Our work on the historical geography of Newfoundland family history and genealogy began as early as 1967 with field and archival research on the distinctively Irish settlements of Logy Bay, Outer Cove, and Middle Cove, north of St. John's, and in the Freshwater Valley just west of the 19th-century port. This work was an integral part of my PhD studies at the University of Toronto. It was extended in 1968 to include the historic communities at Placentia and along the Cape Shore of Placentia Bay. Irish-Newfoundland genealogies reconstructed from that time are included in this online collection. We came to Newfoundland permanently in 1969 and our work on "Tracing the Irish" has continued to the present. A substantial portion of the nominal data here was compiled while teaching at the Memorial University of Newfoundland through the 1970s and 1980s.
My first thanks must go to the undergraduate students who reconstituted family trees as part of their coursework in cultural and historical geography at the Memorial University, and to the many informants in the field who generously shared their knowledge of Newfoundland family lore. Over the years the research project was funded by the Canada Council (later the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)) and by the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Memorial. A research grant from the Canada Council to hire a graduate student, Edward Tompkins, full-time for eighteen months, from 1978 to 1979, was a major boost to our venture. Ed's work is exceptional and his contribution populates many index cards in this collection. Our thanks also to the late Howard Brown, whose copying of the Roman Catholic Basilica Parish registers, under an ISER research grant in 1973, was seminal. Other paid research assistants worked on the project throughout the 1980s.
Our work became known outside the university through public lectures, broadcasts, and informal exchanges. By good chance it attracted the attention of Alton Hollett, Assistant Deputy Minister, Economics and Statistics Branch, Department of Finance, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Alton had been engaged with his colleague, Terry Quinlan, of the Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency (NLSA), and Dr. Sean Cadigan, Professor and Head of the Department of History at the Memorial University, in the Canada Century Research Infrastructure project. This involved the digitization of the nominal censuses for Atlantic Canada from 1911 to 1951.
The NLSA joined forces with the Memorial University in applying for funding to digitize the Mannion Collection through the Emigrant Support Programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Ireland. Funding was secured for three years (2015–2017). The project has been supported and administered by the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and by the Memorial University. Particular thanks go to Sean Cadigan, now Associate Vice-President (Academic) at Memorial, who has served with Alton Hollett as co-lead of the project since its inception, and to Robert Reid, Director of the NLSA. Our thanks also to the ambassadors and staff of the Embassy, especially Ambassador Jim Kelly, whose enthusiasm for the work was infectious. Three ministers from Dublin, together with their staff, visited the NLSA and contributed to our discussions, as did the Director of the Irish Abroad Unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Their warm support is deeply appreciated.
Our greatest debt is to Terry Quinlan, who directed the staff of the NLSA in the challenging work of scanning, typing, cleaning, coding, and verifying more than 86,000 handwritten index cards. The names of the staff are listed below. At times they had to decipher difficult handwriting, unfamiliar geography (such as locating Affane in County Waterford), and Gaelic place names such as Graiguenamanagh. Few had much prior knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century Irish Newfoundland. We would like to think they learned something interesting here. Some even reconnected with their own roots. Our thanks also go to Jamie Dower, himself an Irish Newfoundlander, for guiding us through the complex process of making this collection available online.
Finally, our thanks go to Ireland Newfoundland Connections in Ireland (INC) and its sister organization in Newfoundland (NLIC). They have been steadfast supporters of this project from the very beginning. In September 2014, Eamonn Murphy, Chair of the INC, attended a conference on heritage and culture in Tilting, a distinctly Irish community on Fogo Island. The conference, organized in part by Anne St. Croix, was also attended by, among others, Alton Hollett and Robert Reid of the NLSA. This meeting of interested parties provided an important stimulus for the digitization of this collection. Their annual "Gathering", formerly known as the Festival of the Sea, alternates each year between Southeast Ireland and Southeast Newfoundland and reflects the two central themes of the collection: Irish migration and settlement, as described in the special note below by Wally Kirwan and Eamonn Murphy.
May their yearly gatherings on both sides of the broad Atlantic continue to prosper.
