All praise to the Nobel Prize winning Irish poet, William Butler Yeats. Thanks, Barb, for a powerful read with my morning coffee. The explosions at the Four Courts occurred in June 1922 and was the beginning of the Irish Civil War. The Free State supporters (IRA) had occupied the building and refused to leave. After the murder of a British official in the North, the Pro-Treaty group led by Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, were being prodded by the Brits to bring order to the country as heads of the legitimate government. They chose to bombard the building and retake control of the place. So it was a fratricidal destruction of the Irish records. The explosions at the Four Courts was devastating, of course, but not as bad as it could have been for Irish Catholics. The government had requested that all church records be deposited with the state. The Church of Ireland parishes complied, sometimes keeping copies. That was hard as records would have had to be transcribed by hand. However, most Catholic Churches did not comply, but kept the records with the parishes. Thus, what Catholic Church records we do have were mostly saved, albeit, they are pretty meager, in bad shape, and only go back to about 1800. Wills were destroyed as well as deeds and trusts, not much of a problem for my people as they had nothing. Sheila Santa Barbara