Vikings brought Amerindian to Iceland 1,000 years ago: study

AFP

Sunday, 21 November 2010

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/vikings-brought-amerindian-to-iceland-1000-years-ago-study-2140130.html

The first Native American to arrive in Europe may have been a woman brought to Iceland by the Vikings more than 1,000 years ago, a study by Spanish and Icelandic researchers suggests.

The findings boost widely-accepted theories, based on Icelandic medieval texts and a reputed Viking settlement in Newfoundland in Canada, that the Vikings reached the American continent several centuries before Christopher Columbus travelled to the "New World."

Spain's CSIC scientific research institute said genetic analysis of around 80 people from a total of four families in Iceland showed they possess a type of DNA normally only found in Native Americans or East Asians.

"It was thought at first that (the DNA) came from recently established Asian families in Iceland," CSIC researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox was quoted as saying in a statement by the institute.

"But when family genealogy was studied, it was discovered that the four families were descended from ancestors who lived between 1710 and 1740 from the same region of southern Iceland."

The lineage found, named C1e, is also mitochondrial, which means that the genes were introduced into Iceland by a woman.

"As the island was virtually isolated from the 10th century, the most likely hypothesis is that these genes corresponded to an Amerindian woman who was brought from America by the Vikings around the year 1000," said Lalueza-Fox.

The researchers used data from the Rejkjavik-based genomics company deCODE Genetics.
He said the research team hopes to find more instances of the same Native American DNA in Iceland's population, starting in the same region in the south of the country near the massive Vatnajokull glacier.

The report, by scientists from the CSIC and the University of Iceland, was also published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
The journal said 75 to 80 percent of contemporary Icelanders can trace their lineage to Scandinavia and the rest to Scotland and Ireland.

But the C1e lineage is "one of a handful that was involved in the settlement of the Americas around 14,000 years ago.

"Contrary to an initial assumption that this lineage was a recent arrival (in Iceland), preliminary genealogical analyses revealed that the C1 lineage was present in the Icelandic mitochondrial DNA pool at least 300 years ago.

"This raised the intriguing possibility that the Icelandic C1 lineage could be traced to Viking voyages to the Americas that commenced in the 10th century," said the journal.

Green Shoots / Irish Roots; Eneclann's Digitisation Business Expansion Plans

Eneclann, a leading provider of online genealogical data, will be raising funds from a Business Expansion Scheme {"BES") which focuses on a key component of Ireland's future economic recovery, HERITAGE. This Heritage is shared by the Irish Diaspora of 90 million people who claim Irish descent and represents a proven global economic success story. Eneclann will use the funds attracted through the BES to increase the pace of digitisation of Irish records, thereby increasing the digital assets of the company. They also plan to introduce a course on digitisation, drawing on their expertise to help other organisations in Ireland.

Eneclann believes that a well placed investment in the creation of digital assets, with a non-depreciable value and capability of generating continuous cash flow, would leave the company in a very strong position as the market continues to develop over the coming years.

Eneclann has 12 years of successful trading activity and an annual turnover of over euro 1 million + over the past six years. It is an accredited Trinity College Dublin campus company and has established partnerships with the National Archives of Ireland, National Archives UK (Kew), and Enterprise Ireland.

To find out more, please visit www.eneclann.ie or email info@eneclann.ie.

Northerm Ireland Wills Online

November 30, 2010

Northern Ireland Wills Online

From Dick Eastman's http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/11/northern-ireland-wills-online.html#more


The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has indexed and digitized early wills from the three District Probate Registries of Armagh, Belfast and Londonderry between the years 1858 and 1900.

Speaking on 30 November 2010 about the Wills application, Culture Minister Nelson McCausland said: “One of PRONI’s key goals is to digitise key cultural resources and make them easily available to a worldwide audience. This free of charge application will therefore be of enormous assistance to anyone trying to trace their genealogical roots and will be of particular help to those wanting to begin their research from the comfort of their own home.


