Good afternoon. My name is Brian Donovan, and I'm one of the record experts at Findmypast. I'm here to discuss unlocking Roman Catholic records. I'll be talking for about 45 minutes. If there's anything you don't understand, feel free to jump up and holler at me, and I'll try to explain it, because there's probably other people in the room who don't understand either. If you have a question about your own family history or any other question for that matter, could you wait till the end? And there's a microphone just in the middle of the room, and you can get up there and actually use that. Or if you like to shout, you can try that, too. Maybe I'll hear you. [LAUGHTER] Some of you may remember, I came here about two years ago to RootsTech to announce that we at Findmypast, along with our colleagues in Ancestry, had indexed the Roman Catholic parish registers for Ireland. These were nearly 11 million records. They had been--it's been incredibly popular with our users. They were very inaccessible prior to this. And we made them available for free. We covered all 32 counties, 97 percent of all parishes. And this is the most important source for Irish family history prior to the 1901 census. Now, I'm not here, actually, to discuss Irish family history, though, of course, I know quite a bit about it. That's part of my job. But I'm here to discuss the value of Catholic records in general. Those of you who have used the resource will have seen the images which are online for the Catholic records, which were put online by the National Library, which we worked with, of Ireland. Some of them are better than others, unfortunately. But Findmypast is committed to actually keeping those Catholic records online for free forever. So you can go and search them, whether you are actually a paying member or Findmypast or not, just as long as you register. And if you want to try them out, you can go into the exhibit hall and try it out in the stand today. Now, that was two years ago. We came home. And we started getting ambitious. We thought, what other things can we do with Catholic records that would be useful to unlock? We already knew quite a bit about what material was out there. And some of you will find these images familiar-- St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, or the cathedral in Philadelphia. So we initiated the Catholic Heritage Archive. And last year, we came here to RootsTech to announce the launch of the Catholic Heritage Archive. It's expanded quite a bit in the last 12 months. Not only do we have all of the Irish Catholic records online now, and we're working on all of Scotland, we're covering increasingly large territories in Britain, in England. And we've also now expanded out to about seven dioceses in the US. Now, as you can see, there's an awful lot of blank spaces in the US. This is going to be a long project. We'll be at this for quite some time. But it's very exciting. Catholic records have not been available for your use--or anybody else's use, for that matter--forever. Now, why did we actually embark on looking at American Catholic records? Obviously, you can think of the obvious reasons for looking at parish registers in general. But in terms of tracking the history of Catholicism in this country, we chose three specific dioceses to start with. First of all, the Diocese of Baltimore. Why is that? It was the first diocese ever in America. In fact, all of North America--or, I should say, all of North America other than Mexico--was actually of that one diocese for years. In fact, all the other Catholic dioceses were subtracted from Baltimore. And the first bishop--there's a picture of him there--of Baltimore, John Carroll. No prizes for working out where he came from. There's been a very, very close association between the Catholic Church in America and Ireland, including the personnel from one and the other were the same. And that's one of the reasons why Catholicism in America is quite different from that in Italy, or in Spain, or in France, Germany, elsewhere. It's very definitely Irish Catholicism. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit. The next diocese that we actually worked closely with was the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Why? Some of the earliest Catholic records are in Philadelphia because it was an unusually tolerant state, and it allowed Catholics to worship openly. Most of the 13 colonies did not. And I'll talk more about that history in a little bit. But William Penn's religious toleration extended to Catholics as well. And a mass was first said publicly here in 1707. New York, well, simply speaking, New York has got the largest number of Catholics of any diocese in the US. And 50 percent of the population of New York are Catholic. But I thought it would be interesting to show you the first Catholic church in New York. That was built on Barclay Street, St. Peter's Church. And it was built outside the city walls because, like most of the 13 colonies, Catholicism wasn't encouraged or even allowed to be practiced. And in New York, they could only practice it outside the city. Obviously, it's well within the city now.

