The talk explores ways in which visualizing the locations of households of particular surnames in Catholic records, valuations, census records and records of births, marriages and deaths can help with genealogy and local history, providing vivid examples of just how local some names are and how impossibly widespread others can be. All the records covered are free online and form part the basis of almost all nineteenth-century Irish research.

In addition, some of the focus will be on maps of the geographic areas used to collect the records. The talk will give some of the technical background involved in creating the maps, but will mostly focus on their use and on how they shed light on the surnames and the families.

Our speaker, John Grenham, was Project Manager with the Irish Genealogical Project from 1991 to 1995 and later went on to develop and market his own genealogical software, 'Grenham’s Irish Recordfinder'. In 2005, he was the first Genealogist-in-Residence at Dublin City Library. He was awarded a fellowship of The Irish Genealogical Research Society in 2007 and of the Genealogical Society of Ireland in 2010 and Accredited Genealogists Ireland (AGI) in 2021. He is the author of Tracing your Irish Ancestors (5th ed. Dublin, Baltimore MD, 2019) the standard reference guide for Irish genealogy, The Atlantic Coast of Ireland (2014), Clans and Families of Ireland (1995), and An Illustrated History of Ireland (1997), among other works. He wrote the "Irish Roots" column in The Irish Times from 2009 to 2016, has developed heritage databases with Dublin City Library and Archive and the National Archives of Ireland, and ran the Irish Ancestors website in conjunction with The Irish Times until 2016. In partnership with his son Eoin, he now runs the successor website at www.johngrenham.com.

He was an external member of the National Library of Ireland Genealogy and Heraldry Committee from 2011 to 2021. He has been a member of the full NLI board since 2021 and also chairs the Genealogy and Heraldry Committee.

The Webinar will be recorded and available on the CGS website in the members only section.

Registration is required via the Chicago Genealogical Society website under Events. Registration will close 1 hour prior to the event. The meet-up will take place virtually via ZOOM. All people registered will receive an email the morning of the event with log-in instructions and a link. This information is not to be shared.

Note: This webinar is FREE for CGS members. Non-Members can register for the event for $10. No refunds.