“In recent years there has been a huge increase in people researching their family history and trends have shown that a large number of these people are from outside the UK. I am sure this new application will be of particular interest to this international audience.”

Wills are one of the most used archival sources by both family historians and solicitors. The images have been linked to an existing searchable index which allows researchers to view details such as name, dates and the abstracts taken from the original entries.

Future digitisation plans include the addition of further pre-1858 will indexes to the PRONI Name Search facility. These indexes from Northern Ireland dioceses, will list the names of people who had wills probated as early as the seventeenth century – pushing the possibility of family and local history research further back in time.

Looking ahead to next year’s opening of the new PRONI headquarters, the Minister added: “I recently had the privilege to visit the stunning new PRONI headquarters at Titanic Quarter. This much needed £30million investment in our cultural infrastructure was provided by the Northern Ireland Executive. The new state-of-the-art facility will open to the public early next year and will protect Northern Ireland’s irreplaceable archives in a safe and secure environment.”

The wills are online at http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives/will_calendars.htm

David McWilliams: Harnessing diaspora will help us rebuild economy

By David McWilliams, Irish Independent
Wednesday October 27 2010



A couple of days after the Global Irish Economic Forum at Farmleigh last year, I received a call from Galway-based technology entrepreneur Mike Feerick. This man had an extraordinary idea. Instead of waiting, he said, for Irish Americans and the like to come back to Ireland to trace their roots, how about we go the other way?

How about we organise and enable, using the latest online communications and database tools and resources, local Irish communities at a townland, village and parish level to find out who was born in their area, where they went, and trace them and their descendants worldwide?

That way, he suggested, we could systematically reunify our entire diaspora, creating "virtual communities", expanding each local parish beyond its own physical boundaries and allowing them reach out across the world?

As soon as I heard and understood this idea, it wasn't hard to see the common sense and power of deploying local, rather than national, resources to galvanise the global Irish tribe.

So began the development of a simple idea -- something we could call 'micro-diaspora'. The idea we had was rather than build a top-down structure with experts, we should provide the platform for ordinary people to do it for themselves.
In a sense we are inverting the pyramid. Rather than working from the apex, for example networking the top 500 important Irish Americans, we are doing the opposite -- operating around the base of the diaspora pyramid.

When you think about it, the Irish diaspora may be 60 to 70 million worldwide but it can be broken down to perhaps no more than 3,000 Irish parishes north and south.
What if each village in Ireland could harness the economic power of its diaspora? What if, as a nation, we mobilised each parish in Ireland to actively research its genealogical past and identify those people who are of its own flesh and blood and reach out and engage their interest? This local-based approach is what, in another context, made the GAA one of the strongest organisations in the country. It is local pride that motivates people to get together to work in national competitions like the Tidy Towns.

After Farmleigh, the penny dropped for me. This is where the real strength lies in Ireland. Why not use this energy and local enthusiasm to build a vast network of local communities reaching out to their diaspora, to their ancestors' kin?
Together with Mike Feerick and his international advisory board, we have worked on developing this concept over the past year.

Our efforts thus far culminate in the launch of the 'Ireland Reaching Out' South-East Galway Diaspora Pilot Project tomorrow night in Loughrea, Co Galway. What started as a few phone calls and a notion over a pint is now sponsored and supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Heritage Council and Galway County Council, the GAA and a number of Irish-American funders.

More than 30 parishes, including the towns of Loughrea, Gort and Portumna and all neighbouring parishes, are being targeted for the launch, although the project will start only in those parishes that make clear they wish to be part of this initiative.
We have developed the technology to enable every parish in Ireland to participate in this initiative and over the next nine months we are going to fine-tune it, to see where we can improve it and what the pitfalls are by using the east Galway district as our pilot project. Once the glitches and problems are ironed out, it will be available to everyone. The company is set up as a charity, so that we can all benefit equally.