And, of course, in Britain, the first archdiocese we focus on was Westminster. It's one of the oldest diocese in Britain, even though it's in London. It's had continuous congregations since the 1660s or earlier. And that's a picture of its wonderful cathedral. There's also a cartoon I thought I'd include here. This is when they finally allowed Catholic dioceses to be set up in England. And in this famous Punch magazine, which was very popular in London, they compared it to Guy Fawkes, the man who tried to burn down Parliament. That was their fear of Catholics actually becoming mainstream. I'll talk more about that in a bit. So what about the history of Catholicism? One of the interesting things about both the US and Britain is that there were--the establishment has always been Protestant. Catholicism has always been in the minority. And as a consequence of which, its history has been somewhat hidden. It's not part of your mainstream education, your history education. And I want to try and delve into that a little bit because it'll give us some clues as to how useful the records are, and more speaking about the experience of Catholics in America. When we look at American history, immigration is the most important component. It is the lifeblood of this country. And scenes like this from Castle Garden in 1871 packed with immigrants--the majority of whom were undoubtedly Irish at that date--is not unusual. In fact, you can see the throngs of people migrating into America there. That's an image from Ireland, actually, of people leaving in around the same period. But the official narrative, historical narrative, in this country has remained the same. And the official historical narrative is not untrue. It's just only partly true. And that is of Protestant minorities, Puritans, emigrating to America to have religious freedom. Now, there's nothing inaccurate about that. It's just it's only one story. And why is it the official narrative? Well, in my experience, every country has an official historical narrative, which reflects establishment norms. And they're usually very dangerous assumptions. And certainly, us, as genealogists looking at the past, need to be aware of the fact that your traditional historical narrative is constructed for reasons. So I want to delve into that now a little bit. The truth is, the first Europeans in North America were all Catholic--Spanish, Portuguese, French. But they were outside the 13 colonies to start with. The establishment in the 13 colonies didn't trust Catholicism. And sometimes, they had reason for not trusting it. But more often than not, it was fear from their own experiences back in Europe. They wanted to have that freedom for their own Protestant worship. So as a consequence, Catholic activity, or Catholic role in settlement of America, was minimized. There was also a heavy dose of anti-Catholic bigotry. A lot of that was sparked by the mass migration of the Irish in the 19th century--Catholic Irish--and then, following that, the Italians, and Germans, Poles, and so on. But, of course, the Catholic component of the country expanded, not just because of this migration, also, as the US expanded into Louisiana and the Spanish territories, the composition of the country changed. And the response--the nativist response in the country--was not pretty. Here, we have St. Augustine Church being burned down during nativist anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia in 1844. And that's just one example of many, because those who actually followed the establishment felt they were under threat. So Protestant communities felt under threat by the waves of Catholic migrants or so on. It's a feature we see right across the world in every country, no surprise here. So I want to actually look a little bit about how we need to tackle these constructed histories. And I'm going to use one example to try and make a few points. Are any of you familiar with a place called Amherst Island? I'd be surprised if anybody here has ever heard of it. Well, it's a small island. It's in Lake Ontario. It's right in between Canada and the US. Here it is. Tiny little place. That's why none of you have ever heard of it. There's about 300 families that live on it. It's tiny. Well, here is their official story. There's a big Presbyterian church on the island. According to the official narrative, it was settled by Irish Presbyterians who were brought there by Sir John Johnson, an English gentleman who had been given Amherst Island because of his loyalism during the colonial wars. Sir John Johnson was the son of another wonderful Englishman, we're told, Sir William Johnson, who was known as the Mohawk Baron. Sir William Johnson was not only one of the greatest prerevolutionary generals in America. He was also credited with having made peace with the Mohawk and actually expanding territory through that area. That's the official narrative. I don't believe official narratives. I don't trust them for a moment. So my mother is Canadian. So I have reason to go to Canada every so often. And I decided I was going to go and visit this place. I was interested in this Presbyterian Irish heritage. So I thought, let's go find out what it really is. And the island is quite small. But the eastern half is very poor land, and the western half is much better. So I went out to the eastern half, to the poorer half. Who went there? And lo and behold, I found the Catholic church. [LAUGHTER] And I discovered that all the people who lived on the eastern half of the island were Catholic. There's a little picture of my youngest son, who just turned seven the other day, who was with me at St. Bartholomew Catholic Church. And then, I looked a little bit further, and I found the cemetery, the Catholic cemetery. It's a big cemetery. It's the biggest cemetery on the island. And here is the headstone of the McKenty family, who were Irish Catholics and loyalists. They had actually fought against the revolutionary forces during the American War of Independence. But actually, this is more a story than just that. It wasn't just the fact that Catholics made up nearly half of the settlement on that island. Do you remember that guy, Sir William Johnson, the great English general? Well, his name wasn't actually Sir William Johnson at all. That's the name he adopted himself when he came here. He, himself, was Catholic. And his real name was Liam MacShane O'Neill. [LAUGHTER] He was Irish.

