The Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland

If you plan to do any family history research in Northern Ireland and you have ancestors that emigrated to Northern Ireland from Scotland, this is a good place to do some research. Before we left for Ireland, I planned on visiting their facilities. However, when I was at PRONI, I decided to spend my time there rather than go to a facility that may not have anything that I am interested in as some of my Irish ancestors were Methodists and the records that I needed to access if I had enough time would be in PRONI. Afterwards, I was assured that there may have been some records that may have helped me in my search.

Most of the information that I present here was gleaned from the website. Their website looks like it’s fairly easy to use. They seem to have it well organized and they have a slide show explaining some of the history of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

If you are working on your family history, they do state that they do not have a comprehensive collection, but they will do the best that they can in order to help you. If you are interested in hiring a researcher, they direct you to go to the PRONI website and choose from the list of researchers there.

The website lists what is held in their library, in their archives, and how donations and indefinite loans can be made.

There are a number of documents that have been digitized and can be accessed online. The only problem is that you need to have a paid subscription or membership in order to access the information available. It currently costs £16 per year. When you look at the cost and compare it to some of the fees for other websites, £16 really is not very much money. Unless you are going to Ireland to visit other places as well, you may just find what you are looking for on your computer in the comfort of your own home.

If I find that the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland is one of the places where I can find records of my ancestors, yes, I would use the website and pay the fee so that I can access the information. You never know just where you may find something about that elusive ancestor who doesn’t seem to want to be found.

Family

Today, I had the opportunity of working on my family history. I had sent an email last night to a cousin in Vancouver asking about some information that he might have. Well, Jim answered the email and sent me information as well as an obituary about the person that I was asking about.

I sorted through the information and was able to make sense of most of it. After I had entered it into my tree, some more information came to the surface. I use websites that have an automatic search function. This function does about 80% of the work when the information is on their website. This function can only sort through the information and records that the website has available. Not all information that is needed is on websites or is not yet digitized. It costs money to digitize records, but, fortunately, there are people that do the work needed.

Anyway, there was a bit of the information that he sent that did not fit easily into place. As it turned out, this information was on the tree of another cousin. This cousin lives in Rainy River, and we have been in touch previously. It just didn’t sink in which part of the tree was the one that she belonged to. I found out today.

We have just spent about an hour and a half, getting to know each other. I also took the time to sort out those hard-to-fit pieces of the puzzle and can now put it to bed (so to speak). I also asked for more information concerning the family and she was quite happy to give me the information. I found out that she is about a year and a half older than me and that her brother is about three quarters of a year older than me as well.

We plan to stay in touch as we are family, albeit distant family. My husband has been told that if we were to travel west in Canada, we will be stopping to visit.

I have found that when you research your family history, you have a marvelous opportunity to meet family members that have drifted away. This drift is not always intended and, sometimes, you think that there are not many members of the family.

Family history will help you to discover your living family as well as those who have gone on before you. It helps you to rebuild the ties that should never have been severed. It can make your family stronger. Once you discover how large your family actually is, and you may never know the full extent of the family, it’s up to you what you do with the information. It can be a very joyous trip.

On the other hand, you might dig up some information that some members of the family do not appreciate. Just remember, your ancestors were people too. They made their mistakes just as we make our mistakes. Life can be very rewarding even with the mistakes that are made. After enough time, we should be able to look back and say, “Yes, I made a mistake, and it was a bad one. But I learned from it.” Or “Yes, I made a mistake, and I thought that it was a bad one, but I survived and am trying to do better.”

Live life. Love your family. Look for the missing members of the family that should be there. Work together. Have fun. Support one another. If you don’t have your family, you don’t have one of the most important things in life.