Follow Your Family Through Their Chain Migration
Kevin Cassidy

The average Irish immigrant did not arrive in the U.S. alone. He likely followed an already existing chain of relatives, friends, and neighbors who had crossed the pond. This talk details how to find the pathway and track one’s family back to the parish of origin.

Forum member Kevin Cassidy is an avid researcher and lecturer on genealogy topics. He has spoken across the U.S., as well as Ireland. Cassidy has traced his own family tree back to the townlands of origin for all eight of his great-grandparents.

Researching the Irish Schools’ Collection
Jill Williams

In the late 1930s, more than 50,000 children in 5,000 primary schools in the Irish Free State were enlisted to collect folklore in their home districts. This included oral history, topographical information, folktales and legends, riddles and proverbs, games and pastimes, trades and crafts. The children recorded this material from their parents, grandparents, and neighbors, and it can now be found—and searched—in the Irish Schools’ Collection at www.duchas.ie.  Jill Williams will discuss this underused resource and encourage our members to delve into it.

Jill Williams has been teaching family history courses for over two decades. She was a longtime volunteer in the library of the Irish Genealogical Research Society in London and is a fellow of the society.

The Great Hunger
Elizabeth Stack

Between 1846 and 1851, about a million people in Ireland died of famine-related causes. Most deaths were due to diseases like typhus rather than starvation per se, although diseases like dysentery and scurvy are related to lack of food.

Elizabeth Stack will discuss conditions leading up to the failure of the potato crop and the devastating consequences for the population of Ireland. She will examine the response of the British government and the landlords, as well as testimonies from eyewitnesses. American charity in Ireland and the mass migration, including life on board the so-called coffin ships, will also be covered.

Elizabeth Stack, Ph.D., is the former executive director of the American Irish Historical Society in Manhattan and former executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, New York. At Fordham University, she taught Irish and Irish American history and was associate director of Fordham’s Institute of Irish Studies. She is a frequent guest on podcasts and radio shows about Irish America.

The Shape-Shifting Nature of Old Irish Surnames
Irene Morgan

Your brick wall could be a modern-day blind spot in surname pronunciation or spelling. Old Irish surnames are living, breathing entities that shape-shifted and evolved across generations. Discover how to navigate mysterious spelling variants and aliases to trace elusive family names all the way back to Ireland.

Irene Morgan, a native Irish speaker, is the resident genealogy writer for Ireland Reaching Out and founder of Irish Quest. She spoke to the Forum in January about Irish forenames and nicknames.