What's interesting about that--and this is just a bit of a segue, but I'd like to mention it anyway--his grandfather, who was one of the lords of the O'Neills of the Fews in County Antrim, had surrendered to the English and surrendered his land to the English. And he would have known this. He would have grown up with these stories. Can you imagine the negotiation he had with the Mohawk? My granddad had to do this. It totally changes the color of what's going on there and the experience. And I think that's fascinating because when you actually look at this hidden history, it pulls everything apart. Anyway, that's just one little story. In Britain, history of Catholicism has got some similarities to America. But it's a considerably harsher experience, however bad it was for Catholics in this country. In fact, it was easier to be Catholic in Ireland than it was in England. The Penal Laws--you may have heard of these--the Penal Laws were brought in to try and restrict what Catholics could do in England. They were not allowed to own land. They weren't allowed to have an occupa--or--a profession. They weren't allowed to vote. They weren't allowed to do a lot of things. That stayed that way right up until 1778 when they started actually, slowly but surely, allowing Catholics to do things. Even when the government did this, this sort of fomented anti-Catholicism was so strong, it led to riots across the country against Catholics, burning down Catholic houses, burning out Catholics to leave. A lot of Catholics in England moved to Ireland because it was safer. And Catholic emancipation only came through in 1829 in Britain, as well as Ireland. But you only start seeing significant migration of Irish Catholics quite a lot later. There's a big English Catholic community. As I said earlier on, the Catholic hierarchy of bishops were only established in England in 1850, quite late. And that caused huge consternation amongst the population. Here's an image in 1594 of an architect being hung for finding secret hiding places for priests, building them. Or then, there's Guy Fawkes, famous image of Guy Fawkes. This is an archetypal feature of English identity. Every November, they build fires all over England and burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes, this Catholic who tried to blow up Parliament. In fact, I had cousins in England who used to always express surprise and shock that we didn't do the same in Ireland. I tried to explain to them that it wasn't really popular building bonfires and burning Catholics in Ireland. [LAUGHTER] But even today, it's so much part of their tradition. I mean, most people, there's not much antisectarianism really left in English society today. But they still hold onto this. And this was such an important part of what it was to be English. You defined as anti-Catholic. It's a very establishment view. There's an image of those Gordon Riots I mentioned before, of torch-lit thugs driving Catholics out. God, you see images like that throughout the world over history, don't you? Anyway, so how many Catholics really were in England in this period before the Irish start moving in and others? It's still quite large. In northern parts of England, 20 percent and more were Catholic, even in the earlier period when even those Penal Laws were in place. It's extraordinary when they--so many survive. So it's very important because these people were the most likely to leave to here, to come here. So we don't think of English migration to America, but large numbers of English Catholics migrate to North America because it's safer to be here. So there's a few lessons from all of this before we get into the records, which is really what you all want to hear about. Don't believe official historical narratives of any country. They're usually written by an establishment to protect their interests and their views. I know things are better now than they were in the past, but there's still an awful lot of that survives. And we lose a whole bunch of our history. The established norm, at best, reflects the majority. More often, it doesn't even reflect that. And remember, oppressive laws in every country exist because there is a group to oppress. They're not there for no reason. So when you see Penal Laws in Britain coming in or similar things happening here, it's because a community is actually there. They don't bring these laws in because nobody's there. It's usually a red light that somebody is there. And also, more importantly, sociological historians can generalize about the population in general, but you all, I would sure, know this, genealogists can never generalize about anything because every family will buck the trend when you look at them. Let's have a look at the records, Catholic records, because I want to spend some time looking at why they're so important, and the difficulties people have had looking at them. Why have they been so inaccessible? Now, some of you will know some of this already. But maybe some of it is self-evident, maybe not. They're secret! They're not public records. And I think we tend to forget, these are sacraments. And the Church takes this very seriously. These are actions by individuals with their God. And these are records of this. They are not public records. So the Church takes this desperately seriously. The Catholic Church has a code of laws which has been in place for over 1,500 years known as the canon law, and Canon 220 states quite clearly that people have the right to that privacy of access to records. And it's there in black and white there, if you don't know no more. But there's other issues of privacy as well, which is worthwhile looking at. The parish registers within the Catholic Church contain a great deal more than the simple act of baptism or marriage or the other sacraments. They often include a great deal of marginal annotation, which could cause embarrassment. For example, there's an image up there--I don't know if you quite see it, I've highlighted it in red--where a child has got "illegit" directly after the name. In other words, they were illegitimate. Their parents are not married at their birth, which was considered to be socially a problem in the 20th century. It wasn't in the 19th century, particularly. But it became a really big issue in the 20th century. I think, hopefully, now, we're back in the situation where it's no longer so much important. But there's a sense of embarrassment on behalf of the Church that they made such a big issue about this because, of course, they hadn't earlier. But that aside, there are even bigger issues than that. Now, we released, in the last couple of days, a full transcript of all the New York baptisms and marriages for the Archdiocese of New York. But we weren't able to release the images. And why? Because New York state law and canon law makes any reference to adoption private forever. And we've had to go through every single image, because there's marginal annotations about adoptions in many of these. The Catholic Church goes further. Any annulment of a marriage is considered private forever. So we have to go through and extract all of these references because they take these things so seriously. So you will see those images very, very soon in the next few weeks. But we've had to do extra work. Now, besides that, there are also practical problems in trying to access these records. One is that they're generally not in English. They're in Latin or other continental European languages you may not be familiar with. I want to try and get you to understand, that's not such a big issue. And it's not such an issue to be frightened of. It also can be quite fun sometimes. This is a parish register from Norfolk in England from 18--sorry--1642. And I love this. This is a priest who obviously knows his Latin really, really well. And he records the death of William Gamblin, who died in December 1642. And he writes--his name, obviously, in Latin is Gulielmus Gamblin, William Gamblin--and he writes [LATIN],, he is now food for the worms. [LAUGHTER] Isn't that great?

