Sunday, April 21, 2013

Graveyards of Ireland



  Tourism has been and is a large part of the Irish economy.  The growing interest in genealogy has proven a boon to that industry, with “heritage tourism” alone reaping over 1 billion euros each year for Ireland.  The benefits of encouraging genealogists stateside and around the world to visit the homeland of their ancestors are finally being recognized on the island.  One manifestation of that realization is Ireland Reaching Out, which attempts to connect the Irish diaspora with people currently living in their ancestral communities.  Another is a project called Historic Graves, an initiative to record historic (naturally) graveyards in Ireland.  http://historicgraves.com/

     At this site you will find beautiful aerial photos of the graveyards and churches along with pictures of the stones up close and stories about some of the people buried there.  On the home page are tabs for EXPLORE, with a list of graveyards, stories, maps and a blog- SEARCH tab is self explanatory- ENGAGE invites you to participate in the project and finally there is an ABOUT tab describing the project and its goals.

     Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Tipperary graveyards are well represented and there are other counties just getting started with the recording and transcribing.  This is an ongoing project and worth checking out and bookmarking.

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