Over the next nine months, the project has three main aims. First, to identify and engage 44,000 people outside the country who have direct links with the parishes in the Loughrea electoral area. We will do this using oral records, online genealogy and the latest technology to assemble all these data. The figure of 44,000 is the same number of people who live in the area today. So we want to trace one member of the Tribe for every one of us living in the area.

Second, the pilot project will attempt to attract 25 or 30 of these people home to their parish or townland of origin in June next year. The proposed 'Week of Welcomes' is similar to Israeli programmes that invite young Americans of Jewish heritage to come to Israel to learn more about who they are and how the state of Israel can be part of their lives.

Many years ago, I lived in Israel for a short while and was always amazed at how the Israelis used their Jewish diaspora. They seemed to have a forensic knowledge of who was who and where everyone was. They told me that these records were assembled by people like retired teachers, policemen and local enthusiasts. Ireland has the same resource here in every village and town just waiting to be tapped.

For the Week of Welcomes, these returning members of the local diaspora, many newly identified, will attend several days of lectures in the local school on Irish history, literature and so on, visit a local GAA match and attend a local Comhaltas session. Obviously, each parish will have its own particular programme.

The third goal is to identify, among the 44,000, approximately 500 enterprising members of the Tribe who can be buyers, advisers, investors and influencers for the benefit of not just the locality but the Irish nation as a whole.

The project's real power is the sheer practicality and scalability of it all. Through the Ireland Reaching Out pilot project funding and the guidance of the promoters, parishes across Ireland will have the online tools to create their own databases of contacts and organise the international 'Reach Out'.

It will then be down to local voluntary effort for each to make the best of the opportunity given. More than any element of the project, the secret to success will be how the local parishes respond and engage not just in the research of historical records, but in how the programme is carried on through the Week of Welcomes and beyond.

The 'meet and greet' element of welcoming the Irish diaspora has been a key missing ingredient in making sure people of Irish heritage return. Now this element can be introduced in a most profound way, opening up an Irish phenomenon that could perhaps even change Ireland as we know it.

In the past we didn't have the technology to do this; now we have.

Last week on the train coming back from Galway, looking out at the fields and rivers, I thought about how many stories each of these fields hides when we consider that five million people born in this country emigrated -- and most were born in smallholdings in these exact fields.

Now we can trace these people to precisely the fields they left. We can do this now. Can you imagine an Irish American getting an invitation to come back and see, not just Ireland, not just the county her great grandfather left, but the very fields that her ancestors farmed?

Today we have the means to do it. Micro-diaspora is the opportunity. So let's go to work.

For more info email info@irelandxo.com The launch of the 'Ireland Reaching Out' South-East Galway Diaspora Pilot Project, Loughrea Hotel & Spa, October 28 at 7.30pm.

- David McWilliams
Irish Independent

John Grenham awarded Fellowship from the Genealogical Society of Ireland

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Irish Times - Tuesday, November 9, 2010


Genealogical society fellowship for author

Minister for Tourism, Sport and Culture, last night.

TIM O'BRIEN
WRITER, GENEALOGIST and teacher John Grenham was last night honoured with a Fellowship of the Genealogical Society of Ireland.

The fellowship, described as a special award to mark the 20th anniversary of the society, was presented to Grenham by Minister for Tourism Culture and Sport Mary Hanafin at a ceremony in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

Grenham is widely known for his journalism, teaching and consultancy but also for his books, particularly Tracing Your Irish Ancestors, which has become the indispensable reference for those researching their family history.

Grenham also contributes the “Irish Roots” column to this newspaper and the Irish Ancestors page at irishtimes.com. Irish Ancestors aims to be the first online stopping-off point for those interested in researching their Irish ancestors. Michael Merrigan general secretary of the Genealogical Society of Ireland paid tribute to Grenham saying he had done much to popularise genealogy. He said the society had been set up to make records available and to demystify the research process so that everyone could use facilities such as the National Archive and the National Library, regardless of the level of their formal eduction or personal resources.