Now, there's another slightly less pleasant side to the reason why you can't have access to them. And this is modern-day sectarianism. Sectarianism is a feature of religions and their interaction with each other since time immemorial, I'm sorry to say. I come from Ireland. I know all about it. But it continues to this day. In 2008, the Vatican body called the Congregatio Pro Clericus--this is a body which directs the activities of priests--decided after ruling that Mormon baptism of the living was actually not in accordance with Christian norms--all the Christian churches generally accept each other's baptisms, except Mormon baptism. And I'm not talking about sealing of the dead. This is baptism of the living. The Catholic Church ruled that it wasn't actually a proper Christian baptism. You go figure it out. I'm not going to try. But anyway, because of that, they became very hostile to the fact that FamilySearch were doing some filming of Catholic records around some of the dioceses. You know, that wonderful work that they do for free. So they wrote, essentially, an edict saying that nobody was allowed to work with them anymore in 2008. Well, not that long ago. And in 2014, they wrote another letter reinforcing this and stating that digitization of Catholic records could only happen if, A, it was carried out by the Catholic Church and owned by the Catholic Church. And if you don't believe me, here are the letters that were sent everywhere. Now, whatever I personally may think about the decision, this is the rules. And so there's a certain degree of--well, we can discuss it at greater detail later if you're interested in it. But our ability to actually be able to get Catholic records and put them online is quite some achievement. And it's taken a lot of work, myself and a couple of the colleagues that spearheaded that. So why are these records important, despite our problems we've been looking at? Well, to understand how important Catholic records are compared to any other denomination--because I think it's safe to say that they are, in denominational terms, the best parish registers, and in case you don't believe me, hopefully, by the end of it, you'll see, really, why--you need to understand the rules that govern their taking of records. And they're--I mentioned canon law. I mean, they've been developing rules for centuries to dictate every single thing that the priesthood does. Now, the great thing about Catholicism in this country is that it was actually very much in line with the rigid, doctrinaire Irish Catholicism of the late 19th century. As I mentioned before, quite different from continental Europe. The reason why this is great for us is because the priests over here generally do what they're told. Now, not all Irish priests do what they're told, but, you know, if you go to France, or Spain, or Italy, there's a much more laissez-faire attitude about things. They aren't quite as doctrinaire. So here, when canon law was imposed on doing this stuff, it was followed to the letter. And canon law has a whole sequence of requirements in keeping a baptismal register, a marriage register, and all the other registers, as well. On top of that, Ne Temere, Decree Ne Temere, was an encyclical by the pope in 1907, which came into force on Easter 1908. And that required a whole layer of additional details. Now, this is also inspired by Irish and Irish-American Catholicism. It's quite a distinct feature of the Church internationally. And that was their fear that the Church was being polluted by marriage to people who weren't Catholics. So they started imposing rules during the course of the late 1800s to require that only Catholics could marry Catholics, or if they did marry somebody who wasn't Catholic, there were rules to govern what would happen to their children. So what they did under the Decree Ne Temere is they required that when a priest was approached by a couple, they had to verify that each of these people was Catholic, where they'd been baptized, their parents, and whether their parents were Catholic as well. They had to find out the date these things happened. They had to communicate with the priest in those parishes where they were baptized to confirm that this was true. And they had to record everything down in the books. They also had to--when--anytime another priest communicated to them about somebody who might have been baptized in their parish, they had to write into the books the fact that this person was being married somewhere else. So all of this incredible detail is captured in these records. And I'll show you a bit more about them later. So what sort of records are kept by the Catholic Church? Well, there are loads of different types of registers, some sacramental registers, some other. And I'm going to try and run through them quickly. There's a lot more that could be talked about afterwards. Baptisms. You're probably all familiar what a baptismal register looks like. Let's actually look and see the sort of American baptismal registers you're likely to find. This is one from 1903 in Philadelphia. It's in English, which is great because only a minority of these records are in English. The majority of Philadelphia records, like everywhere else, are in Latin. And here's a Latin one from 1846. You're probably going, oh, my God, the writing isn't great. It's Latin. How am I going to cope? Let's look at one, and we'll tell you how easy it is to cope. This says, "1846 [LATIN] 15 [SPEAKING LATIN]."."

That's the Latin. It doesn't take a genius to work that out. It's the 15th day of October. Bridget, the daughter of John and Margaret Kerry, got baptized. You know what, you can do this with Google Translate. They've got a good translation from Latin, too. So don't be scared by this. Here's another example here. This is from the parish at St. Nicholas Most Holy Redeemer Church in New York in 1843. And what this states in Latin is, "Anna Maria [LATIN]"--abbreviated--"legit"--abbreviated--"legit Jacobi Milzer [LATIN] Oberhaussen Bav"--short for Bavaria--"Bavaria--"[LATIN] Catherina Meger," and which you actually translate as Anna Maria, the legitimate daughter of James Milzer of Oberhaussen Bavaria--in Germany--and Catherine Meger. My pronunciation of German probably isn't very good. I'm good at Irish, but not so good at German. [LAUGHTER] I do my best. But isn't that great? You've actually got all this information about where they came from. And there's lots more about places of origin. Here is one page of a baptismal register from 1883 in Philadelphia, which has got places of origin for everybody. I've underlined them in red here. And if you zoom in, we'll see them. Like, for example, the first entry here, the family--family--[STUTTERS]--sorry--are--sorry--are from Hibernia, Ireland. That's the Latin for Ireland. The next entry is from Scotland, and there's another example of "illegit" in the corner there as well. Here's another baptism from 1900 in Chicago. We're actually currently indexing all the Catholic records from Chicago. You may be aware that FamilySearch has done some of them. But they've only done about 15 percent of them. So we're working through them all now at the moment. It's a huge collection, too.

