Irish Soldiers' Wills made pre the Great War

[Christopher]

GREAT WAR WILLS

Thousands of soldiers from the north of Ireland, going away from home to fight in the Great War (1914 - 1918), made their wills before they left. Today these wills are stored in boxes in the National Archives in Dublin. Military historian Alistair MacKerracher, of Portrush, looked at some earlier in the year. They are stored in 30 boxes.
Mr MacKerracher reckons these wills in total amount to about 10,000 documents which are not properly indexed. I contacted the National Archives today and learnt that one of the readers who visits the Archives is attempting to index these and put them onto a CD. Unfortunately she lives in Co. Kerry and can only devote two days a month to the indexing of these documents. I feel these wills are an extremely important part of Irish history and the sooner they are properly indexed the better. 

[Taidquest]

hi christopher,thats very interesting.do you happen to
know if soldiers who enlisted from dublin would be included
among these records?
                                        anne

[Christopher]

I'm certain they are Anne. I wonder if there's any way the indexing process could be improved. One person devoting two days a month sounds as though it will take a considerable time. I wonder, besides 30 boxes of Wills, what other unindexed documents are sitting in boxes and how many such documents do they have in total.

[Pat Reid]

Hi Chris:
Sounds to me that someone over there might want to organize some volunteers to help speed things up a bit. Are there many rootschatters near Dublin?

Pat

[Christopher]

Count me in on this exercise please. I'm champing at the bit to help. I think there are a few members in the Dublin area, Pat. If one or two of them have some floor space for me and a sleeping bag I could spend time helping with the indexing. State and semi state archives appear to be somewhat slow in some respects when it comes to getting things done. I know there have been FAS schemes benifitting genealogists in the Republic of Ireland. I don't know about schemes by similar bodies in the UK. A lot of the indexing seems to be left in the hands of Family History Societies.

We'd need to find the reader from Kerry to find out how much indexing she has already done. I wonder if she's a member of Rootschat or if there's a Rootschatter who knows her. It's the usual problem on this site. People do not mention their location on their profiles. It should be a compulsory answer .. a county is sufficient and gives you all the privacy in the world. It's not the same thing as being asked a postal address. If people disclosed their county it would make a lot of sense. I'm sitting in Co. Down and attempting to answer questions from most of the counties in Ireland. I have no objection to lifting a phone to speak to a librarian, a parish helper, a priest, or someone in a heritage centre anywhere in Ireland if they are being slow in posting a reply and assistance is required by a RootsChat member. I get annoyed when people post messages saying Irish research is difficult. It's difficult in that documents are not there but it's being made much more difficult by not knowing who is in a specific location when a query arises regarding that area.