Galway Surnames List - Questions and useful tips

Compiled by quibellg@labyrinth.net.au

Welcome to the Galway Surnames list. Genealogy is now one of one of the fastest growing area's of the Internet, and this particular list has now grown to in excess of eight hundred entries. Given the Galway population of several hundred thousand at the time of the famine, there is still a fair way to go! Although I am no real expert one these matters -- here are a few of the general questions/enquires that I get asked to respond to from time to time as the maintainer of this list as well as a few general tips I have found useful when using surname lists. 

I generally update the list at least once every month and inform submitters that their entry has been added. (I update more frequently if the flow of entries increases.)

Most of the entries vary from around 1 to 10 lines in size. If you want to add a lot more detailed information, the most efficient way is for you to create your own web page and I'll link it to your surname entry. That way all your detailed information is under your control and can be updated as often as you like.

My own personal experience with Internet surname and Family History Society lists has been extremely positive. Although there is no substitute for doing your on research, one of the most important links the lists play is that they provide a link to other researchers. Sometimes you are able to exceed all expectations and are able to get access to records or information that you are simply not going to find at the LDS, Genealogical Society or in the County Archives. As a result of my interaction with other researchers via the surnames lists I now have copies of several family photograph's, (examples include: GG Grandfather & siblings), copies of correspondence, school reports, photograph's of various family heirlooms as well as notes copied from family Bibles and other books.

When you first start out in Genealogy and start putting together your family tree, one of then first things you are told by experienced researchers once you hit a brick-wall is to locate other persons whom are researching the same or similar spelt name in your particular geographic region. Those of you who have joined various Genealogical Societies and Family History Societies (FHS) throughout the world would be familiar with the process of declaring/registering your family surname interests upon joining the various societies. Over the last three to four years this task has been made a little easier for those of us with access to the Internet, newsgroups and electronic mail (e-mail). The Internet is proving to be a very powerful research tool for genealogists and there has been an explosion in the number of genealogical web-sites over this time.

Remember to check the other online regional surname lists to see whether anyone else is also researching one of your family names.

The use of Surnames lists should always be seen as a two-way interchange of information. As a beginner you usually start off with very little information and to a large extent rely on the generosity of others supplemented with your own research efforts to allow you to build up a database of information. The surname lists are full of people at both ends of the spectrum. Later you may find that the pendulum shifts and you find yourself giving out more information than you receive!

Research is very much a cooperative effort. Currently I am researching a fairly rare and localised surname from Hampshire and Wiltshire in England with about twenty other researchers. One researcher is compiling and collecting census indexes and data, while another is compiling an index of births, Deaths and Marriages from the central registration records. If you were doing this on your own you "probably" wouldn't have the time to do it all!

Never discard anything, even if you just print off or file away various correspondents' e-mail's on their ancestors. If you discard it now sometime down the track you will never know if that correspondent's line and your's were connected. I have personally corresponded with several people in USA, Canada and England whose family lines eventually connected up with one of mine more than two years after the initial contact was made. If you retain this information it allows you to pass on a summary of what you have received together with contact e-mail addresses to other researchers who may come along researching the same surname. I have been able to directly help many other researchers in this manner!

Responding to a surname listing / Answering an inquiry to your own listing - When I contact or am contacted by someone in relation to a surname listing I usually supply some or all of the following information:

1. A reference to where I obtained their contact details from.
2. The extent of my research interest - For example: is it a one name study, localised study, relevant dates, Family history or surname history research, etc.
3. An outline of the family tree I am researching (With all due respect to privacy - see "Privacy" below) giving event dates, locations, etc.
4. Any information that I believe relates to the correspondent's family tree with event dates, locations, etc.
5. How long I have been researching and the type of data and information I have available for sharing with other researchers.
6. Information on the family tradition (Word of mouth, meaning of the surname, etc.)
7. How my data is stored - Is it a Word-processing document, Spreadsheet, Database or paper based.
8. My contact details - e-mail, Web page, postal address or phone/facsimile.
9. In the e-mail header include some identifying information such as "Galway Surnames List". or other information the lister has referred to in their listing.