Let's move along a little bit. Now, let's have a look at the impact of Ne Temere, the Decree Ne Temere I told you about before. Here's a baptismal register, and you'll see that far-right-hand column when you zoom in on it, you find out what happened to these children who were being baptized later in life. For example, here, married Henry Helmstead in St. James's in Philadelphia on August the 12th, 1910, and so on. So they're actually capturing the marriages later on. So even though that's back in the 1880s or 1890s baptismal register, they're getting the marriages from later on. Now, marriage registers are, I think, possibly the single most important source for all parish registers. And the Catholic Church's is brilliant in this regard. This is another Latin one from 1778 in Philadelphia. And again, the handwriting is pretty awkward, and I wonder, you're probably thinking, that's going to be difficult to read. I'll give you an example of a couple here. The first entry here says, "May 1, Joanem Georgium Bauer and Elisabethem are Reinhartin, [SPEAKING LATIN],"," which I wouldn't have a clue what that means. But I put it into Google Translate, and I got, "John George Bauer and Elizabeth Reinhart, who have already been joined in Germany." So they had obviously had the first step of their marriage carried out in Germany, and they're getting the rest of the ceremony carried out in that parish. Or even better yet, look at the next one down. We have--I'll just do the translation because, quite frankly, my Latin is pretty rough. On May the 5th, we've got Ignatius Schneider, a young Austrian from Vienna, aged 17, and Catherina, daughter of Christopher Viel and Catherina. Isn't that great? You get lots of information about them from a marriage. And this is 1778. This is not later, not out under Ne Temere. You can see that they're capturing this information from quite early. Or here's another lovely example. This is from St. Nicholas parish in New York in 1851. Augustus Berthold of Shildenberg in Bavaria. He's 24 years old, the legitimate son of Wendelini Berthold and Catharina Hermstadler. And he marries Magdalena Berninger of Eigenbill in Bavaria. She's 23 years old, the legitimate daughter of Michael Berninger. I mean, it's very rich detail for a marriage register, even at that early a date. I'm going to have a little bit of a segue again in this conversation because I want to actually raise an issue with you that you might be able to help me with. I was going through all these records, getting this presentation prepared, and we recently got the Catholic records from Chicago in. And I was looking at some Catholic marriages and getting very confused because there was one parish for a five-year period in Chicago, where they were virtually all Irish in it. But every single person had an alias name. And we didn't know what was going on. So here's the example. George W. Garrity, alias George W. Mickelo, and Maria McNichola, alias Maria Stabbing. That's a bit weird. What about this one? John H. Hanigan, alias Henry, who marries Emily McDonnell, alias Silviria. Or Matthew Brodie, alias Matthew Keely, and Louisa Walshe get married. She's also an alias, Louisa Breen. So I decided to dig into it. Where was this place? It was St. Bridget's parish, outside Chicago a bit. And I had to do a little digging around to find out where it was. Turns out, it's a bit to the edge of Bridgeport neighborhood. Is anybody here from Chicago or know it well? Because I can tell you one thing, I didn't know it well at all. I discovered that this particular area--and that's the church, there in front of you, where all this happened--this area was settled by the Irish in large numbers in the 1840s. And then, in 1863, the Germans settled, which, again, the Irish didn't like that. They were very territorial. So when the Swedes came, and the Czechs, and in the 1880s, the Italians, Lithuanians, and Poles, by then, the Irish had actually set up criminal gangs to actually run the neighborhood and, largely speaking, to push the others out. And these wonderful gangs--they set up wonderful names, I should say, I doubt they were wonderful--the Bearfoots, the Hamburgs, the Old Rose Athletic Club, the Shielders, the Dukies. What did the neighborhood look like? Well, I found a photograph. The back of the yards near St. Bridget's Church. It was a slum. And the first mob boss of Chicago was from the area, Michael "King Mike" Cassius McDonald. Now, we know what happened to the Irish gangs in Chicago. What happened to the Irish gangs in Chicago? They eventually ran the city. Like every Irish gang around the country, I mean, they eventually--the criminal end of it was basically forced out by the Italians when they came in. They were better organized at it. But the Irish gangs, basically, sort of went quasi-legit. I suppose it's quasi-legit when you go into politics. I never think it's particularly legit, but anyway-- [LAUGHTER] Sorry. I'm just betraying my distrust of politicians fundamentally. But anyway, so what you are looking at, I think, in that 1890s, that poor priest is trying to make sense of a lawless ghetto community where names are really quite elastic, and, actually, really, your preference is not to be using your real name anyway. That's my guess. I might be wrong. I don't know. But if you know anything, I'd love to hear more about it because it's a good story. And I know I've gone off the track of the talk a little bit, but it's fascinating what you discover about a community when you look at these records. We've got many other records as well. We've got confirmation. They generally aren't terribly informative. They tell you that a young teenager was confirmed in the faith. Death and burial. We don't have many records for last rites, not surprising, I suppose. We have a small number of deaths registers, but the Catholic cemeteries were huge in this country, in a way we never had in Ireland, for example. They're well organized, and we started working on Catholic cemetery records, but we're quite early stages of that development. We've got Chicago up because, of course, it's been available for a while. That's a death register from Chicago, by the way. They do have a few. That's 1922. And these are the cemetery cards for Chicago, which are useful. But there are also other weird registers you may be aware of--catechisms. Now, catechism is a swearing an oath on the Bible, which you do as part of your faith formation within the Catholic Church. But they