I’m from Donegal, the Inishowen Peninsula, right up the very top. I’m a genealogist and historian. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on their farm growing up. My father farmed and worked off-farm.
My father and grandmother, they instilled in me this sense of where I was from and the people I was connected to. So I’m really, really interested in history.
Some of my very first memories are of wondering around the local graveyard and being told who was related to us.
My granny used to always say when we were out and about: “They’re friends of ours.” I used to think, gosh, granny’s got loads of friends, but it’s actually a saying up here that means you are related to someone.
She was actually giving me my genealogy from a very young age and I didn’t know it at the time. That’s a tradition of old.
Career change
After school I went to university and studied accountancy. It was one of those “good jobs”. My parents were very big on education because neither of them got to go to third-level. They were from large families and financially the opportunity just wasn’t there.
I went off, studied accountancy and I did it for about 20 years. With the recession in particular, I found that it was becoming more and more difficult to be an accountant, gathering money and the like.
Genealogist and historian Jennifer McLaughlin-Doherty.
I was posting a lot of articles on history and genealogy on Facebook, people were starting to ask me to do their family trees – particularly people from the States.
I decided to take the plunge, give up the accountancy and go down the genealogy route. As the business progressed it also turned into a tour company. People, again mostly from the States, would find out their ancestry and they’d want to visit their ancestral home. They would ask me to take them on a tour.
Barney Kerr making hay in Urris, one of the historical farming pictures being used in the workshops.
I did a two-year course in tour guiding with Letterkenny Institute of Technology (now Atlantic Technological University) and I’m also now an Irish national tour guide.
I always tell my children the path to happiness is never straight and the path to career happiness is never straight either.
Going from being an employee to being self-employed was a big risk to take. Especially having a family at the time. My husband is a plasterer and working in the construction industry and during the recession he was off work for a time. I was taking a mega risk to jump ship.
I’ve never looked back and I have to say, not one day feels like I’m working. I love what I do. I think when you love what you do it doesn’t feel like a job. Sometimes I feel guilty because I enjoy it so much.
Storytelling workshop
As part of my job I’ve been involved in a lot of different projects. I’ve run genealogy classes and I’ve done exhibitions – one being the industries of Inishowen, which included agriculture. Men’s Shed Carn here in Donegal asked me to run a genealogy class, which I did. Then they asked would I like to be involved in a farming storytelling project they are running. I jumped at the chance.
So I’m leading the project. It’s focusing on the history of farming in Inishowen.
Farming was chosen because it has been the predominant industry in Inishowen. Here, if you don’t farm then somebody in your family has farmed. Fishing is the other major industry, but fishermen nearly always supplement their income with farming.
Farming was overtaken somewhat by construction in latter years, but I think after the recession you saw the farms being worked in earnest again. Certainly, around here a lot of young people went and got jobs in construction, but they’ve come back to farming and that’s good to see.
The workshops are made up of eight biweekly sessions on Thursday nights. The first one was on 29 September. They’re in the old co-op building in Carndonagh, that’s where the Men’s Shed is.
We are hoping to finish up in February with an exhibition. We are also hoping to use all the material to publish a booklet, perhaps even do a video.
The group at the first farming storytelling workshop with Jennifer McLaughlin-Doherty.
Anybody can come along to the workshops, men and women, young and old, from any part.
The session starts with what I describe as a snack-bite of history, just 20 minutes of the history of farming in Ireland.
Then we raise a few topics related to farming that people would like to speak about. The first week we had hiring fairs, women in agriculture and the major weather events in Donegal, for example. Then we break into groups and tell our own stories.
In the coming sessions I also want to talk about tracing the history of people’s own farms.
Storytelling is a great way to spend the winter months when farming isn’t as busy. People love to reminisce and it’s something that has taken place for centuries with people gathered on winter evenings telling stories.
Up here we called it céilíng if you went to your neighbours house, you céilíed to them. It was a great way of a catching up with the news and telling stories.
