PRONI

Trip Start Apr 25, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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Monday, April 28, 2008

Spent most of the day in PRONI, the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.  The first archives center I've been to where the security team was a lot more concerned about what I was bringing in than they were about what I might be taking out.  (I've used the BL during times of heightened security, but they were always equally careful going through my bag on the way out).

I got a fifteen minute session with an archivist who ran me through the procedure for finding McConnells in the records - I know from work that Dad's done that our ancestors were in the States long before the famine, and also that we lose the lineage before they arrived, so I thought I could at least get a sense of what some McConnells in the North might have looked like.  Quite a few farmers and labourers with the name McConnell left in the late 1700s, most bound for Philly or NYC, many of them with largish families - probably second or third sons of reasonably well off families whose land couldn't be split up any farther than it already had.  I saw enough to know that we'll not pick up the thread on this end, and also enough to know that if/when we do, we won't go back much father with the records they have here.  (A lot of records for the 18th century are marked "Records Destroyed in Dublin" - turns out the records office was destroyed in the Civil War). 

Had a nice pint of cask ale in the Crown across from the Europa Bus Centre - a very nice pub with original gas lights hanging from the ceiling, and enclosed booths with privacy doors. 
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