Non or negative reply - Inevitably you will always get a few of these. I remember being contacted with a request for information a couple of years ago. I supplied a lot of information, but never heard from this person again. I followed up two more times a year later with some additional information but still heard nothing back. Some time later another researcher who was a relative of this person contacted me. This researcher was able to supply me with some very useful information! It appears that the first contact only had a passing or minimal interest in genealogy - but later passed on my contact details and research information to the 2^nd researcher. The motto here is to have patience with people who may not have the same level of interest in Genealogy!

In this day and age, a lot of people run spam filters, so your e-mail message may have been inadvertently caught by one of the spam filter rules based upon the information contained in the e-mail header, or because you sent the e-mail from a free e-mail address such as Hotmail or Yahoo.

Always keep your surnames list information as current as possible - Don't forget to update your surname related data, your e-mail, postal address detail or your web page address and these details change!

Research - Supplement your Internet, LDS and library research by joining local Family History Societies (Join several). These are generally an invaluable source of local archive and other related information for a small annual fee. The bottom line is that although it is a useful tool, the Internet (and surnames lists) should be treated as just another finding aid like the IGI. Most success still comes about by looking in archives or libraries or using the resources of a Family History Society.

I started this list because some of my ancestors came from County Galway and at that particular there was no GENUKI or equivalent Galway specific list that I could find on the Internet or CompuServe. My own success with some of the other GENUKI surnames lists and the absence of an Irish one for an area of my one of my interests resulted in me setting one up for County Galway in Ireland. http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~quibellg/galway.htm

When requesting or sending information where possible don't include personal data or information on living persons. They may not appreciate data or information being posted without their consent. For more information about privacy on the Internet from a Genealogical perspective see: http://home.sprynet.com/~harrisfarm/warning.htm and http://www.ancestry.com/home/Myra_Vanderpool_Gormley/Shaking_Family_Tree06-19-97.htm

Typically I always try to avoid publishing information before 1900 unless it is really needed as well as information about living people.

Genealogy like everything else is subject to Copyright laws - for general overview of Copyright take a look at http://www.benedict.com/contents.htm or from a genealogy point of view

http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/14_cpyrt.html

Some useful places to start include:

(i) GENUKI: The UK & Ireland Genealogical Information Service. See also GENUKI: Getting Started in Genealogy and Family History

The aim of GENUKI is to serve as a "virtual reference library" of genealogical information that is of particular relevance to the UK & Ireland. It is a non-commercial service, provided by an ever-growing group of volunteers in cooperation with the Federation of Family History Societies and a number of its member societies. An article by David Tippey appeared in the May 1998 issue of Family History Monthly entitled "GENUKI -- The UK and Ireland Genealogical Information Service on the Internet". See also GENUKI Surnames List index.

(ii) Rootsweb: Rootsweb Surnames List - RSL search options are by surname, Soundex, or Metaphone (the latter two are "sounds- like" matches). You can search for updates from the past two months, last month, last week, or for any mention.

Rootsweb's Guide to tracing Family Trees: http://rwguide.rootsweb.com/ and http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson21.htm as a background on the difficulties of research in Ireland. More lessons still being added on a regular basis at this site

(iii) The Irish Ancestral Research (TIARA)

(iv) LDS Family Search

(v) The Irish times

(vi) Cyndi's list - For all Worldwide Genealogy

(vii) World GenWeb

(viii) Ancestry.com has some free Genealogy Charts and Forms

(ix) Family Tree Maker's article on Researching Irish Roots

SOC.GENEALOGY.SURNAMES.IRELAND is a forum for queries about Irish ancestors. The purpose of the newsgroup SOC.GENEALOGY.SURNAMES.IRELAND and its linked mailing list SURNAMES-IRELAND is to help genealogists contact others researching the same families in Ireland. The group covers both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Queries from genealogists living in any part of the world are welcome.

Galway mailing list - To subscribe in digest mode, send a message to IRL-GALWAY-D-request@rootsweb.com that contains in the body of the message the command "subscribe" and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use subscribe in the subject, too.

Ireland mailing list - To subscribe in digest mode, send a message to IRELAND-D-request@rootsweb.com that contains in the body of the message the command "subscribe" and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use subscribe in the subject, too.

Shamrock mailing list - To subscribe in digest mode, send a message to SHAMROCK-D-request@rootsweb.com that contains in the body of the message the command "subscribe" and no other text. No subject line is necessary, but if your software requires one, just use subscribe in the subject, too.

All contents of this page are Copyright © 2001-2005 G Quibell

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