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To Solicitors, Public Guardians, Estate Administators and Estate Trustees.
Probate Genealogy Service/Living Heirs Research in Northern Ireland
Ulster Ancestry provide a number of services to trustees and executors in order to help them meet their obligation to settle an estate.
Our specialised probate genealogy service includes:
· Finding legal beneficiaries in cases of intestacy
· Finding missing heirs named in a will
· Provision of relevant legal supporting documentation and official birth marriage and death certificates
· Find missing family members.
Our investigative experience has allowed us over the years, to resolve the most complex and challenging cases and we guarantee detailed high quality research.
Please contact us to discuss your needs.
Business as usual!!
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland {PRONI} will close on Friday 3rd September for 7 months to facilitate their move to new purpose built premises in Belfasts Titanic Quarter.
We intend to maintain our research service. By making use of other family history centers, county libraries and The National Archives of Ireland we hope that our business will continue as normal.
Access to some pre 1800 material unique to PRONI may be restricted but we will endevour to keep this to a minimum.
We will also be introducing some new research options which will come on line very shortly.
If you have a question about possible research please contact us via researchers@ulsterancestry.com
Thank you.
ulsterancestry.com
Anyone who has a parent or grandparent born in either Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland can get an Irish passport by applying to your nearest Irish embassy or consulate. The procedure is :
You need to have the following :-
1) For the Irish grandparent, Irish birth certificate and marriage license to whoever was the other grandparent of the applicant.
2) For the parent (child of the Irish grandparent) birth certificate and marriage license to your other parent.
3) For you: birth certificate
ALL of the above documents must have complete details that prove the connection. In other words, the birth certificate must show the names, dates of birth and places of birth of both your parents, so that they can be conclusively identified to be the same person mentioned on the marriage license and their own birth certificate. Irish documents seem to include these details automatically, but in the U.S., you may have to contact the Vital Statistics Bureau in the state of birth to get an official copy containing more details.
ALL of the documents must be official, i.e., must bear the raised stamp of the issuing agency.
To obtain these official full long form certificates see www.ulsterancestry.com/documents/
{button over to the left of the screen on home page www.ulsterancestry.com}
Emigration in the 19th century was for the family remaining at home almost akin to that person dieing.The emigrant did not often return to Ireland from far flung places like Australia, America and Canada.
This was brought back to me recently when I listened to a radio recording.
An old man was taking about his own emigration from rural Donegal in the early part of the 20th century.
His story.
‘As a very young man of 18, I was emigrating to Canada, to British Columbia.I was to join the police force there. My parents were very proud of me.
In the last few days my friends had a big ‘going away’ party for me and everybody was in the best of form, dancing and singing. My mother was rushing about the house fussing and checking all the last minute things that she had already checked several times.
‘Have you that letter from the clergy man’ Have you taken the warm underwear I got you in Carn’ ‘Is your ticket safe’ all that sort of stuff. The night before leaving I hardly slept with the excitement of it all.
The next morning I walked down the road carrying my small suitcase and at the bottom of the lane I turned to look back at the old house for the very last time. My father and mother were standing in the door. My father was waving bravely, but my mother was crying very sore.
I cannot describe the pain I felt at that moment. So great was it,that the memory of it stayed with me throughout my entire life, it never left me and even now in the twilight of my years, I cannot think of that moment without being overcome with a most terrible grief.’
The 1821 census for Forkhill Parish, County Armagh was discovered a few years ago in the Church of Ireland vestry room in Forkhill by a Canadian research student Kyla Madden. Kyla, whose roots are in Forkhill was there with the kind permission of Rector Mervyn Kingston. What she discovered amongst the papers wasn’t the actual 1821 census returns. It was, in fact even more important. It was the Field Books, compiled and collated by local men Robert Balmer and John McCoy. They had visited all the houses in the parish and filled in an ‘estate copy’ and then returned to the village where they transcribed their findings and sent these to Dublin.
