Eilish Ellis, M.A., F.A.P.G.I., F.I.G.R.S.

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At the time APGI was founded Eilish Ellis was by far the longest established professional genealogist working in Ireland. She played a central and vital role in the evolution of genealogy in this country.

Eilish, who is a native of Quin, Co. Clare, attended University College, Dublin, in the 1940s and after graduation obtained a Masters degree. She worked in academic research under the Irish Manuscripts Commission, publishing 'State-aided Emigration Schemes from Crown Estates in Ireland, c. 1850' in Analecta Hibernica, Vol. 22 (1960). In the 1950s she was introduced to genealogy by Gerard Slevin, then Chief Herald of Ireland, who invited her to join the freelance panel of researchers for the Genealogical Office (GO). At the time there was only a handful of professional genealogical researchers operating in Ireland, and those based in Dublin were more or less all attached to the GO. At the time there were no existing standards for research or report writing. These were set by people like Rosemary ffolliott and Eilish.

Eilish's most significant published work is possibly the third volume of Registry of Deeds Dublin Abstracts of Wills (1984) on which she collaborated with her friend and colleague Beryl Phair (nee Eustace).

She remained with the GO’s research panel until it was discontinued in the mid-1980s. With her research panel colleagues she had already founded Hibernian Research, the first independent genealogical company in Ireland, and she remained with it till its demise in the late-1990s. In the meantime she re-established her connection with the GO, taking the part-time post of in-house researcher.

In the 1980s Eilish chaired the steering committee of what was to be APGI, and in 1987 she became the Association’s first President, a position she retained until 1997. In May 1997 she was elected a Fellow of the Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS) and in September of that year she was honoured as keynote speaker of the 3rd Irish Genealogical Congress, in Maynooth.

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