Two of the latest videos on the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland’s (PRONI) YouTube channel are Getting Started Workshop — Using Online Resources on how to use PRONI’s website and other free online resources and Sexuality & Social Control in the Presbyterian Archive circa 1717-1830 about promiscuous Presbyterians.
During the informative 48-minute video on online resources, the presenter talks about the eCatalogue, church guide, wills database, and Valuation Revision Books on PRONI’s website, census records on the National Archives of Ireland’s website, birth, marriage and death records on IrishGenealogy.ie, and Griffith’s Valuation on Ask About Ireland.
The winner, however, for most titillating title goes to PRONI’s one-hour video, Sexuality & Social Control in the Presbyterian Archive circa 1717-1830, about misbehaving ministers and promiscuous Presbyterians. It is presented by Dr. Leanne Calvert, who is a lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire.
Over the course of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-centuries, over a quarter of a million people migrated from Ireland to North America. The overwhelming majority of these migrants were Presbyterians from the province of Ulster. Motivated by a desire for greater economic opportunity, political and religious freedom, individuals, whole families and entire congregations travelled across the Atlantic. Once they arrived in the New World, these Presbyterian migrants reconstructed the communities that they left behind in Ireland. Crucial to this process was the establishment of the Presbyterian system of church courts, which underpinned the religious and cultural life of the community. In Ireland, sexual offences dominated the business of these courts.
Drawing on the minutes of the Presbyterian church courts, Dr. Calvert’s research examines the extent to which Presbyterian values and codes of behaviour were transmitted across the Atlantic and replicated in these settler communities.
