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Archiver > IRISH-AMERICAN > 2003-04 > 1049818764


From: Pat Connors <>
Subject: [Irish-American] Irish Heritage Centers
Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 09:19:24 -0700
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030407211522.00a467c0@mail.bellsouth.net>


> When I contacted Donegal Ancestry in 1998/99, they did not seem to
> have their act together, and others were warning of their business
> prreacices. Have they improve? Are they reliable and trustworthy?
> Can they be trusted to have relatively reasonable fees or do they
> charge and charge, rather than being upfront about how much they do
> and what
> they charge?


I think this is a good subject to explore. Each county has a heritage
center, some more than one. Each has a reputation, some are good others
are not good. One bit of history I have read about these centers is
that some of their data bases were transcribed by out of work people
with no training or experience in reading old handwriting or genealogy.
Hence some of the databases are faulty. I found that out when first
starting my family history quest.

I first contacted Tipperary Heritage Unit ten years ago and they found
nothing on my family and of course charged me for the search. Then in
1999 after finding my gggrandfather in the Cappamore Griffith's
Valuation, I stopped at the church and sure enough I found two babies'
baptisms and my gggrandfather's second marriage in the church. When I
got home, I wrote THU again with the info I found and asked for them to
look for more, since I was looking for my ggrandfather's birth and my
ggrandfather's first marriage. They wrote back they found nothing, not
even the marriage and births I found! Of course, this cost me money also.

In 2001 when again in Ireland, I stopped into the Limerick Archives
(heritage center) and sure enough they found more births but not my
ggrandfather's. They also found the marriage. Then when I was in
Dublin, I went to the National Library of Ireland and searched the two
churchs' records myself, still looking for my ggrandfather, and found
another birth that didn't show up in either of the centers' records. It
turns out that the records for the year my ggrandfather was born, are
not available in Cappamore so looks like I'll never find his birth.

The object of the above is: I would never recommend Tipperary Heritage
Center but would recommend Limerick Archives (both have Cashel and Emly
Diocese records). Since they are both working from the same database,
why didn't THC find the same records LA found? Also, I would not count
results from either center as complete or fully accurate.

--
Pat Connors, Sacramento CA
http://www.connorsgenealogy.com
All outgoing mail virus free, scanned by Norton 2002





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