Last week saw the third release of Pension files by the Irish Military Archives for almost 900 men and women who took part in the Irish revolution from 1916 through to the end of the Civil War in 1923. To date, Mallon Technology has scanned and digitised around 660,000 individual pages on behalf of the Irish Military Archives.
The latest batch of files to be released deal with pension applications by those involved in the conflicts or by those who claimed they were involved. The files offer a wealth of information on the actions of those from the highest to the lowest ranks of Cumann na mBan, Irish Volunteers/IRA and other organisations in the fight for independence and Civil War that followed. The latest files released contain a number of interesting stories, most notably those of the father, aunt and uncles of President Michael D Higgins. Like many Irish families, they were split politically over the December 1921 Treaty with Britain and saw the President’s father denied a military pension for 22 years before he was eventually granted one in 1956.
The release of the collection has proved to be a big success and since their launch in January 2014, more than 250,000 relatives and researchers from 185 countries have read or accessed the files online. Remaining in the collection is around another 300,000 files dealing with the actions of 80,000 people. The Irish government has committed funding for the further release of these files which will be gradually digitised in one of the biggest projects of its type in the world. Mallon Technology is proud to have played a key role in the release of such an important national collection and is continuing to assist the Irish Military archives in the digitisation of its collection. If you wish to view the collection for yourself make sure to visit the Irish Military Archives website.
