Acknowledgement

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 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 Memorial, 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 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, 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 per a research grant from ISER in 1973 was seminal. Other paid research assistants worked on the project in 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, Newfoundland and Labrador Statistics Agency (NLSA), and Dr. Sean Cadigan, Professor and Head, Department of History, Memorial University, in the Canada Century Research Infrastructure project. This involved the digitization of the nominal censuses for Atlantic Canada for 1911 to 1951.

NLSA joined forces with Memorial in making application for funding the digitization of the Mannion collection to the Emigrant Support Programme, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Ireland. Funding was secured over three years, 2015 to 2017. The project has been supported and administered by the Irish Embassy in Ottawa and by Memorial. Particular thanks to Sean Cadigan, currently Associate Vice-President (Academic) at Memorial, who has acted with Alton Hollett as co-lead of the project since its inception and to Robert Reid, Director, NLSA. Our thanks also to the ambassadors and staff at the Embassy, especially Ambassador Jim Kelly whose enthusiasm for the work was infectious. Three ministers from Dublin and their staff visited the NLSA and contributed to our discussions, as did the Director of the Irish Abroad Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Their warm support is deeply appreciated.

Our greatest debt is to Terry Quinlan who has directed the staff at NLSA in the challenging work of scanning, typing, cleaning, coding, and verifying over 86,000 handwritten index cards. The names of the staff are listed below. Sometimes they had to deal with difficult handwriting, unfamiliar geography (locate Affane in County Waterford), and Gaelic place names (spell Graiguenamanagh). Few had much knowledge of 18th and 19th- century Irish Newfoundland. We would like to think they learned something interesting here. Some actually reconnected with their roots. Our thanks to Jamie Dower, himself an Irish Newfoundlander, in guiding us all through the complex terrain of online dissemination,

And finally, our thanks to Ireland Newfoundland Connections in Ireland (INC), and in Newfoundland (NLIC). They have been stalwart supporters of this project from the beginning. In September 2014, Eamonn Murphy, Chair of the INC, attended a conference on heritage and culture at Tilting, a strikingly Irish community on Fogo Island. The conference was organized in part by Anne St. Croix, and attended by, amongst others, Alton Hollett and Robert Reid of NLSA. This meeting of interested parties was an important stimulus to the process of digitizing this collection. Their annual "Gathering", formerly the Festival of the Sea, alternating yearly between Southeast Ireland and Southeast Newfoundland, follows the narrative of the collection's twin themes of Irish migration and settlement, described in a special note below by Wally Kirwan and Eamonn Murphy.

May their yearly gatherings on both sides of the broad Atlantic continue to prosper.