kept registers of the people who did it. Or congregational lists. Who's in the congregation at any given moment? This is from 1770 in Birmingham in England. It's a full list of everybody in the congregation, with lots of details about them, too. Or mass books. Now, I love this. These survive not everywhere. They're very rare. But these are the original books kept by the priest. And they give you the list of people they say prayers for who are sick in the community, who have died recently in the community, and anything else that's happening as well--reading the banns, and so on. We've digitized all of this and indexed all of it. It's wonderfully informative about people's experiences and their lives and so on. And when you're incredibly lucky, you get census records. Now, censuses were carried out by Catholic dioceses periodically. I've only come across a couple of dioceses who've done censuses so far. I'm really hoping to find more out because this is--this is the Diocese of Westminster in London. And in 1880, 1893, they carried out a full census of all of their congregation. And this is all digitized and online at Findmypast, I should add. But the census includes names, ages, addresses, occupation, relationship within the household, their attendance at mass, their attendance at Easter service, their confirmation, whether they're in a mixed marriage, whether they have children attending Catholic school as opposed to state school, and then they give this wonderful string of comments. The priest just--they obviously thought they were private. Well, they were, I suppose, up until we published them. [LAUGHTER] They gave all the comments about every single person. And I'd like to read some of these. For example, we have--the first person is a good Catholic. The next left school, has got no work. There's a whole bunch of kids here. I think it's wonderful--they call them wild, unruly savages. [LAUGHTER]

We have a good widow, very poor. An invalid. We've got another who left school with no work. And I love this last one--a bad Catholic with a good Protestant wife. You can imagine that-- [LAUGHTER] --poor priest said, I've got the wrong one. It's so unfair. [LAUGHTER] So they're wonderfully informative. Now, the major reason why we're interested in these records, apart from building our family connections here, is the power they can play in getting back across the Atlantic. And, of course, working at Findmypast, this was one of our biggest obsessions--finding records that get you back across the Atlantic and connect with all of our wonderful Irish and British records to make that journey easy. So the great thing about this is it allows you to find research certainty. And I'm going to show you why and how. This is a New York register of marriages in 1905. And it gives, as I said, under Ne Tem--even before Ne Temere, you've got the names, addresses, parents' names, date and place of baptism. It's wonderfully detailed. It allows you that chance to actually find that connection. I'm going to lead you through a couple of examples to show you how it will work. This is two marriages. You can see on the page in front of you. On the top one is Edward Conway, who marries Margaret McNeeve on the 29th of March, 1910, at the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Parish in Philadelphia. Now, because of Ne Temere, he reports his baptism as being June the 4th, 1880, in Cork. And his parents' names--that's Michael Conway and Bridget Magner. So let's go look and see if we can find him in the Irish records, because the Irish civil register of baptisms is available. So go and look at that online and see if we can find his birth in 1880. And true enough, we found one, but it wasn't 1880. We found the right name with the right parents' names in the right district, but in 1877. The day of his birth is about right, June 3. I mean, he got baptized on June 4, so that's probably about right. It also shows that he has a twin, Michael. But is it the right Edward? We don't know because it's the wrong date. We can't be certain. So let's go and look at the Catholic parish baptisms in Ireland. And lo and behold, we find it, but he's got the different name. He's not Edward, he's Edmund. But we know it's the same Edward that we saw on the civil register of births because he's got a twin Michael and the same parents in the right place. But here's the good thing--the parish priest in this parish recorded in a marginal notation that this Edmund--not Edward--married Margaret McNeeve in 1910 in Philadelphia. The priests were in touch with each other. So the date's wrong, the name's wrong. But it is the right person.

Now, we'll try another one. The bottom of the page here, you can't see it, but Mary Lawrence marries James McElroy on the 30th of June, 1909, in the Church of Our Mother of Sorrows in Philadelphia. Again, I'm using a lot of Philadelphia examples, but there's many from New York, and Chicago, and other ones that we've been working on. And, of course, because of Ne Temere, she says that she was born and baptized in Mullinahone in Ireland on 27 of December, 1882. 27 of December, 1882. So back to the civil register, and what do we find? We find Mary in Mullinahone, born in 1880 on the 25th of July, not 27 of December, 1882. And we have, she's the daughter of William Lawrence, a shopkeeper, and Catherine Murphy. Of course, she didn't give her parents' names in the previous document, so we have no idea this is the right Mary at all. Wrong date, no parents' names, wrong day, month, and year. But we go to the Catholic parish registers in Ireland. And yes, the birth register was right about the dates. But again, if we look at this closely, in the marginal notation--you can't even see it here--it says that she got married to James McElroy in Philadelphia. The priests are in communication, and we know we have the right Mary, despite the dates--the day, month, and year--being wrong. So we're getting research certainty. We also get some lessons from this. Dates are elastic. Don't ever trust them. [LAUGHTER] Days, months, and years can change so easily. It doesn't mean anything. Names can vary. You've got to remember, these people are bilingual, most of them are. The Irish over here are Irish speakers as well as English speakers. The Germans are certainly German speakers. The Italians are certainly Italian speakers. I mean, how are they going to get this necessarily right? But relationships are what you can rely on because they are fixed.

