
And if you see this button over here - 'use sounds like' - that's a very
important button. So you tick that there and what that does it brings up all
variations of McCarthy - MacCarthy, McCarthy, McCartie so on.
so if you just click search
and there all of the McCarthys in that graveyard. So they're all
McCarthys except if you see at the very bottom Catherine McCarty
and people aren't always buried under the exact name you're searching for so
it's good idea to use the 'sounds like', and again just click in there and you
see this beautiful memorial to Catherine
okay so that's the graveyard database
let's look at the burial registers. So back again to our West Cork graveyards page
burial registers contain lists and information on those interred
in the graveyards - kindly made available to us
by Cork County Council, which we're very grateful for, and we're digitizing them
over time. Now they don't cover all periods in every graveyard but what is
available, hopefully over the long term, we intend to make available to you with
thanks to Cork County Council. So halfway down the page there there's a list of
the burial registers that we have available now and we're digitizing those
as we go along so keep an eye out there's more to come. And if you go into
graveyards database page, the same search engine, and here we go again
so this time let's look at a burial register. So here we have all the burial
registers, so let's look as Allihes burial register. Again you can
click search and it brings up everybody that's recorded in that register and
again you can open one there
very sad a little baby seven months old
died in 1919, I wonder was it Spanish 'Flu
Michael Cambell and but it gives all
the information on the register here but you can also click this button here
'view register', and if you click that you see the original register for Michael's
death and if you go up here you can, in whatever format
you using, whichever search engine you use, you can click the download button
and it comes down as a PDF and you can download it, and save it, and keep that
page of the register that shows your ancestor's burial recorded.
After Michael you can do the
same thing you can just click Next results and you can scroll through the
graveyards like that, as we did with the graveyard survey. What you can also do
we just go back to the search page, again we'll go to Allihes burial register
will click the very important 'use sounds like' because we're going to search for a
name now and we put in a name that's quite common on the Beara Peninsula
a very noble name too - my mother was one - O'Sullivan and we'll do a search
here we go, so it brings up O'Sullivan, Sullivan, Sullivan (brohil), Sullivan Carthure
all the pet names for Sullivan, so you can see how useful the
'sounds like' button is. And again you can download those and keep them yourselves.
So that's basically how to do a search, there's a lot of other information on
the page as well. We go back to the page there now. Some of the graveyards we
have erected signs at them and there's little vignettes of
history on them. again we go to Aughadown because we're a bit fond of Aughadown
but we're fond of all of them really. Here you go if you click that it shows
the sign that we put up there and also a history of that beautiful graveyard.
Also on the website, on that same page, you can do
video tours of various graveyards. You just click down here, video tour and
that brings us to a tour of Caheragh Old Graveyard but we hope to be adding to
those over time so do keep an eye on it. So that's essentially what we have
on our graveyards database page. Hope it's of use to you but just before you
leave the website, just go back to the homepage, because there's a lot lots more
there. In this news and articles page here there's a lot of historical
articles about the area and under genealogy you can also search for school
records, estate records and so on whatever else we we have there. So do keep an
eye out. I hope that was of some use to you and thank you for your attention
Take care.
you