Belfast

We made it to Belfast today.  On the way there we stopped at the borough offices that include the community of Straid.  In the lobby I spotted a book entitled "Not Lost or Stolen but Straid", a community history of Straid.  On leafing through the pages I found an article on the Ellis family of Straid.  Seems they came over to Ireland in the service of Queen Elizabeth I in the 1600s.  Of course, this didn't connect our Ellis family to them, but interesting to spot, non-the-less. 

On entering Belfast we followed our GPS to 68 Balmoral, the records offices for Northern Ireland.  Too bad they have moved to a new building.  We went to the Heritage Society Offices, where we got the new address, and quickly discovered what a GPS cannot do, which is find an address that is so new it isn't on the map yet.  After driving around the center of the city (Belfast is a city of about a million population) looking for Titanic Quarter (you history buffs will know that the ill-fated luxury liner was built here and left this harbor on it's maiden voyage that didn't end well).  There is new construction going on in this area and the friendly citizens of Belfast that we stopped and asked for directions didn't know where it was.  After several inquiries and several wrong turns we found the place.  Parking was several blocks away, but I had the good fortune to meet a retired, professional genealogist on my walk to the building, and he filled me in on what I had to do to get into the place.  It's a state of the art research facility, guarded like Fort Knox.  I have my souvenior security badge that I needed to enter before I could do any research.

In addition to the orientation to the building, the retired genealogist also gave me a warm welcome to the city of Belfast and pointed out the Titanic museum that is being constructed and is due for completion by next spring, the centennial of the fateful voyage, and the old building that was the center for the planning and design of the ship.  He also filled me in on some history of the Presbyterians of Ireland.  I had wondered what may have induced the Ellis family to emigrate back in the 1830s.  That was before the famine years.  I learned that many Presbyterians emigrated after laws were passed granting more religious freedom to the Catholics in Ireland. 

So I had a great orientation and got into this state-of-the-art building, but in only a few hours it was impossible to make so very many discoveries.  I did find a Leslie Ellis (the name of Tom's g-g-grandfather, in the records of the Straid Independant Church (now Congregational) but the years were wrong.  It could have been his uncle, who had the same name.  The discoveries of the Ellis name in Straid and the identical name of  Leslie Ellis in the church records at least supports, but doesn't comfirm, my thinking that we were at least in the correct Straid yesterday!  Oh genealogy!!

We are back in Belfast tonight and have an early flight to Kiev tomorrow.  Tom was happy to give up driving on the left side of the road.  He's in bed already, so no photos to post.  In cast you haven't guessed, the photos and captions are Tom's contribution to "my" blog.  He has been labeling the pictures using my "voice."