The European 400m Indoor Athletics champion, David Gillick, may have been named as one of Ireland's 2005 Texaco Sportstars, but he was not the only member of his family to receive an honour during the year. In fact, his grandmother outshone him in receiving two awards in 2005.
Eileen O'Byrne, one of Ireland's most distinguished professional genealogists, was informed in September that she had been elected a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society. Then, on 1 December at the annual lunch of the Association of Professional Genealogists in Ireland, it was announced that Mrs. O'Byrne had become the second recipient of APGI's Fellowship.
Eileen's early career choice was in the legal profession. As Eileen Moran she was called to the Bar in the 1940s. Afterwards she married Pierce O'Byrne and began a new career as a mother, raising their five children. In the 1960s, when her youngest child had started school, she was introduced to genealogy through her good friend Eilish Ellis. Joining the Genealogical Office's freelance research panel, she soon gained a working knowledge of the whole spectrum of sources. Her legal training and her keen, logical brain made her ideally suited to the 'detective work' involved in genealogy.
Her most important publication was the Convert Rolls (1981), which she edited for the Irish Manuscripts Commission, and she was a contributor to Irish Genealogy: A Record Finder (1981), the landmark book which influenced later writing on Irish family history. However, as she devoted her time mainly to research for individual clients and consultancy, her published work was a comparatively small part of her prolific output.
As a founder member of APGI in the mid-1980s, Eileen served as its representative on the Taoiseach's Task Force on Genealogy, one of the early precursors of Irish Genealogy Ltd.. In 1998 she became the second President of APGI, succeeding Eilish Ellis in the role and serving a three year term. Among her many voluntary works for the development of Irish family history research, Eileen served on the organising committee of the 1st Irish Genealogical Congress, which was held in 1991.
As well as being an acknowledged expert on Irish genealogical records and an excellent researcher, Eileen O'Byrne is known for her generosity and encouragement towards people new to the field. And all the while her self-effacing nature would fool those unfamiliar with her life's work into thinking that she knows a little about the subject.
While Mrs. O'Byrne no longer takes commissions, she is still a member of the APGI panel of consultants that provides the Genealogy Advisory Services at the National Archives and the National Library. Her APGI colleagues hope that she will long remain on that panel. Eileen's two 2005 awards are long overdue recognition of her valuable contribution to the development of Irish genealogy. In becoming a Fellow of APGI she joins Eilish Ellis in an exclusive club reserved for the very best.
To read more about APGI, visit the new APGI website at www.apgi.ie
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