Saturday, March 15, 2008

It's St. Patrick's Day!

Did you know that TODAY is St. Patrick's Day for 2008? It is - see here. Apparently, the Roman Catholic Church changed the day this year because 17 March is Holy Monday of Easter week. That won't happen again until 2160, according to Wikipedia.

You would think that with a fine New England ancestry (about 50% of my ancestors lived in New England) that I would have at least a smidgen of Irish ancestry. Much to my chagrin, I don't have any Irish ancestry that I'm aware of. I keep hoping that I'll find an elusive ancestor that includes an Irish DNA strand, but I haven't found it yet, and really don't anticipate finding it anytime soon.

Therefore, Randy O'Seaver has no claim or allegiance to Ireland or Saint Patrick. I don't like beer or whiskey, so celebrating that way is not for me.I do enjoy the music, the parades, the dancing, and the wearing of the green (when I was a boy it was great fun to pinch those not wearing green).

I did notice that www.Ancestry.com has put the Index to Griffith's Valuation 1848-1864 and the Ireland Tithe Applotment Books 1824-1837 on their New Database list here. I haven't done any research in these in my genealogy career, and they are probably in the World Deluxe collection on Ancestry.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) web site www.NewEnglandAncestors.org has "The Search for Missing Friends: Irish Immigrant Advertisements placed in The Boston Pilot 1831-1920 " in their list of databases. This is also a subscription site.

I hope that someone will post a collection of Ireland genealogy research helps over this weekend - one of our new CVGS members has many Irish lines and needs some guidance. I guess I could send her to Cyndi's List, which has a wonderful list of Ireland links. She could also use a good guide to doing Ireland research - perhaps this Beginner's Guide to Tracing Irish Ancestors.

Last year, I posted "Funny names in the census - St. Patrick's Day edition" for the edification and amusement of my readers.

My little celebration of Saint Patrick's Day this year is to turn Genea-Musings into a "green page" for the weekend. I hope you enjoy it! If you're reading this in a reader, please click on this to see the beautiful colors of Ireland on my blog.

1 comment:

Thomas MacEntee said...

I am back from Reno and catching up on my blog reads. In Chicago we held our annual St. Patrick's Day parade on Saturday since the real day, Monday, falls within Holy Week. In the Roman Catholic Church, a saint's feast day is not celebrated with a mass if it falls within Holy Week. So the same goes for today which is St. Joseph's Day, a big Italian feast day.

As for funny names, my nickname on St. Patrick's Day is Patty O'Furniture - most likely because I usually end up spending the night in someone's back yard.