Finders International’s [1] Irish office celebrates its fourth anniversary this year—four years of providing missing beneficiary tracing, no known next of kin, rooting out unclaimed assets [2] and more.
In the four years, we’ve built up a solid reputation for thoroughness and professionalism, and we’ve been involved in plenty of ‘good news’ stories over that time.
When RTE Radio 1’s Liveline programme made an appeal after a member of the public found an old medal and wished it to be returned to its rightful owners, we heard the story and wanted to get involved.
Medal reunited with owner’s grandchild
Researcher Hayley Seager was able to find the last living grandchild of Felix Patrone—the man who’d earned the medal. Denis Ryan, who found the medal, was able to give it back to Geraldine Davies, a result that delighted us [3].
We also helped reunite Fred and Jimmy O’Donnell [4], brothers who’d spent eighty years apart. The brothers grew up separately, unaware of each other’s existence. The story was broadcast on BBC Family Finders.
And we’ve played our part in helping to ease the Irish housing crisis. We launched the tracing empty property service [5] to help find the owners of empty and derelict properties in Eire so that properties can be claimed by their rightful owners and returned to the housing market as soon as possible.
Cross-country probate research
Maeve Mullins, Finders Ireland’s [6] office manager and senior researcher, said: “In the last four years, Finders Ireland has worked hard to establish itself as THE probate genealogy service in the country.
What’s fascinating about working on cases in Ireland is that, in many cases, people scatter far and wide—hence the to-ing and fro-ing of genealogical research between our London, Edinburgh and Dublin offices.”
Migration from Ireland has been documented since the Early Middle Ages, but some 9 to 10 million are thought to have left the country since the 1700s to seek fortune elsewhere. As an example, the 1901 Census for England, Scotland and Wales lists 606,510 people who were born in Ireland. In addition, the census revealed 1,980 people born in Wales but living in Ireland, 26,574 people born in Scotland but living in Ireland and 61,484 people born in England but living in Ireland.
To celebrate our fourth birthday, we’re running a small competition on social media. Name the top four Irish family names of 2018 (according to the independent.ie) and you can win a Finders reusable coffee cup with goodies inside! Email us at marketing@findersinternational.co.uk [7] by 31st August and the first four names out of the hat with the correct answer will win.
This adds up to 90,038 people in Ireland who were born in England, Scotland or Wales.
Maeve said: “Putting this in the context, these are first generation immigrants in both directions, the numbers increase dramatically for subsequent generations.
Emigration to the UK ‘the first step’
“Irish emigration to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has been well documented and is written about often, but emigration to the UK was in many cases a first step on the journey to more distant destinations.
“Because we have our offices in Dublin, Edinburgh and London, we’re able to call on our colleagues to help us quickly and easily identify family members of migrants wherever they are. If you need help tracing missing heirs or finding people when there are supposedly no known next of kin, we’re happy to help.”
You can contact Finders Ireland office [6] at t: +353 (0)1 5676940 or email: contact@findersinternational.ie [8]