Read more
The voice behind the Ploughing
Life on Knockfierna Hill, Co Limerick
I’m from Donegal, the Inishowen Peninsula, right up the very top. I’m a genealogist and historian. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents on their farm growing up. My father farmed and worked off-farm.
My father and grandmother, they instilled in me this sense of where I was from and the people I was connected to. So I’m really, really interested in history.
Some of my very first memories are of wondering around the local graveyard and being told who was related to us.
My granny used to always say when we were out and about: “They’re friends of ours.” I used to think, gosh, granny’s got loads of friends, but it’s actually a saying up here that means you are related to someone.
She was actually giving me my genealogy from a very young age and I didn’t know it at the time. That’s a tradition of old.
Career change
After school I went to university and studied accountancy. It was one of those “good jobs”. My parents were very big on education because neither of them got to go to third-level. They were from large families and financially the opportunity just wasn’t there.
I went off, studied accountancy and I did it for about 20 years. With the recession in particular, I found that it was becoming more and more difficult to be an accountant, gathering money and the like.
Genealogist and historian Jennifer McLaughlin-Doherty.
I was posting a lot of articles on history and genealogy on Facebook, people were starting to ask me to do their family trees – particularly people from the States.
I decided to take the plunge, give up the accountancy and go down the genealogy route. As the business progressed it also turned into a tour company. People, again mostly from the States, would find out their ancestry and they’d want to visit their ancestral home. They would ask me to take them on a tour.
Barney Kerr making hay in Urris, one of the historical farming pictures being used in the workshops.
I did a two-year course in tour guiding with Letterkenny Institute of Technology (now Atlantic Technological University) and I’m also now an Irish national tour guide.
I always tell my children the path to happiness is never straight and the path to career happiness is never straight either.
Going from being an employee to being self-employed was a big risk to take. Especially having a family at the time. My husband is a plasterer and working in the construction industry and during the recession he was off work for a time. I was taking a mega risk to jump ship.
I’ve never looked back and I have to say, not one day feels like I’m working. I love what I do. I think when you love what you do it doesn’t feel like a job. Sometimes I feel guilty because I enjoy it so much.
Storytelling workshop
As part of my job I’ve been involved in a lot of different projects. I’ve run genealogy classes and I’ve done exhibitions – one being the industries of Inishowen, which included agriculture. Men’s Shed Carn here in Donegal asked me to run a genealogy class, which I did. Then they asked would I like to be involved in a farming storytelling project they are running. I jumped at the chance.
So I’m leading the project. It’s focusing on the history of farming in Inishowen.
Farming was chosen because it has been the predominant industry in Inishowen. Here, if you don’t farm then somebody in your family has farmed. Fishing is the other major industry, but fishermen nearly always supplement their income with farming.
Farming was overtaken somewhat by construction in latter years, but I think after the recession you saw the farms being worked in earnest again. Certainly, around here a lot of young people went and got jobs in construction, but they’ve come back to farming and that’s good to see.
The workshops are made up of eight biweekly sessions on Thursday nights. The first one was on 29 September. They’re in the old co-op building in Carndonagh, that’s where the Men’s Shed is.
We are hoping to finish up in February with an exhibition. We are also hoping to use all the material to publish a booklet, perhaps even do a video.
The group at the first farming storytelling workshop with Jennifer McLaughlin-Doherty.
Anybody can come along to the workshops, men and women, young and old, from any part.
The session starts with what I describe as a snack-bite of history, just 20 minutes of the history of farming in Ireland.
Then we raise a few topics related to farming that people would like to speak about. The first week we had hiring fairs, women in agriculture and the major weather events in Donegal, for example. Then we break into groups and tell our own stories.
In the coming sessions I also want to talk about tracing the history of people’s own farms.
Storytelling is a great way to spend the winter months when farming isn’t as busy. People love to reminisce and it’s something that has taken place for centuries with people gathered on winter evenings telling stories.
Up here we called it céilíng if you went to your neighbours house, you céilíed to them. It was a great way of a catching up with the news and telling stories.
Read more
The voice behind the Ploughing
Life on Knockfierna Hill, Co Limerick
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