This is for all who asked me to share what I received from the South Mayo Heritage Center, for my $70. Today I received my family report from the South Mayo Heritage Center, 10 days later then they promised, but included an apology. For myself, the report was unable to find my ggparents. They found a family of 5 in 1847 in Sarnaught, near Castlebar, which has some similarities to my ggparents. However I told them that the third child was born in Canada in 1845. Now I must verify this again, thru the Canadian Roots List. While my gfather always told my father that he was born in Mayo, the Heritage Center map shows that a portion of Mayo was ceded to Co. Roscommon 1n 1898. This would be Kilcolman, Ballaghaderren, and Castlemore sections of Mayo that border on Co.'s Sligo and Roscommon. Most of the info I got, was researched from sources available at LDS centers. They spent time on Griffiths valuations, when they were told in my letter, that the family was in Canada, 10 years before. For the record they gave me this answer. The non-existence of explicit records of Patrick McDermott and Bridget Flannelly his wife, implies that either the family lived outside of Co. Mayo, or in a Mayo parish for which suitably early records either do not exist or are incomplete for the period. No birth/baptisms of themselves were found. No marriage record found. I think I would have been satisfied with the results, had I not done a lot of searching on my own prior to engaging the Heritage center. What this does for me, is to make me go back over my work, to see if I'm correct in each case. $70 is alot of money to spend on one Heritage Center, so each person has to make his or her own decision, about spending that much money. It was 12 weeks that I waited, so their might have been a waiting list. Jerome J. McDermott PS. I'm including two messages, that were on the net about Heritage Centers. Please read them and base your opionion on them. >From Dennis Ahern South Mayo got a 73% favorably rating, based on 22 responses in our survey. --------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Ted Hynd" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 11:27:30 +0100 Subject: Re: Cost of Irish Research Message-ID: <[email protected]> References: <[email protected]> Yes, Irish research definitely is expensive if you were to use the Heritage Centres. I myself did for a period of time work in one. It was embarrassing having to tell enquirers the cost of the service. Also, the information held in these Centres is suspect to say the least. The Centres were started in 1985 and all church ledger transcribing was carried out by what was called voluntary 'dole' members. These were people who were on the unemployment register. However, the work was not voluntary. There really was no option, either you did it or you lost your dole money. Quite simply, it was a form of cheap forced labour. The people who did this work were on average, around the age of seventeen, had no knowledge of computers let alone know anything about Genealogy or how to transcribe documents. Equally important, the majority of them had no interest in the work they were doing. Needless to say, the results of their efforts was catastrophic. It was not until seven years later in 1992, that the Heritage Centres realized that the information that they had collected and put on computer databases was not up to the standard or accuracy required for such an important. Concern grew around 1991, and it was decided to allow Independent Inspections of completed work. Comparison of records from original source showed an extremely high percentage of error in transcription and computer database input. Also, many records were found to be figments of the imagination of some of the so called volunteers. It was not uncommon to find a Marlyn Monroe married to an Al Jolson or such like. Other records were found simply with some kind of a statement made in language best left to the imagination. It was also discovered that when the project was started in 1985, no one had been responsible for co-ordinating the project throughout all the Centres in Ireland. All Heritage Centre had been responsible for the purchase of their own computers and software. This again was later to prove a disaster. It was found out around the same time (1991), that the Centres had used many different makes of computer, some Apples, some IBM compatibles, and worse still, much older cheap computers which after a couple of years became extinct. The information copied and stored to floppy disk from these computers could not be accessed on the more modern types, therefore this information lay on shelves in the Centres for years before anyone had the technical knowhow to resolve the problem. In 1992, it was decided that the Heritage Centre project should literally start again from the beginning, and that people with proper professional qualifications should be put in charge of the Centres. Whether they have got their act together now I do not know. I can say however, that the church records were not recalled to the Heritage Centres for re transcribing. The 'volunteers' are still using the original transcribed record cards (warts and all), to build their computer database information. Regard Ted Hynd of 'Donfam' at: http://homepage.tinet.ie/~donfam