The Council of the Irish Genealogical Research Society are proud to announce that our valued former colleague, the late Rosalind (Roz) McCutcheon, has been unanimously chosen as the 2023 recipient of the Wallace Clare Award***. Roz was the face of the Society for many, and frequently the first person who met people when visiting the library either at St Magnus the Martyr or later at the Society of Genealogists. Her cheerful and breezy manner belied her vast professional experience, for she was a Council Member, Fellow, and Vice President of this Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists.
She was editor of the Newsletter since 1991, a position she used to entertain her readers with amusing but true anecdotes whilst at the same time imparting a vast amount of more mundane genealogical news. From 1996 Roz worked on compiling the Early Irish Marriage Index, and latterly the Early Irish Birth Index and Early Irish Death Index, from material in the Registry of Deeds and elsewhere. In doing so she opened for researchers a previously little-known source of information; all three of these BMD indexes are now available online.
With IGRS Member Nick Reddan from Australia, she was inspirational in forming the Registry of Deeds Indexing Project. She was the main contributor to this index uploading over 157,030 of her own index entries, along with 12,701 entries from Maureen O’Sullivan, and 1,291 entries from the Michael Leader Collection, as well as others. The final submission of Roz’s work to this database is in the region of 185,789 entries. Because of her unique grasp of the complexities in dealing with the Registry of Deeds material she was asked to join, and contribute, to the Registry of Deeds Digitisation Strategy Advisory Group, under Tailte Éireann (formerly the Property Registration Authority).
Roz also started a massive project to scan IGRS library materials, such as manuscripts and card indexes, to make them accessible for members who often had no opportunity to visit the library. A great indexer, she indexed the newspaper Pue’s Occurances 1744-1749 in her “spare” time as it were.
One of her greatest skills, and she had many, was the ability to encourage others in their genealogical research. She gave intensely informative and invariably entertaining lectures in person or on zoom for the IGRS, at the Society of Genealogists, London, in Ireland, Canada, Australia and in America at the internationally famous Roots Tech Convention as well as at the University of Strathclyde and University College Cork. Aware of the need to attract more people to become involved in the work of the IGRS, she, with Jill Williams, established and maintained the successful London and South East Group of the Society which included meetings and outings to research centres. She managed to keep the Society in focus and on track by inspiring and enabling others to undertake research by her phenomenal indexing of otherwise little used sources.
In announcing this posthumous award, IGRS Chairman Steven Smyrl, said "The sudden death of not only a much valued colleague but also a dear friend to many in the IGRS has left us reeling. For many years Roz was the life blood of the Society. Her decades-long contribution to the world of Irish genealogy will take some surpassing. Her vast knowledge of the sources for Irish genealogy will be greatly missed. The Wallace Clare Award is designed to be the highest form of recognition the Society can give in acknowledging an individual's significant, long-term contribution to the development of Irish genealogy world-wide. We hope that this Award can do justice to Roz's lifetime of invaluable work."
***The Wallace Clare Award is named in honour of Rev. Wallace Clare (1895-1963), a Catholic priest and keen academic who founded the IGRS in 1936. This was as a response to the great conflagration of 1922, which consumed almost the entire contents of Ireland’s Public Record Office. Fr. Clare initiated the Society's core policy of maintaining a library which 87 years later holds an invaluable collection of transcripts and abstracts compiled from documents subsequently destroyed in the fire. He was the author of the first ever book on Irish ancestral research, A Simple Guide to Irish Genealogy, published in 1937. Unsurprisingly, Fr. Clare was the first individual to be elected a Fellow of the IGRS in 1937.
