Mayo council minute books from 100 years ago to be digitised
MAYO County Council is digitising the minute books of the council for the years 1913 to 1923. They will also digitise some rare urban district council minute books from that period.
The project is part of the Mayo Decade of Centenaries programme.
The records provide a valuable insight into the political, social and cultural life of the county in those tumultuous years.
The books will first be cleaned and preserved and will then be digitised and indexed and made available to the public for the first time on the council’s website.
A report on the Decade of Centenaries events and projects in 2022 was presented at a meeting of the council's heritage and cultural committee by county librarian Austin Vaughan.
Another digitisation project involved the autograph books in the Jackie Clarke Collection.
This project aimed to research, digitise and make available online the autograph books from the period 1921-1923 contained within the collection.
Included are autograph books from Kilmainham Gaol (1920-21), the Anglo-Irish treaty negotiations in London and subsequent Dáil debate/vote (December 1921-January 1922) and Republican's Prisoner Autograph Book from Tintown/Curragh Camp (1923).
The project made the contents of these remarkable autograph books readily available to the wider public, creating a tangible link with the past and the complexities of the revolutionary period.
The Anglo-Irish Treaty Notebook contains 130 signatures - the names of the Irish delegation and ancillary staff who travelled to London in December 1921 (included are Collins, Griffith, Barton, etc).
It was present in Hans Place, London, during those weeks. It also contains signatures collected just ahead of the historic Dáil vote on January 7, 1922, along with a tally of the votes on the Treaty as it happened. The closing statements of Collins and De Valera are recorded in shorthand.
This is a unique record of a pivotal moment in Irish history.
The Tintown Autograph Book contains signatures, drawings, slogans, etc., of Republican prisoners interned during the Civil War. Some were local Ballina men, who would take part in the Hunger Strike. There are a number of visually striking drawings in color which will be of interest to those exploring themes of the visual representation of the period and the Republican tradition in particular.
Other events throughout the year included Shane Finan's artist's residency at the Jackie Clarke Collection, working on a project entitled It matters what stories tell stories, which focuses on how we choose to collect and remember. Commemorations included Michael Staines, the first Garda Commissioner, in Newport, and Sean Corcoran, officer of the East Mayo Brigade, who was killed near Ballyhaunis.
A major civil war seminar was held in October in Castlebar Courthouse - the flagship event.