He said Grenham had done much to help achieve those goals. “His books include ‘how-to-do’ sections, details on where the resources are, reference numbers and text references. I would say his work is essential for anyone starting to search their family history,” he said.

Irish Minister of Culture to Prioritise Archives

Source: The Irish Times - Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Minister to prioritise archives

ALISON HEALY

MINISTER FOR Culture Mary Hanafin has acknowledged criticism of the lack of
foresight of successive governments in providing proper accommodation for
the National Archives.

She said she would prioritise spending in this area in the coming years. “I
accept that there is a major responsibility on Government to preserve all of
those documents and to do it properly.

“I can assure you that I will put it as one of my top priorities . . . that
we not only improve the current conditions but try to move to a situation
where we can have much more accessible accommodation and also much more
top-quality accommodation.”

She was speaking at the launch last night of a special volume of the Irish
Archives journal, which marks the 40th anniversary of the Irish Society for
Archives.

A journal article, by former Dublin diocesan archivist David Sheehy,
criticises the Government’s prevarication for nearly two decades in
providing adequate accommodation for the archives.

The great Irish painting that turned up on eBay

The Irish Times - Saturday, October 2, 2010

The great Irish painting that turned up on eBay

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/1002/1224280192787.html

Niamh O’Sullivan is professor of visual culture at the National College of Art Design


Lost for almost a century, John Mulvany’s ‘ The Battle of Aughrim ’ re-emerged on the online auction site, put up for sale by a dealer who believed it to be an American battle scene. For NIAMH O’SULLIVAN , who had spent years searching for the painting, it was a heart-stopping moment

IN IT WAS A 21ST-CENTURY moment when a once-celebrated painting that had been missing for almost 100 years turned up – and not in an attic, under generations of dust, but on eBay.

The Battle of Aughrim was last seen in Denver, in the US, in 1914. In 2003 I travelled there, to try to track it down, but to no avail. Earlier this year I saw the painting on eBay, for sale as an American military painting. I knew immediately what it was. Seeing something flash before you that you have been searching for over seven years is a heart-stopping moment.

Many years ago, in a dark recess of the Battle of Aughrim Interpretative Centre, in Co Galway, I had come across a black-and-white photogravure entitled The Cavalry Fight at Urachree, 12 July 1691. When I saw the painting on eBay I knew immediately that it was the original and that I had struck gold.

I contacted Anne Weber, the great-grandniece of the artist, with whom I had been working on the Mulvany project for some time. She jumped on a plane to the dealer in San Francisco. When she saw the painting she was quite overcome: here was the painting that was closest to her great-granduncle’s heart, and it was spectacular.
One hundred and thirty five years later the painting was on its return journey, this time from California to the Gorry Gallery, on Molesworth Street, around the corner from where it was first exhibited in Dublin, on Grafton Street, in 1885.

That year, when the Fenian and Irish National Land League founder Michael Davitt saw the barely-dry Battle of Aughrim he declared: “If I were a wealthy man it should never leave Ireland.” But the painting was promised, and its artist, John Mulvany (c1839-1906), took it to the US, where it was last recorded in 1914. The rediscovery of the painting marks an exciting moment in Irish art history.

There is a common assumption that Irish artists of the late 19th century transcended the harsh realities of political and economic life either by emigrating and assimilating or by staying put but avoiding subjects that might mirror or create discontent. Mulvany’s The Battle of Aughrim , however, places visual art at the centre of an emergent nationalism traditionally perceived as the preserve of poets and playwrights, journalists and politicians.