Now, of course, it's not just the Irish. I know I've been biased. That's where I'm from. I tend to focus on Irish records. But the value is as much for German research--and I've covered a bit of that while I'm here-- even more so for Polish--and I haven't touched any Polish research. One of the interesting things about Polish Catholic parish registers is they're nearly always in Polish. And my Polish is hopeless. And even Google Translate--my ability to read them is difficult. So my Google Translate ability isn't very good either. There's a lot of Lithuanian as well. The Lithuanian parish registers are nearly always in Lithuanian, too. And again, that's a challenge in its own right. And, of course, the Italians. My gosh, lots of Italians. And that's great. And the records are fantastic. And the Italian records are particularly good at pinpointing exact locations. Because you've got to remember, the Italians--the Ne Temere Decree that we looked at here, the Italians were doing this back in the 1500s. Their records are spectacular--the Catholic Church records in Italy. You know, if you're doing Italian research, you're in for a treat. You don't have to go there, though. So how far have we got in this project to--to, uh... we've only just really started, I know. And I'm not going to try and pretend otherwise. But we're doing well. In only two years of work, we've done all the Irish archdioceses and dioceses. We've finished Birmingham Archdiocese--I'm going to cover Britain first. We got Westminster Archdiocese in progress. We're starting Southwark Archdiocese, which covers the southeast of England. Liverpool Archdiocese should be out very, very soon. All the Scottish archdioceses and dioceses, we've got a chunk of them online already with lots more coming out this year and next year. We've signed up Middlesbrough Diocese. It's up in the northeast of England. It's a big area. Northampton in the middle of England. That's all starting this year. In the US, we've largely finished Philadelphia. New York, we just published 2 million records in the last two or three days. And then, the transcripts and the images will follow in a few weeks' time once we get over the secrecy issues. Baltimore, half the images--well, actually, less than that--a quarter of the images have gone online. We haven't started--the transcripts haven't appeared yet, but they'll come online soon. We've got another three-quarters of the images yet to go online. Chicago, we've managed to get a lot of the records online so far. There's a lot more to come. We've got a couple of million records there. Cincinnati is starting this year. We're covering the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Wilmington Diocese will come online. We're going to finish up the work that they've done themselves, which is brilliant. Toledo Diocese, we've got--all of the images are online already. And I haven't even discussed this here, but we're also doing the diocesan newspapers. The diocesan newspapers in America are enormously useful because they are a community newspaper. In fact, the Catholic newspaper, or the newspaper of the Archdiocese of New York, up until the 1860s, was called The Hibernian Catholic. They assumed all Catholics were Irish. But they tell you, they have regular accounts of new Irish-- new Catholics arriving in the country, letters being written in, reaching out to friends and relatives who might be in the city. This was a community broadsheet, enormously valuable for connecting families and doing research. So we're going to be making all of those available, too. So that's where we are at the moment. And I'm really pleased to see that we've basically doubled the size of our project in the space of the last year. I hope to double it again between now and next year when I come back to tell you more. To finish up, may I remind you--or you may not know--if you come to the Findmypast stand, they'll give you a 15 percent discount on their subscriptions if you just let them know I sent you. They've also got other goodies down there of things to give away, which you should go and check out. And to finish up now, I'll just take any questions you might have, and thank you very much for listening. [APPLAUSE]

This lady here. Are there plans to do the Milwaukee Archdiocese in Wisconsin, or the Canadian? I want them all. [LAUGHTER] No, but I mean, are there any plans for the future? Well, I'll say a couple of things to that. Number one is that we have plans to do many. Which ones are in negotiation, I really couldn't tell you now because I'll tell you, it's a very delicate process. Every single diocese is a unique entity of its own right. Every bishop has the right to set his own rules around this. There are some dioceses out there who are fundamentally opposed to anything happening. And there are some dioceses who are quite willing to help. But we've tried to focus on strategic areas to try and give us the ability, if convincing those, that others will feel happier about getting involved. There's a lot of fear here. And we have to be very sensitive to that. Who's next? Lady here. So I have ancestors that immigrated to Calumet, Michigan, and very Catholic. So could I contact the current priest there to see if they have any record, or how do I go about that? You should start by seeing if the diocese involved has an archive. They might be able to help you. If not, go straight to the priest. But do bear in mind that priests' first responsibility is to the living and to their own congregation, to the cure of souls, as they call it, and that genealogists come really low on their list of priorities. So don't be offended if they don't help. In Ireland, it's always great. You just send them a tenner for the priest's fund, and they will usually help out. It's a tradition of doing that. And it's not just financial. It's actually just--there's a long tradition of doing that. But it's different here. I think you need to--some priests can be very helpful. Others are less so. And it's often their workload can be very high. So be patient. Lady behind there. So we've got dates that are variable between US and Ireland or whatever for the birth dates or marriages. Which date would you take, or would you record both? Well, it's the same in all research. You've got to actually determine what is a primary source and what is a secondary source. And to quote Elizabeth Shown Mills and her determination of that, a primary source is a source taken at the actual moment of it. Oftentimes, the baptism is more relevant than the birth register because say, in Ireland, for example, you had to register a birth within six months or the parents were liable and could face a court fine. So if they forgot, they might just change the birth date so they didn't actually get caught for a fine. Whereas the baptism, within the Catholic Church, anyway, there was a tendency to rush to get your child baptized within 48 hours because limbo. Limbo was a bad thing. You didn't want your child to end up in limbo. Other denominations didn't have that concern. So you've got to understand the nature of the record you're looking at as to which is going to be the most reliable. One other question was--or comment was--on the names in Chicago [INAUDIBLE]. Yeah. Part of it--I know I've worked with Cambodians that were moving into Utah back in the '80s, and they were really concerned with the death squads that were here. And so they changed their names so that they wouldn't be identifiable by the names they were in Cambodia. I'm wondering because the problems with the gangs and all that, it was something of a protection strategy. Yeah, you might be right. But it wouldn't have been a production strategy coming out of Ireland. It would have been a protection strategy in this country, I think. This lady over here in blue. Two things. I've yet to find anyone who came over from Ireland who actually was consistent about what date they were born. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. Yeah. And secondly, many of the Catholic dioceses have taken their sacramental records, make indexes, and publish them. Do you have access to those? We have access to some of them. Like Wilmington, I think, was an example I was using there. But there are many others. You're absolutely right to say this. There are many dioceses which have actually done work themselves. And you should always check to see what they have achieved. And there are quite a few images of some dioceses which are available through FamilySearch, particularly, like they did the entire province of Ontario. All the dioceses there were microfilmed at one time. But it's a bit patchwork. Most of it hasn't been done.

