A 9th Century Viking Town: Dublin and Norcross/Woods/Delaney Genealogy

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A 9^th Century Viking Town: Dublin and Norcross/Woods/Delaney Genealogy

As some of you may know, we are very into genealogy and Cope has ancestors from Ireland, so he was very anxious to get to Dublin to do some research on his Irish family heritage. But, first a little tour of Dublin. Today, as with most of our trip, it is cold and windy with a chance of rain. We wind our way along the River Liffey beside the Irish Sea. There is construction going on just about every street. It makes it slow going as we head to Trinity College, our first stop. Founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I, Trinity College is beautiful mix of old and new buildings. Students going to and from classes surround us as we walk through the campus. This college just “looks” like a place where important learning takes place.

Dublin as an interesting city and we stop at several parks, one of which was Merrion Square, with lovely flower gardens and a statue of the writer, Oscar Wilde. The house he grew up in is just across from the park. Prior to the turn of the century this was a private neighborhood park and you had to live around the park (very exclusive), in order to have keys to the park. Now it is open to everyone.

Next we visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, built in honor of Ireland’s patron saint. It is built next to the famous well where tradition says St. Patrick baptized converts. It is believed to be the earliest Christian site in Ireland. It is also the burial place of Jonathan Swift, the famous Irish writer. The church is packed with tourists but we manage to walk all around. Every church has something unique about it, this one is no different.

We get off the tour bus in downtown Dublin right near Trinity College, walk up Nassau Street, make a right and head to the National Library of Ireland. After locking up our bags and coats in a locker we walk up 1 flight of stairs to the genealogy area and sign in to wait our turn to talk with a professional genealogist specializing in Irish heritage. We had expected a large library of some sort but…in this day and age it is very much computerized and no large stacks of books, just computers. The genealogist directed us to sources of research in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s on websites we were already familiar with, but we did gain a few clues as to where we could search more on family Irish history when we get home.

Outside again, it is windy and cold and starting to rain so we decided to walk back to Merrion Square to catch a shuttle back to the ship.



Goodbye Dublin ;-)

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