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Everyone’s looking to Ireland to find their roots
By Tom Fitzpatrick
 People
around the world are now clamouring to find a clan connection to Ireland
according to a leading genealogist who gets bags of letters from those
in Britain tracing their family roots.
Southport-born Anthony Adolph has been a professional genealogist for
nearly 20 years and his latest book is called Tracing Your Irish Family
History.
The Canterbury resident has also appeared on radio and television, presenting
Channel 4’s Extraordinary Ancestors, Living TV’s Antiques
Ghostshow and Discovery Channel’s Ancestor Hunters.
And with his roots lying in Co. Waterford and Cavan, it should come as
no surprise that he has been interested in the subject since his late
teens.
He explained: “It was mainly because of my ridiculous surname.
“I felt a great need to explain my surname as a child. Similar to
Irish people brought up in Britain, there was a sense of not fitting-in
and it raises questions like, where do I belong?
“I just got fascinated with the idea of delving into the past.
“Now Ireland is catching up and making more records available and
coupled with the internet it is easier than ever to trace your own Irish
roots.”
Adolph maintains that people now covet the idea of being Irish.
He said: “There used to be a negative association with being Irish.
“Now, similar to Jewish ancestry, people are desperate to be associated
with Ireland, particularly in places like America.
“It seems the worst thing I can do to someone today is tell them
they aren’t from Ireland as they had hoped.
“Being associated with English aristocracy is no longer fashionable,
people want to be connected to Ireland in some way and it’s generally
people outside Ireland who are fired up by the idea of Irish culture.”
Adolph is the resident genealogist for www.genesreunited.co.uk and says
he gets “stacks and stacks” of requests every month from people
in Britain looking to trace their Irish roots.
He said: “It’s quite unusual to be asked by people within
Ireland to trace their history.
“Lots of people have no need for external genealogists because they
know more about their background.
“Lots of people are still living in roughly the same area as their
ancestors from 300 years ago. “Although they won’t know the
whole family tree they’ll essentially know roughly where they are
from.
“So it’s people mainly in Britain and America who get in contact
with me.”
Online websites now offer a wealth of material such as birth, marriage
and death records, as well as census details containing millions of names
from Britain.
But Adolph suggests that the first step in tracing your family history
can be a lot simpler.
He said: “When I started you would write a letter to a priest or
an archive and it involved travelling, which could be expensive.
“You start by really going into what the family knows already.
“Find out all the information any older relatives have, who they
exchange Christmas cards with, whether they have any old address books,
letters or photos and so on.”
While the subject was not always fashionable, a simple internet searche
now merits hundreds of millions of responses to terms like ‘searching
your family tree’ and people all over the world are exploring their
Irish heritage as a result.
Tracing Your Irish Family History is published by Collins. Price £17.99.
ISBN-13: 978-0-00-725532-0. For further details on the author visit: www.anthonyadolph.co.uk
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