There are still beautiful wild places in Ireland where nature is in charge.  Note the bog cotton!

www.AbbeyleixBog.ie

As we were heading north on R-702 in Kiltealy, County Wexford during our recent vacation to the southeast of Ireland, my eye caught sight of some sort of plaque on the wall along a driveway to the right. There was a beautiful horse farm that seemed to run along both sides…

This week, I finished an index for all the names on all the stones in Rathdowney, Laois(Queen's Co) and I head of into town to go to the graveyard to begin checking the 1300 or so names and with my new magic torch hopefully be be able to read the bits I had a problem with.

As I get into the town, I wonder to myself if an acquaintance of mine who is also director f a funeral home would be interested in the index so I call to ask him.  "Ah Jane", ses he......"I have an index.  I keep…

A Church index of sorts.

While I've been travelling around with my friend Janet, Daniel who helps me with from-ireland has done a bit of organising of my last few months posts and created a Church index.

Mainly the Churches are in the counties I name above, but, we also have some Cork, Carlow, Kildare, Waterford, Dublin, Westmeath, Offaly (King's Co.) and Galway churches.

I just know I've forgotten somewhere!!

Bit, I told Janet earlier about you calling these kind of trips I make Fairy Trips....and she laughed. Later, she turned round and asked me what I had said about Fairies.

The more I think about this, I smile - travelling through Ireland with nary a care in the world, not worrying about where you are going because when you get there you will find something worth remembering - it is actually a fairy trip. Earlier today we were trying to get home from Castlecomer and I saw a sign…

I transcribe gravestones in Ireland as well as transcribing information from parish records.  I began transcribing the words of pre 1901 gravestones in 1996.  

I have a website which was created in 2001 and two years ago we put 170,000 gravestone and church photographs online.  I indexed the names off every stone I could read and we have that index online as well.  The numbers of gravestone photographs have increased since that time and the places I have been to stretch from…

recently, I was able to trace my family from Seattle, Washington and all the steps they took from the home in county Laois.All my life I never knew where my family came from... just Ireland. I feel pretty good about bringing my family back to life....and in my imagination I could really feel who these people were. It also helped to watch period shows like "Coppers" and "Boardwalk Empire" I read books on the history of Ireland and America in the 1800's and early 1900's... The journey was so…