Military Service Pensions Collection - enhanced search

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Sduddy
Posts: 1826
Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2010 10:07 am

Military Service Pensions Collection - enhanced search

Post by Sduddy » Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:32 am

Yesterday, 15 Apr 2021, Claire Santry’s site (https://www.irishgenealogynews.com) announced “Military Archives launches enhanced search facility to MSPC (Military Service Pensions Collection)” : http://mspcsearch.militaryarchives.ie/s ... e=advanced
There are 408 entries for Co. Clare.

Sheila

smcarberry
Posts: 1281
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2007 4:31 pm
Location: USA

Re: Military Service Pensions Collection - enhanced search

Post by smcarberry » Thu Jan 27, 2022 11:31 am

This agency continues to expand the public's ability to access its collections. Many documents still can be read only in the Reading Room although the online catalog provides a detailed summary of the document, sufficient to determine likely relevance. However, although the website states that there is a search facility for the entirety of the collections, I cannot get to one and instead find myself being diverted to the Military Service Pensions section with its search engine. Room for improvement, but a great start.

The reason for being there today was due to a Google search on another subject, which placed in my search results a full document placed online by this agency in pdf format: a witness statement made 1954 by Seamus (James) Connelly of Cullinagh, West Clare, describing his service in various nationalist military units, including activities during the War of Independence 1921. I was struck by how candid he was and how well his description brought home the reality of that struggle. So, I tried finding the exact webpage for his statement in the military archives, since Cullinagh is a good unique search term. As indicated already, there is no search facility for the entire website, but I did find Connelly's report via the search engine for the Bureau of Military History section. You can read it (WSF Ref 976) here:
https://www.militaryarchives.ie/collect ... =cullinagh

This website has a Genealogy section, where the Irish Army Census of Nov 1921 contains 842 results for Clare, which can best be reached by inputting (Clare) in the search engine; note that results include non-Clare residents temporarily at Clare locations. Next of kin are recorded, so this can serve as a partial substitute for the non-existent 1921 general census.

The Pensions section now has 549 results for Clare people (both men and women).

Since many of these records are in handwriting, errors in surnames are possible. There were some obvious ones, such as Frawby and Marnans. There also seemed to be some confusion between Newmarket, Cork, and Clare's Newmarket on Fergus.

I recommend viewing the breadth of the collections, at: https://www.militaryarchives.ie/collect ... ollections

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