Monday, January 20, 2014

TIARA I

TIARA, the Irish Ancestral Research Association, is an Irish genealogy group based in the Boston area of Massachusetts (click here to learn more about their meetings). As the largest Irish genealogy group in a traditionally Irish state they have many interesting databases on their website.


One such database that they feature is information from the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters. This was a fraternal life insurance organization founded in Boston in 1879 by a group of Irish immigrants. Over the ensuing decades the organization spread throughout the state and by the end of the 19th century there were ninety-five branches throughout Massachusetts.[1]

TIARA has created an index for mortuary records from the Foresters. The database contains over 27,000 names of members who died between 1880 and 1935. Many Famine era immigrants would have passed away during those years. This index will make it easier to find the records of relevance to you. The records are at the University of Massachusetts and are supposed to come online on the Familysearch website at an as yet unknown date. 

Click here to read more about the Foresters organization and this project.

Check the next blog post in a few days for more about TIARA databases.




[1] TIARA. Tiara Foresters Project. 2011. http://tiara.ie/forest.php: accessed 16 December 2013.

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