Mulvany chose a propitious moment for the action of the painting, the momentary victory by Jacobite forces over the Williamite army at Urraghry on July 12th, 1691, before their subsequent calamitous defeat on the Hill of Aughrim, in Co Galway. By showing the weakest link in the Jacobite position Mulvany illustrates the bravery of the Irish as they took on the superior forces of William. But when the Jacobite commander Lieut Gen St Ruth was decapitated by a cannonball, near victory became a rout. In a striking prefiguration, the painting depicts a Williamite soldier, in the centre of the picture, staggering backwards as his head is severed from his neck.
The myth of Aughrim is largely built on the randomness of the defeat – the decapitation of St Ruth – as one stray cannonball consigns Ireland to another 200 years of subjugation. As if to emphasise this, the decapitation of the British soldier in the painting signals, in its one-on-one combat, the valour of the Irish by comparison with the contingency of the British victory. From near triumph to resounding defeat, the story of Aughrim was subsequently reclaimed in Irish cultural memory as an enduring symbol of entitlement, a site for future resurgence.

According to the Gaelic American of March 6th, 1909, Mulvany was “of an imaginative and inquiring mind, his teacher’s favourite . . . They both loved Ireland and hated the Sassenach.” As a Famine child Mulvany emigrated from Moynalty, in Co Meath, to the US, where, according to the Nation of January 15th, 1887, “he became an infant phenomenon as a colourist . . . and was soon earning thousands of dollars a month”. Notwithstanding the hyperbole of late-19th-century art criticism, the reviews of his work bordered on the ecstatic.

When the Irish-American Club in Chicago wanted Irish pictures, it consulted Mulvany. He explained that the wealthy Irish had little time for national art, that nationalists could not afford to buy art and that painters could not live by ideals alone. Following the remarkable success of his epochal Custer’s Last Rally (1881) – the first major painting of another celebrated defeat – Mulvany was at the peak of his artistic powers, and pledged himself to the cause of his homeland.
But why did he select Aughrim as his plumb line to the past? In the late 19th century radical nationalism was focused not only on peasant proprietorship but also on political independence. Such boldness required representation on a large scale: galvanising, iconic images that had the power to incite action. Mulvany began Aughrim only 15 years after the 1867 insurrection and six years after the formation of the Irish National Land League, and the bicentenary of the battle was less than 10 years away.

This was no incidental exercise in nostalgia, then, but a purposeful, positioning image, designed to press powerful memories into a contemporary political use. If out of violence and trauma comes renewed resolve, The Battle of Aughrim may be seen as an exemplification of Ireland’s glorious past and a call to arms in the present. And by creating Aughrim for the diaspora, Mulvany was able to reach international audiences.
Aughrim was one of the bloodiest battles fought in Ireland, with 7,000 slain out of the 40,000 engaged in the confrontation. Following the defeat, Galway and Limerick fell fast. For these reasons Aughrim rather than the Boyne can be considered the decisive battle of the Williamite wars in Ireland.

In its subsequent mythic versions the battle functioned much as the loss of Meagher’s Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg, or Pickett’s men charging to their deaths at Gettysburg, celebrated defeats resounding to the credit to the losers. Indeed, the characterisation of Aughrim as the Gettysburg of Ireland would have not displeased the Irish-American Mulvany, himself a Civil War artist and an ardent Irish nationalist. Inevitably, it was also likened to Ireland’s Little Big Horn.

MULVANY WENT OVER the battleground meticulously. He went to London to research the uniforms and arms but had difficulty gaining access to the Tower of London, as his republican views and associates were known. The early 1880s in London were characterised by violence, instigated by the dynamiting campaign funded by Clan na Gael in the US. That January there was an explosion at London Bridge. Mulvany, a member of Clan na Gael, fled to Paris with the painting; he believed that, if he had not, he would have spent the rest of his life in an English prison. In Paris the famous Goupil engraved it, and Mulvany then took the painting back to Ireland.
In Dublin the Freeman’s Journal of July 11th, 1885, announced that “no one but an artist of genius could possibly have produced such a masterly and realistic picture . . . The work may be said to be of the school of De Neuville – the manipulation is broad, rapid, and consequently singularly effective, the drawing is perfect, and the colour masterly.” Contemporary reviewers also compared Mulvany to Landseer and Vernet. Stylistically, the composition of Aughrim is circular, cyclonic and sweeping: full of verve, dynamism and energy.

