The Freeman's Journal - an online source of Clare records

[Paddy Casey]

Paddy Waldron, prominent Clare genealogist and member of the Clare Roots Society, just flagged this on-line cornucopia of Irish and Clare information - The Freeman's Journal* - to me. He, in turn, had been put on to it by Graham Lambert of Colyton, NSW, Australia. I thought I'd pass it on to this forum in case other members are interested and wish to exploit it.

Gale Digital Collections is offering a free trial of their databases, one of which contains the Freeman's Journal. They don't say how long the free trial lasts but, as with all these offers, one is advised to go for it without delay in case it suddenly evaporates. Go to http://access.gale.com/gdctrial/index.html and sign in. Then select 'Freeman's Journal' from the journal collections and start your search in that journal. For example, I typed in 'Clare' and got 32351 hits which I am now ploughing through. Of course, some of them refer to Lord Clare or Clare St. in Dublin or other false-positives but there are plenty of entries with names of people and places. The law reports are particularly meaty. I've already found an account of a faction fight at the fair in Tubber, my paternal ancestral home, with familiar names of local farmers and peasants.

Go for it !

Paddy

*The Freeman's Journal was established in Dublin in 1763 by Charles Lucas, and remained in circulation throughout the following century. It was a four-page daily paper until it doubled in size in 1872. In 1854 at least three Irish newspapers enjoyed far larger readerships than the Journal, but by 1900 it could claimed to be 'the leading Irish newspaper' in its weekly advertisements.
The Freeman's Journal played a central part in British nineteenth-century politics and the Irish movement for Home Rule. Until the late 1830s the Journal was a mouthpiece of rule from London, receiving subsidies for the publication of proclamations and containing very little Irish news. However, under the ownership of John Gray (a Protestant MP in William Gladstone's government), the Freeman's Journal became an increasingly influential Liberal paper that was often critical of the British government. The paper advocated reform of Dublin municipal government and of land-holding systems, and called for the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland and for Catholic educational rights. Following his father's death in 1875, Edmund Dwyer Gray, as a convert to Catholicism and an MP, strengthened the role of the Journal in the growing nationalist agitation for Home Rule, as well as in campaigns for public health reforms in Dublin.

[smcarberry]

Paddy, you know that I dove into this database like the first swim of summer. Thanks for passing along the info.

I used the search term "clare AND ireland" in the 19th century British newspaper section, which took me long past
my bedtime to complete reading. I was copying out the info, but now I see your posting jpg image files, for which I
saw no feature on the site itself. Are you using your own image-capturing software, such as SnagIt ? I have a
Freeman's Journal article which can serve as a census substitute for men in East Clare in 1880. I printed out the
page, which comes out in tiny print. Can you post it in jpg here ? The date is 6 Dec 1880 and the article's title is
The Defence Fund, with the Clare part being in the middle of the page. Thanks.

Sharon Carberry

[Paddy Casey]

Hi Sharon,

The Gale database set is amazing, isn't it ?

To capture the screens I use a program called PrintKey 2000, a freebie developed by a Swiss man called Alfred Bolliger. His webpage is http://www.geocities.com/~gigaman/ It seems that he has discontinued PrintKey 2000 and even claims that it doesn't work with Windows XP, a claim that conflicts with my daily use of it under Windows XP. He has replaced it with PrintKey-Pro ($19.95). Since I am grateful for my successful use of his freebie over several years I think I will upgrade to PrintKey-Pro.

In the meantime I'll have a go at snagging that article you mention.

Watch this space.

Paddy

[Paddy Casey]

Hi Sharon,

I've just made a discovery. There's a much easier way to copy newspaper images to this forum. It works with Firefox, the browser I use, but I'm not sure whether it works with IE. Just left-click on the image and its background turns blue, indicating that it has been "selected". Then right-click on it and Save it. Firefox saves it as a .PNG file. You can then attach it to a posting (see example here from Freeman's Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser (Dublin, Ireland), Friday, October 10, 1890).

I am, of course, kicking myself - very vigorously - for not having thought of this in the first place, i.e. why do it simply when one can complicate it (rolls eyes).

Paddy

[smcarberry]

Paddy, I will certainly give that method a try although, as your example shows, some additional news items tend to get
included with the target one. Thanks for the tip on that. I do use Firefox exclusively now for about a year.

Just so the other Forum members know, I am planning on posting the East Clare contributors to the 1880 Defence Fund
after I type up a list with the surnames in alphabetical order, so that the list can be reviewed quickly. I will also be posting the Clare-born found in U.S. newspaper death notices, sorted by city. Finally, hopefully within the next week (as the Library has informed me), I will be announcing the inclusion on the main Library site as a contributed database the set of eviction cases from the early 1820s which I copied out at the National Archives (Dublin) back in 1998.

Excelsior,
Sharon Carberry

[smcarberry]

Paddy,

Unfortunately the only way for me to retain an image of a Gale database article is to print out the whole screen on
which it appears, trim the paper to fit just the article, scan in the article to my computer, and then attach it to a
posting which I make here. So, if you don't mind, could you go back to The Freeman's Journal and provide here images
of these two articles on the indicated publication dates:

Irish Parliamentary Fund 22 Jul 1886

National Indemnity Fund 27 Nov 1888

One of those has a listing of men only for the "united parishes" of Kilkishen and O'Callaghan Mills, while the other may be
more expansive in covering Clare residents.

Thanks,
Sharon C.

[Paddy Casey]

Sharon,

Here's an easier way than printing out the paper, cutting out the snippets and rescanning:
- right-click on the document on the Gale screen and select Save As and save it as a JPG document
- download and install IrfanView from http://www.irfanview.net/ It's a superb little free and world-famous gadget for doing simple things to photos. No ads, no scum, no spyware. It's the free lunch that everyone says there isn't.
- open your JPEG file with IrfanView
- select the bit of the document you want
- Crop to that selection
- Save it under another name
- Bingo ! You're done. No scanning, no printing, no nothing.

I'll send those images this evening.

Paddy