Meet the Speaker
John Grenham served as Project Manager for the Irish Genealogical Project between 1991 and 1995. Following that role, he created and promoted his own genealogical software, Grenham’s Irish Recordfinder. In 2005, he became Dublin City Library’s first Genealogist-in-Residence.
He was elected a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society in 2007 and later a Fellow of the Genealogical Society of Ireland in 2010.
Grenham is widely known as the author of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors (5th edition, Dublin and Baltimore, 2019), regarded as a leading reference work in Irish genealogy. His additional publications include The Atlantic Coast of Ireland (2014), Clans and Families of Ireland (1995), and An Illustrated History of Ireland (1997), among others.
From 2009 through 2016, he contributed the “Irish Roots” column to The Irish Times. He has also developed heritage databases and managed the Irish Ancestors website in partnership with The Irish Times until 2016. Today, he operates its successor site, www.johngrenham.com, alongside his son, Eoin.
About the Program
Researching Irish genealogy and historical records often comes with unique difficulties. In this presentation, John Grenham examines how mapping the distribution of households sharing specific surnames—drawn from Catholic parish registers, Griffith’s Valuation, census returns, and civil birth, marriage, and death records—can provide valuable insight for both family historians and local historians.
Through detailed examples, he illustrates how certain surnames can be intensely concentrated in a small locality, while others appear across vast regions of Ireland. The presentation also highlights the geographic boundaries used in record collection, explaining the mapping process itself and the technical considerations behind it. Attendees will learn how these maps can be used as practical tools to better understand surname patterns, family connections, and regional history.