The Council of the Irish Genealogical Research Society is proud to announce that Claire Santry has been unanimously chosen as the 2024 recipient of the Wallace Clare Award***. Claire is a Fellow of the Society and a former member of its governing Council. The award recognises Claire's dedication to the promotion of Irish genealogy over many years through which she has had a particularly significant impact on the development of Irish ancestral research.
Claire has had a long career in mainstream journalism and additionally she has had numerous articles on genealogy published in magazines such as Family History (UK), Family History Magazine (USA) and Practical Family History (UK) and a regular quarterly news column in Irish Roots.
Across the globe, Claire is perhaps best known by Irish family history researchers for her unparalleled ‘Irish Genealogy News’ blog, which published its first news item on 11th March 2010. It operated for fourteen years, finally coming to an end earlier this year. During that time Claire published 5,764 blogposts bringing much awaited news to those involved in Irish ancestral research. Quite often she published scoops, well ahead of any competition, and which ensured that her blog became the go-to site for those seeking as-it-happens news from the world of Irish genealogy.
However, when considering Claire as a candidate for the Wallace Clare Award, the Awards sub-committee took particular note of several other of her contributions to the field. These include the considerable amount of time and effort she invested to create the online list of Church of Ireland parish registers for the IGRS, which is a highly reliable and accurate resource located on the IGRS website; her Irish Genealogy Toolkit website, launched in 2008; her book The Family Tree Irish Genealogy Guide published in 2017; and her ebook New Irish Genealogy Records, first published in 2014, detailing Irish online resources released since 2011, and which has seen updated editions published more or less annually up to 2023.
On the IGRS announcing this news, Paul Gorry, chairman of the Society's Awards sub-committee said "It is particularly fitting to be recognising Claire Santry's contribution to Irish genealogy in the year in which she has chosen to retire from journalism. Without doubt, over the past fourteen years her Irish Genealogy News blog was the most significant source of information on what was happening in Irish family history around the world. It is greatly missed. As a journalist she knew the value of media coverage in promoting news, and many societies, businesses, and even individuals, have benefitted significantly from her expertise, sharp insight and generosity, not least the IGRS."
The chairman of the IGRS, Steven Smyrl, said “Claire’s contribution to Irish genealogy is exactly that which our Wallace Clare Award was created to recognise. She has undoubtedly enjoyed every minute of the many years she has dedicated to promoting Irish genealogy news, but beyond that none of it was ever done for fame or glory. That said, the IGRS was thrilled when in 2015 Claire was voted by the genealogy public at large as a Gold Medallist Genealogy Rockstar in the annual poll run by John D. Reid's Anglo-Celtic-Connections blog. Well done Claire and thank you for your many years of service”.
***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.
