Eneclann recently released an interesting new CD: Ireland's Memorial Records: World War 1 1914-1918. At the end of that war, the Committee of the Irish National War Memorial compiled the information on this disk under the direction of the Earl of Ypres. The result was eight volumes of information about 49,400 49,000 Irishmen who served in the British Army and lost their lives fighting in the Great War. Published in 1923, it is the most complete record known to exist, but only one hundred copies were printed. Now Eneclann has put these volumes onto CD-ROM, where you can easily search for relatives and then view the page as it was originally published.
This compilation is special in several ways. Not only does it record the names of the dead, but it also records their rank, regiment, date of death, and regimental number. In most cases, the soldier's county or place of birth and the place and date of death are recorded. All 32 counties in Ireland lost men in the Great War, more than 5,000 from Antrim, 4,800 from Dublin, and 3,000 from Cork alone. Indeed, it is likely that every village, town, and city in Ireland at the time was touched in some way by the loss. With so many families affected, there is likely a significant number of family historians who may be interested in these records.
As the introductory information on the CD explains, the committee that extracted all these names from official records was not able to obtain a complete list of the names of the fallen Irishmen in the Navy, Air Force, and Colonial Regiments. Keep in mind that all of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom at the time, and the army regiments were part of the British Army, although many of them consisted solely of Irishmen. The books covered all the counties in Ireland, including what is today called Northern Ireland.
The disk is designed to operate equally well on Windows and Macintosh systems. In fact, there is no software installation at all: simply insert the CD disk into the drive, and start using. All required data is kept on the CD-ROM disk itself.
Upon opening the CD, a graphic introduction appears, followed by a menu of several options. I started first with the Preface & Statistics, which gave a bit of background information about Irish deaths in World War I. The toll of 49,000 deaths from an island as small as Ireland is grievous in itself. Nearly every single family in Ireland felt a loss of a family member, a neighbor, or a close friend.
I found that I could either search or browse the books, names, and entries. The simpler search option allows the user to specify surname, forename, date of birth, and year of birth. Any unknown information can be omitted, but at least one field needs to be filled in. The Advanced Search works in almost the same manner as what I just described, except that you can also specify the regiment, regiment number, and rank.
I first did a search for surname Mahoney. Forty occurrences were found. The first was for Cornelius Mahoney, born in Cork, died 21 May 1916 in France. He is listed as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery. At the end of the listing, there is a link labeled "image." I clicked on that and an image of the original page appeared on screen. The image is in TIFF format and can easily be printed or imported into a graphics program.
In short, this is a very easy to use CD for Windows and Macintosh systems alike. It contains valuable references to 49,000 Irishmen who died in what was once called The Great War. The disk also has extensive help files to help the user. No printed manual is included, nor is one needed.
Ireland's Memorial Records: World War 1 1914-1918 on CD-ROM requires Windows 98 or later or a Power Macintosh with at least 16 megabytes of RAM memory and the OS X operating system.
Ireland's Memorial Records: World War 1 1914-1918 sells for €94.90 or $99.95 U.S. dollars plus postage & packing. For more information about this new CD-ROM disk, or to order it online, look at http://www.eneclann.ie/publications-13.asp
