As the release of the 1926 Irish Census approaches, a new four‑part series of A Family History Of… podcast launches on all streaming platforms today, taking listeners deep into one of the most devastating chapters of Irish history: the Great Famine.
In A Family History Of The Irish Famine, regular host Jen Baldwin — genealogist and Research Specialist at Findmypast — traces the life of her own ancestor, Archibald McKenzie.
Jen is joined by special guest Fiona Fitzsimons, family and social historian at Trinity College Dublin and founding member of the Irish Family History Centre at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, whose expertise helps illuminate the wider social and political forces that shaped Archibald’s fate.
Jen said, “The scale of the tragedy of the Irish Famine is hard to comprehend and so many of the individual human stories remain hidden. Exploring my own ancestor’s experiences has been emotional and necessary, and Fiona’s expertise helped me to delve deeper and understand the wider historical context behind every moment in his life.”
Across four episodes, you can follow Archibald’s journey from respectable beginnings in County Cork, through a descent into poverty and confrontations with the law, to a desperate bid to escape via the lesser known “chain-migration” pathway. Census records, parish registers, crime and court documents, passenger lists, and contemporary newspapers, all available on Findmypast, help reconstruct Archibald’s world in vivid detail.
Fiona, said: “Through Archibald’s individual story, we see how policy, poverty, and migration shaped the fate of thousands.”
First launched in March, A Family History Of… is a weekly podcast with monthly themed series that take major moments from Britain and Ireland’s past and bring them to life through the experiences of real families.
The debut series, A Family History Of Wartime Women, featured historian Lucy Worsley, who revisited the life of her grandmother, uncovering a woman shaped by two World Wars, seismic social change, and long‑buried family secrets.
Further series will follow lives through the 1926 General Strike, the Dardanelles Campaign of Gallipoli, and the Somme.
Listeners can discover more about the research behind the stories and explore the historical records and newspapers discussed in the episodes on the podcast website, as well as in special bonus episodes.