This gentleman over here. You mentioned cemetery records. Are they included in the project? Yes, they are, but we're still at early stages. We have the Chicago cemetery records, thanks to the good graces of FamilySearch who've made them available to us, and also, the archdiocese said we could have them, too. That's important. We work very, very closely with the Church. But we're at early stages there. We're in negotiation with a number of cemeteries. This is going to take a while. The Catholic Church doesn't do things quickly. They don't need to. [LAUGHTER] There's a gentleman there. Do you have any projects for the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin? Actually, we do. We have--my colleague, Jen Baldwin, who I work very closely with on the Catholic project in America, she's based in Colorado. But she's doing a lot of really great work on the ground. And I know Milwaukee is in her sights. But where we're at with it, I don't know. You'll have to come and ask her at the stand. [INAUDIBLE] Denver? Oh, Denver? Denver is similar. Do the cemetery records or the Catholic cemetery records have any more information other than just when the person died? Generally speaking, there's not much more information than that. Sometimes, you'll get information about who bought the plot, who's usually a family member. But there's not much more than that. There's a lady here. Yes. Some of the archdioceses boundaries--are you using the current boundaries? Yeah, well, at the moment, that's what we do in terms of the agreements we have because remember, the Archdiocese of Baltimore included the entirety of the US and Canada at one point. So they've all been developing since then. So modern boundaries. And if you're looking for boundaries, I would advise you to actually check Wikipedia. It's got a very good set of boundaries of dioceses. Lady here. This is a question about baptismal records. If the father's name is not listed, only the mother and the sponsors, does that mean the child was illegitimate? It's a good indication that they were. Usually. Usually, not always, but the priests will often record the fact that the child is illegitimate. In that case, it's like that. Normally speaking, the Church was very strict that if the father was known that he should be named, even if they weren't married. But I would suggest they probably were. Yeah, that probably was the case. Any other questions? Gentlemen here. How about San Francisco? We've actually had conversations with San Francisco. I don't know the details of them. Again, my colleague Jen would know. But I tend to focus on east of the Mississippi, which is a pretty big area by itself.

Any other questions? Oh, lady here. The New York that you're working on, is that for the entire state? Good question to ask. There's actually eight dioceses in New York state. The Archdiocese of New York covers Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, and a chunk of upstate New York, but it doesn't go terribly far. Then, the Diocese of Brooklyn covers Brooklyn and Queens. And then, you've got several other dioceses--well, the Diocese of Long Island, and there's dioceses further upstate in New York in Albany and so on. It's big--the Church is very strong in New York state. There's a lot of--very large membership. So yeah. So you are working on all of-- Well, no. The Archdiocese of New York is only part of it. OK. And Brooklyn are doing their own project at the moment, actually, with a local German geological society. And they're capturing everything. But they're doing it very slowly, so be patient with them. But the other dioceses in the state of New York, we're in discussions with them to actually get things started. [INAUDIBLE]

There's a diocese--I can't remember off the top of my head. I'll go and check files when we go back to the Findmypast stand if you'd like. We can find out about where that stands. Any other questions? Just one here. Any plans for work in Texas? Texas, no. We've done nothing in Texas so far. Again, our focus has tended to be on the earliest dioceses because they are the ones which have the most important records for our work because they replace what's lost through lack of civil registration or otherwise, you know? Gentleman here. Any other work in Pennsylvania? Yeah, we're in discussion with the eight other dioceses in the state of Pennsylvania. And they're in various different stages of--two of them are actually opposed. Scranton is totally opposed, as in--what's the other one that's totally opposed? I can't think of it now. But yeah, further out west, they're quite opposed to actually doing anything at all. And one group is also--one diocese is also working with a local family history society to do something on their own. There's loads of different competing reasons why they might not want to do anything. I'll take one more. You mentioned Liverpool. What about Manchester and Yorkshire? Well, Manchester is--that's the Diocese of Salford. And they're doing a project themselves with the Catholic Family History Society of England. And they seem to be getting on quite well. They've done quite a lot of--mostly, they publish their material on the CD-ROM, so it's not available online, which I think is a shame. But we're very cautious about not stepping on people's toes or forcing things. [INAUDIBLE] Yorkshire? Yorkshire? Well, we've got the Diocese of Middlesbrough, which is most of East Yorkshire. And we're in discussion with two other dioceses in Yorkshire at the moment. OK. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]