But Mulvany’s associations with Clan na Gael began to catch up with him. Chicago was a major centre of the organisation. Alexander Sullivan, its leading light, had forged connections between Irish nationalism and the shady side of machine politics, turning on ward “healers”, thugs and liquor dealers. In 1885 there was a move to curb Sullivan. Dr Patrick Henry Cronin, a prominent member of Clan na Gael, initially friends with Sullivan, became his enemy when Cronin accused Sullivan of embezzlement. Anticipating his assassination, Cronin entrusted Thomas Tuite, a friend of Mulvany, with his “evidence” to implicate Sullivan. And, sure enough, in 1889 Cronin’s death followed suit.

Although The Battle of Aughrim had been rapturously received, there was a sudden froideur. As a supporter of Cronin, Mulvany was to be taught a lesson, and the sale of the painting fell through. And the postscript is indeed macabre. The trials that followed Cronin’s murder were inconclusive.

Everyone knew who committed the murder, but convictions proved impossible. Around 1901 Mulvany began work on The Anarchists, a painting that showed a group of men cutting a pack of cards to see who would commit murder. As if life imitated art, Mulvany was soon found dead, face down in the Hudson River, his own death as enigmatic as the fate of his painting.
Missing for a century

It’s a mystery how a painting that measures 198cm by 89cm could vanish for so long, but The Battle of Aughrim had been missing since 1914. Then, earlier this year, a San Francisco dealer put it up on eBay.

Although its painter, John Mulvany, is relatively well known, the painting’s subject had been mistaken as an American military scene. Put up for sale twice, with the price varying between $50,000 and $100,000, it was stumbled upon by Prof Niamh O’Sullivan.

James Gorry of Dublin’s Gorry Gallery, which specialises in repatriating Irish art from abroad, stepped in, and the painting was bought in a private sale. It arrived back in Ireland a week ago and is in very good condition, although its original frame has been replaced. Once it has been reframed it will go on view at the Gorry Gallery, on Molesworth Street, Dublin 2, from December 1st to 15th.
The battle and the war: the background

In the conflict between the Protestant William of Orange and the Catholic James II the crown of England, Scotland and Ireland was at stake, as part of the wider European wars of the 17th century. James was supported by Catholic Jacobites in Ireland and France; William was supported by English, Scottish, Dutch, Danish, French Huguenots and Ulster Protestants; the Dutch Republic was at war with France; and the Stuarts were allies of the Catholic Louis XIV.

When James’s wife gave birth to a son in 1688 the prospect of an enduring Catholic Stuart dynasty impelled parliament to issue an invitation to William of Orange to take the throne with his wife, Mary, daughter of James. The Catholics of Ireland were prepared to fight for James in the hope of regaining political and religious lands and freedoms. Although there was no love between them, James looked to Ireland to regain his kingdoms. He landed in Kinsale in 1689. Louis XIV sent Lieut Gen St Ruth to Ireland with officers, troops and supplies. William needed to quell the Jacobite opposition in Ireland to secure British dominance and the Protestant Settlement, whose power was based on land ownership.

Following a series of defeats, notably at the Boyne, St Ruth managed to regroup 20,000 men on the Hill of Aughrim. On July 12th, 1691, when the Dutch commander Baron de Ginkel came through the pass at Urraghry, the Jacobites put up a valiant fight, and briefly it looked as if they might win. This moment was short-lived, but it is perpetuated for future generations in Mulvany’s The Battle of Aughrim . Like the battle, the painting itself was lost, but, true to its subject matter, has come back to enjoy an unexpected afterlife in the new century.