Back to Our Past 2016 was a hit!

**The Irish Family History Centre stand at Back to Our Past 2016**

This year’s Back To Our Past was another well attended event with lots of you arriving with the family history bug and ready to dive into your roots. We met so many new people just connecting with the world of genealogy for the first time, and our team were delighted to be able to help them get started.

**Our Education Officer Claire Murray loving the show**

We also met quite a few of you who had hit a brick with wall with your research and needed some help from our experts on the day. We were delighted to be able to showcase our new website with everyone and fill you in on all the new services we are now providing online to make your search easier. People were also very interested to find out about our new visitor centre in the CHQ, giving you a sneak peek of what the centre provides through our fun interactive display screens which went down very well indeed. Many of those we spoke to have already attended the visitor centre since, which we were delighted to hear and we hope you enjoyed your visit.

Just a sneak peek of some of our fun interactive displays in our visitor centre — **Just a sneak peek of some of our fun interactive display screens in our visitor centre**

Our stand was buzzing with attendees wanting to avail of our expert research service and signing up to our free genealogy newsletter. We had some great prizes to give away and met some wonderful people over the three days. Competition winners will be emailed over the next month.

**T.I.A.R.A members Virginia Wright and Kathy Sullivan**

Once again we shared our stand with our friends in The Irish Ancestral Research Association who travelled all the way from Boston to be at the show. TIARA is one of the biggest North American Irish family history societies, very knowledgeable and exceptionally friendly.

**Our very own Brian Donovan with T.I.A.RA member Virginia Wright**

The Irish Family History Centre gave three talks over the three days. Fiona Fitzsimons gave a talk on the Friday on Explorations on Irish Genealogy, Donna Moughty kindly gave a talk on Saturday on Finding Irish Emigrants in Online us records and on the Sunday Declan Brady gave a talk on Researching your ancestors in the Irish revolution. A massive thank you to all our speakers and well done to all those who gave a talk as the turnout for each was inspiring.

**Our Guest speaker Donna Moughty ( right ) with friend**

Overall there was a great atmosphere among attendees and exhibitors and we felt this year was our busiest in years. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did :)