County Waterford

Irish ancestry brick wall

Have an Ancestry Brickwall? Here’s a new way to look at it.

We’re in Milwaukee attending the Irish Fest so I’m about six hours behind my normal self – hence the delay in the letter today! We’ve met up with some wonderful people and heard a lot of great music over the past two days – I can heartily recommend attending if you ever get the chance.…

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Irish pilgrim path through hills with woman hiking

Have You Walked one of the Pilgrim paths of Ireland?

Have you ever had the time to walk along one of the Pilgrim Paths of Ireland? These special places lie just beyond our main tourist routes and stops – but offer you a timeless world of beautiful scenery and a way to walk in the footsteps of your Irish Ancestors.

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Sherlock film poster

The Elementary Truth Behind Some Irish Surnames

There is so much talk of immigrants in the news around the world today – so I thought it would be useful to examine an Irish view of “immigrants” in ancient times through the names, nicknames and surnames that were often labelled on these immigrants. Names were given according to appearances – and one word…

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Magdalene Laundry

Modern Slave Labour and The Magdalene Laundries

How important is your name to you? That may seem like a ridiculous question given the fact that a name is so fundamental to our identity and how we interact with all the people around us. In this week’s letter, we meet just one of the many Irish women who had her name “removed” as…

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Beautiful Irish greenery

Top 10 Irish Surnames

The Top 10 Irish Surnames. When you embark on your journey of tracing your Irish roots, you most likely have a surname to launch your search from.  Chances are you may even have one of the top 10 Irish surnames somewhere in your tree.

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