The 1821 census covers 22 townlands in Forkhill Parish and include Lisnalee, a detached townland close to Mountnorris. Unlike the actual returns the field books contain some ‘gems’ which the collectors found interesting but which never found their way to Dublin Castle.
For example in Aughadanove John McCoy 78, wife Margaret 77, grandchild Rose 22 ‘and has 42 grandchildren living and 73? great grandchildren now all living’.
Also in Aughadanove George Robinson 54, schoolmaster, teacher of one of the Charity Schools belonging to the Trustees of the charities of the Late Red. Richard Jackson Esq. of Forkhill erected AD 1811, No of Males 120.
In Shean townland John Little 77, Farmer and pensioner, David 40 son pensioner, Martha 45, wife to David, grandchildren Elizabeth 19, spinner and Mary Anne 16, spinner. Alongside this entry in another hand, the following remark: Betty Smyth, daughter of above Mary Anne Little 16, granddaughter of David Little and great granddaughter of John Little told me that her great grandfather John and four of his sons were at the Battle of Waterloo and that John was 103 years old when he died.
Many other army ‘pensioners’ were recorded in the 1821 Forkhill census including in Tullymacrieve townland Patrick Duffy aged 50 who ‘wants one arm’.
more
Tyrones Ditches is the interesting name given to a small Presbyterian Church close to Poyntzpass on the Armagh Down border. It gets its name from the war which ravaged Ireland in the last decade of the 16th century when Hugh O”Neill, Earl of Tyrone waged a nine-year war on the crown. Earthworks found in the vacinity were thought to date from this conflict. It is now recognised by archaeologists that these are much earlier and may in fact date to around the time of the pyramids.
While looking through the registers of Tyrone’s Ditches Presbyterian Church I noted some interesting cases of longevity.
14th February 1813 Sarah Christian died aged 103
November 1822 Joseph Acheson died aged 102 years
2nd June 1826 Samuel Robb of Belleek died aged 113 years
20th October 1827 Jean Thompson of Searce died aged 90 years
Other unusual deaths include
3rd December 1822 David Revel killed fighting
18th January 1825 Robert Harper drowned in Newry {Newry is a town}
moreUlster Ancestry is compiling a list of part time researchers who can be asked to carry out family history research at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Balmoral Avenue, Belfast.
Interested applicants should contact us initially via
researchers@ulsterancestry.com
A historic manuscript containing details of every soldier who fought with King William of Orange in the Battle of the Boyne has been discovered during renovation work at Belfast City Hall.
The 320-year-old “account book” had been lying in storage at the building for almost a century without the authorities realising the significance it could hold for military historians and the Orange Order.
The parchment document was written by the Paymaster General Thomas Coningsby and includes a detailed record of each man in the 35,000-strong army which accompanied King William III to Ireland to do battle with his uncle and father-in-law, the deposed James II.
It was found when a range of artefacts were moved from the city hall to allow an £11m refurbishment to take place. Belfast City Council has now presented the manuscript to the Orange Order.
Councillor William Humphrey, who is the chairman of the council’s culture, development and arts committee, said officials knew that the book had been given to the old Belfast Corporation “way back in the mists of time”.
But he explained that the council “did not really appreciate just how much information there was in it, until we gave it a more detailed examination”.
“Fascinating read”
Dr Jonathan Mattison, who is a researcher with the Orange Order, described the discovery as “absolutely fantastic” and said they were indebted to the council for unearthing an “exciting piece of history”.
“It shows the payments made to all the various regiments, units, individuals and suppliers during the year of 1690 when William III came over to prosecute the war with more zeal in Ireland, leading up to the Battle of the Boyne,” he explained.
“Officers of high rank and even down to lowly rank are recorded in the pages of the manuscript itself and it’s a fascinating book, a fascinating read,” he explained.
“I think it will give us a greater insight into not only the political history of the time but also the social and economic circumstances and history that go along with any period of war or conflict, because obviously with 35,000 men under your command, people have to get paid.
The book will eventually go on display at the Orange Order’s headquarters in east Belfast.