RCB Library Notes08 Sep 15

Archive of the Month September 2015 – What is a Preacher’s Book?

September’s Archive of the Month at the Representative Church Body Library answers the question: ‘What is a preacher’s book?’ – one often asked by researchers who use the library’s resources – by presenting an online exhibition of extracts from the unique content of such an original source.

Alongside baptism, marriage and burial registers, Church of Ireland parishes kept further records including vestry minute books, churchwarden lists, account books and preacher’s books.

Preacher’s books typically recorded the date a service was held, the names of the clergy officiating, the number of the congregation receiving Communion, the amount collected and also a column for ‘observations’ or ‘comments’. The comments often related to the weather, collections for charity and, in some cases, significant extra snippets of genealogical and local history value.

The RCB Library holds over 1,000 collections of parish registers from all over the country, and many of these include runs of preacher’s books. One such example is the parish of Clones, county Monaghan (and diocese of Clogher), which includes no less than 12 preacher’s books, and it is the first of this collection, commencing on 11th April 1841 – Easter Sunday of that year – and ending in December 1863, that has been digitised.

Accompanying explanatory text to the online presentation reveals the information and value of this particular resource, providing the in–depth analysis of the Clones volume, which throws light on prevailing economic and social conditions during the period of An Gorta Mór (the Great Famine) which is covered by the volume.

The online exhibit also includes extracts from other parish preacher’s books and their unique content. One such example is that for the parish of St Stephen’s in Dublin which, as extracts from its entries in April 1916 tell, has the very interesting story of the local impact of the 1916 Easter Rising on the church and congregation.

The ‘Preacher’s book’ exhibit will be available online from Tuesday, 1st September, and represents another collaboration between the library and a historian – this time Maeve Mullin, a Masters student on the Irish History programme in Maynooth University.

Commenting from the RCB Library, Dr Susan Hood, who manages the Archive of the Month project, says: ‘We are grateful to Maeve Mullin for her colourful and illustrated analysis of these valuable and often over–looked resources, and her generous willingness to share her research via this medium.’

Having completed the project Maeve Mullin observes: ‘Having used the preacher’s books in conjunction with other parish records and local history resources, I would recommend a visit to the RCB Library to browse the preacher’s books for your parish of interest as they may hold a nugget of information that will embellish your family history research or augment your local history story.’

Notes for Editors

‘Archive of the Month’ aims to showcase the collections of the Church of Ireland for a worldwide audience.

Maeve Mullin is a Masters student on the Irish History programme in Maynooth University. She is also a professional genealogist based in Dublin with a qualification in Genealogy from UCD. Maeve has been a member of the Genealogy Advice team in the National Archives, the National Library and on the Kerry Genealogy Roadshow with Ancestor Network Ltd. A native of Glaslough, County Monaghan, Maeve has recently been researching the experiences of men and women from Glaslough in the First World War.