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Copyright© 2003 by Richard W. Eastman. All rights reserved.

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Every March 17, millions of people pause to reflect on their Irish heritage. Conceived as a Saint's Day in the Catholic Church, Saint Patrick's Day is now a time of celebration for millions. However, many of us have little knowledge of the man whose name we celebrate.

First of all, Saint Patrick wasn't Irish. He was a Roman, although born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton in Scotland, in the year 387. His original name is recorded as Maewyn Succat. His father, Calphurnius, belonged to a Roman family of high rank and held the office of decurio in Gaul or Britain. When he was sixteen years old, Patrick was carried off into captivity by Irish marauders and was sold as a slave to a chieftain named Milchu in Dalriada, a territory of the present county of Antrim in Ireland. He was soon sold to another chieftain in the area. The future saint spent six years tending his master's flocks near the modern town of Ballymena. During this time he learned to speak fluent Celtic.

After six years of bondage Patrick escaped, apparently by simply walking away at a convenient opportunity. He wandered for some time and eventually found his way to Westport. There he found a ship ready to set sail and was allowed on board. In a few days he was in Britain, safe under Roman rule. He then traveled extensively to other lands and studied religion. He spent time in St. Martin's monastery at Tours and at the island sanctuary of Lérins. He met Saint Germain and became a student of the great bishop. When Germain was commissioned by the Holy See to proceed to Britain to combat the erroneous teachings of Pelagius, he chose Patrick to be one of his missionary companions.

Pope St. Celestine the First had taken note of the young man's abilities and commissioned Patrick with the mission of gathering the Irish race into the Catholic Church; he also gave him the name "Patercius" or "Patritius." It was probably in the summer months of the year 433, that Patrick and his companions landed at the mouth of the Vantry River, close by Wicklow Head. The Druids were against his missionary work and wanted to kill him. Patrick searched for friendly territory in which to enter on his mission. Near Slemish, the missionary was struck with horror on seeing at a distance the fort of his old master, Milchu, enveloped in flames. It seems the fame of Patrick's marvelous power of miracles had preceded him. In anticipation of Patrick’s arrival, Milchu gathered his treasures into his mansion and set it on fire, casting himself into the flames in a fit of frenzy. An ancient record adds, "His pride could not endure the thought of being vanquished by his former slave."

Saint Patrick traveled all over Ireland, preaching wherever people gathered. His sermons were not always well received, and many attempted to murder him. Saint Patrick wrote in his "Confessio" that no fewer than twelve times he and his companions were seized and carried off as captives. On one occasion in particular, he was loaded with chains, and his death was decreed. However, Saint Patrick always managed to escape death. He converted thousands to Christianity and built many churches. It is recorded that he consecrated no fewer than 350 bishops. Legends attribute many miracles to Saint Patrick.

Saint Patrick died on 17 March 493, and that date is now dedicated to his memory. It is not known for sure where his remains were laid although Downpatrick in County Down in the North of Ireland is thought to be his final resting place.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released a free, online searchable database of Famine Immigrants for the years 1846-1851. This database contains approximately 604,596 individuals who arrived at the port of New York during those years. Not all the people listed in the database are from Ireland although most are.

Quoting from the National Archives' Web site:

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The following is an announcement from ProGenealogists, Inc.:

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The following databases have recently been added to the popular Irish genealogy and heritage site, Otherdays.com:

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The Brooklyn Public Library now has a beta edition of the Brooklyn Eagle online. This new database contains articles from Brooklyn's leading newspaper. Best of all, you can search by every word in the articles.

Quoting from the Web site:

This database is searchable by every word. You can also search by dates or a combination of dates and keywords. Once an article is found, you can display an image of the original article, as published in the newspaper. You can also print the articles on your own printer. Best of all, you can even e-mail the articles found to yourself or to anyone else.

I took a look at the site, assuming that it contained mostly local neighborhood news from around Brooklyn. To my surprise, I found the paper to be full of news, especially human-interest stories, from around the country.

As I usually do, I started with a search of my own surname. I was delighted to find a few rascals of the name, including one name that sounded very familiar. I was fascinated to read about the murder trial of Professor Charles R. Eastman of Harvard University, accused of killing his brother-in-law, Richard Grogan, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the Fourth of July, 1900. This Brooklyn newspaper gave amazingly detailed information about a murder trial hundreds of miles away. The newspaper carried a front-page article about the trial almost every day for three weeks.

Luckily for my family's reputation, Charles R. Eastman was acquitted, and Grogan's death was ruled accidental. That's also a good thing for me and for other Eastman genealogists because I believe the same Charles R. Eastman was a genealogist. For years I have had a photocopy of the first article ever published about the English origins of the original Eastman immigrant to North America. This was a landmark article for Eastman researchers as, for the first time, the author found definitive records of the immigrant's origins and traced his ancestry back another three generations obtained from parish records.

"Some Early English Records Pertaining to the Eastman Family" was written by Professor Charles R. Eastman and published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's "Record" in 1915, some 14 years after the murder trial. The professor described his recent trip to England and the discovery of the christening records of the original immigrant, along with those of the immigrant's father, grandfather and great- grandfather as well as other relatives. I wonder if the same genealogy data would ever have been discovered and published 14 years after the trial headlines if this expert genealogist had spent the rest of his life in the Massachusetts State Penitentiary instead of researching old records in England.

