It is a bright October day on Inishbofin, an island with a population of about 200 off the west coast of County Galway in Ireland, and the community has gathered at the local library branch to celebrate the opening of a new repository housing copies of archival documents. At this launch, copies of historic tax, census, birth, and marriage records are made available for attendees to examine, and the crowd hummed with exclamations of people finding themselves and their families represented among the displayed records.

The gift of this repository emerged from a yearslong project led by Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies Meredith Chesson, a fellow of both the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs. As a member of the Cultural Landscapes of Irish Coast team, led by Professor of Anthropology Ian Kuijt, Chesson worked for several years to compile copies of archival documents from local and national sources within Ireland now housed in the new Inishbofin Library Local Studies Collection. The Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, and the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies provided funding for this archival research and the establishment of this repository.

The collection includes digital and hard copies of census documents from 1901 to 1911, parish records from between 1867 and 1919, two boat registries from the early twentieth century, and valuation records starting from 1842—all relating to life on Inishbofin, Inishark, and Inishturk. These documents are available for viewing in the Co. Galway Library branch on Inishbofin. Chesson and her team spent the bulk of the project painstakingly combing national databases and archives, especially the Valuation Office and National Archives in Dublin, to identify records relating to the three islands, copy them, and organize them for storage and use in the new repository.

While census records can be accessed digitally through Ireland’s National Archive and parish records can be found online through websites like Ireland’s National Library and Ancestry.com, valuation records are only accessible to the public through two-hour in-person viewing appointments with Ireland’s Valuation Office in Dublin. Previously, viewing these records was difficult for most community members on Inishbofin due to the cost and extensive logistics of making an appointment and traveling to Dublin. Now with the repository open, community members can easily access copies of these valuation records locally alongside parish and census records. In discussing this project, Chesson described the partnership with the Valuation Office in accessing and copying the more difficult-to-find documents housed in their archive, “In particular, the Valuation Office staff members were really gracious and supportive of this project.”

Audrey Murray, Co. Galway Librarian for Inishbofin, and Chesson organized the launch as part of the centenary celebrations of the Co. Galway Libraries and Archives. Senior Executive Librarian of Co. Galway Library Jo Fahey and Galway County Council Archivist Patria McWalter attended the launch, along with several government dignitaries including the Galway City Archaeologist Jim Higgins, Gearoid Conroy from the Galway office of the National Monuments Service, and 35 community members who took time out of their busy workdays. The launch featured displays of historical documents for attendees to peruse, a ceremony, and a lunch. Chesson remarked on how the community members engaged with and enjoyed examining the documents during the event, “People were just really interested in when, both before and after the ceremony, we left all of the archives out. They were diving into the documents. And they were saying, ‘Oh, I found this!’ and, ‘Oh, look at this.’ ‘I want to see this.’ ‘Oh, here's my name.’ ‘This is me, right?’ They were really quite pleased about this gift to the community.”

Additionally, Chesson collaborated with the teachers from Inishbofin’s National School. Primary school students created projects for display at the launch. They examined their school’s archival records, including inspection reports and curricular guides for mostly laundry and cooking. The students reflected on the differences between being in school on Inishbofin now and in the early twentieth century.

Depending on their age, students drew pictures or wrote reports which were exhibited alongside copies of the historical documents. These projects highlighted increased access to technology, better facilities, and improvements in education for women and girls as some of the most prominent differences while similarities included the persistence of rules, homework, and the teaching of the Irish language.

Chesson calls the collection a “living repository” that will be added to by her team and local islanders. Together with Kuijt, she hopes to collaborate with local historian and archaeologist Tommy Burke to document land plots and historical buildings on Inishbofin, collect oral histories about these spaces, and link these places with the people mentioned in the archival records in the Local Studies Collection, which provides a foundation for this future heritage research.

The Inishbofin Local Studies Collection is designed as both a way to preserve island heritage and as a gift to the community members. Islanders, and those descended from islanders who left Inishbofin, Inishark, and Inishturk, can easily access a plethora of sources for genealogical and heritage projects. Chesson recounted a story of one woman, whose ancestors used to live on Inishark who came to the repository looking for information about her ancestral home. Using an archeological map from an architectural survey of Inishark’s village, Chesson helped her pinpoint the site of her family’s home from 1855, which is no longer standing, and the location of the house her family moved to around 1894, which still exists. It is this type of genealogical and heritage work that Chesson hopes to enable for the community with these materials. While the community was engaged and pleased at the opening of the Inishbofin Library Local Studies Collection, she emphasized that this is an ongoing project, a dynamic and expanding repository that will become a home for more historical, archeological, and cultural documents as research by islanders and the archaeologists continue.

Chesson insists, “We will continue to add to it, and as the community gathers things, they also can continue to add to it. So it's a living gift that just keeps going,” making the repository a gift to the community both now and well into the future.

Originally published by Cecelia Swartz at nanovic.nd.edu on November 25, 2024.