I didn't name my website last night so now I'll tell you a little about it.

It is called from-ireland and I created it about 2001.  A net friend taught me a little about web page creation and I don't mean the kind of web pages that we find free on the internet now, I mean he taught me code and what the 'source code' of a web page looks like.  I had to work from the back forward meaning I created pages in code and then looked at what the end result would look like.  After a while, I did splash out on a webpage creation programme and it made life a bit easier for me.

Back in 1996 when I first got on the internet there were very few websites coming out of Ireland.  People who did not live in Ireland and whose countries were technologically advanced to ours believed that the Irish were doing this deliberately.  Also, when I would read what I saw on the internet as being 'historically accurate' I'd sit here and think these people were taught a different history to us.  So, I decided I'll create a website with information about Irish people and history as I know it and it will be a good website.  You have to understand that at that time I actually had no idea of what I was getting myself in to, the amount of work I would have to do.  I haven't done too badly because we have a good visitor rate and considering the fact that this was all done by the work of one little woman all by herself with absolutely no knowledge of how the internet worked I'm actually pleased with myself.

The thing is though, I had access to all the old Archaeological and Historical Journals in the University I worked in as a Marine Biologist and I would sit in the library reading through all the material in these books, some of them went back to about 1854 and then, in the Cork Archaeological & Historical Journal I found articles on gravestone transcriptions and they were just magic!!  Absolute magic, I loved them...they were done so well.  The man who had done the transcriptions used to talk to people about the people he'd find in the graveyards and he'd have notes about the dead people in his papers - that was it, I was caught, hook, line & sinker.  I decided no-body has ever done this for Laois so I'm going to start.

At the same time, I was subscribed to an Irish Genealogy mail list with Rootsweb and I used to read the questions and then look for answers if I could.

I used to get into 'trouble' because I would disagree when I read something about us or Ireland that did not actually fit into history as I knew it or had been taught it.  Eventually, my friends suggested that I should begin a mail list of my own and so I did and then all about the same time from-ireland was created.

from-ireland is a mixture of the words of poems, songs, culture, history, genealogy (lists of names I'd find published in these old Archaeological & Historical journals, gravestones - lists and lists and lists; extracts from old newspapers and more).

Every day (well, almost every day) new pages are added.  A day or so every week I take a trip out to take photos of churches or I go over to Kilkenny to transcribe some parish records, or I go up to Dublin to the National Library or the National Archives.

The website is at www.from-ireland.net