I would never have known about this interesting event had it not been for the new online database of the Brooklyn Eagle newspapers. Yet this is just one of many surprises to be found in this Brooklyn newspaper's articles. The Brooklyn Public Library has a winner here.

The database is still a beta effort. You may encounter a few bugs although I didn't find any in my perusal. Every edition of the Eagle from 1841 to 1902 is now available. Later years will be added in the future.

My thanks to Theresa Dewhurst for telling me about this great new resource.

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The University of Leicester's New Opportunities Fund project is creating a digital library of eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century local and trade directories from England and Wales.

Directories of counties and towns can be important sources for local and genealogical studies. They include lists of names, addresses, and occupations of the inhabitants of the counties and towns they describe, and successive editions reflect the changes in the localities over a period of time. You often can find ancestors listed in the trade directories when they may be difficult to locate otherwise. In larger cities, you can often find the address of a tradesman's shop. Assuming that he lived nearby, this information can help you quickly zero in on the appropriate neighborhood in census records that have not been indexed.

This new online collection contains images of a large number of directories. The Web site also has a powerful search engine available so that names, occupations, addresses, and other key words or phrases can be located to their exact places on pages within the text. This makes it very easy for you to find names and other information quickly.

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Last week I wrote about a Web site that provides a simple search engine of genealogy sites. The Web site owners charge $59.99 to use this search engine, which finds the same information that other search engines will find at no charge. Since my article appeared, there has been some discussion on the newsletter's Discussion Board. We now find that a new "service" from the same company has appeared. They are now selling a "self-updating genealogy CD."

If you have any questions or comments, you can post them to the same Discussion Board.

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The following was written by Mic Barnette, a well-known genealogy author and lecturer who is also the owner of Barnette's Books in Houston:

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New York Governor Pataki's proposed new budget includes price increases that will impact genealogists researching ancestors in that state. I have not seen the document yet, but sources have provided me with the following statement of the budget proposal, showing the current fees in braces before the price increase:

Other proposed fee changes include:

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The following announcement is from the Federation of Genealogical Societies:

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The following is an announcement from the Association of Professional Genealogists:

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Under a measure headed to the Illinois House, every insurance company that does business in Illinois would have to make public any records that show it once insured slaveholders for injury or death of their slaves. Companies that have changed ownership would be required to search their predecessors' archives and release information about policies issued to slaveholders that covered their slaves.

The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), arose five months after the Chicago City Council approved a similar measure. Its passage made Chicago the first major U.S. city to require all businesses seeking municipal contracts to search their records and reveal whether they profited from slavery. According to sponsor Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman (3rd), the city ordinance was inspired in part, by a desire to expose the horrors of slavery and to promote a national dialogue on reparations. Davis said she sponsored the bill because insurers are one of the few resources African-Americans have to learn their genealogy. She said that the proposal is not linked to efforts to win reparations but rather to explore genealogy to gain "knowledge of who you are."

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The following is an announcement from Canada's Genealogical Research Library:

The reference to $10 wasn't specific, but I would assume that it is ten dollars in Canadian funds, the equivalent of $6.75 in U.S. funds.

You can "preview" the database at no charge. The sample data is limited; it only shows ancestors' names and the years associated with them. Once you have found the names, you will need to register if you want to obtain a full view of all the names, places, occupations, types of events, and year of each event, as well the images of century-old documents.

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I have written recently about various ethnic foods and where to order these specialty items on the Web. In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, I'd like to offer an equal opportunity to Irish descendants.

To be sure, Irish food probably is a bit closer to the usual diets of many readers of this newsletter. In fact, many of the ingredients in Irish cooking are probably available at any local grocery store. However, a few things can be hard to find, and few companies sell products that are exactly like those back in Ireland, especially the bangers and Irish bacon.

Now Irish nationals and descendants in the United States can order "the real thing" on the Internet. IrishGrub.com offers Shannon Valley Back Bacon, Shannon Valley Boiling Bacon, black pudding, white pudding, Irish bangers, and more. I got quite hungry while looking at the Web site!

Owner Bernard Kavanagh is Irish and guarantees that all the products he sells are "the real thing." The company is located in California but ships nationwide.

My thanks to Diane Wilson Flynn for telling me about this Web site.

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Sprint's billing department apparently is very efficient at finding the current addresses of their customers. David Towles recently received a bill from Sprint that was addressed to him at his current address: The Hillside Cemetery, in Auburn, Massachusetts. Graveyard superintendent Wayne Bloomquist says his guests usually don't get much mail. Towles has been buried there since December 1997.

The $3.95 bill that arrived last week includes a call placed less than a month ago. The bill has been turned over to the town clerk, who noted that Mr. Towles' credit could be affected if he doesn't pay.

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I expect to briefly announce new books every few weeks as announcements are received. Each book mentioned in this new section will be one that is newly published or perhaps is a significant new update of a book published some years ago. This listing is for books published on paper, not on CD-ROM or online. Prices mentioned typically do not include shipping or taxes. More detailed information is available at the Web sites or from the e-mail addresses given.

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The PR Budget for this newsletter is $0.00. I rely upon "word of mouse" advertising in which you recommend this newsletter to your friends. This newsletter is a private project of mine, and I have a zero budget for a publicity campaign to get more readers.

Thanks.

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