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Ulster Historical Foundation is a unique organisation. We are the only body on the island of Ireland that combines expertise in family history research with a publication of high quality historical and genealogical books.
Much more than that, the Foundation is the only Irish organisation that delivers annual conferences and course in family history and conducts extensive lecture tours in North America every year and elsewhere less frequently.
We are passionate about the history of Ulster and the story of the families that have lived in all nine counties of the historic province over the centuries.
And we do it all without one penny of grant aid from government.
The Foundation is entirely self-funded. We depend on the generosity of our members, supporters and customers to continue to provide the range of services that we offer.
We have wonderful resources built up over nearly 65 years, great ideas and ambitious plans to develop more resources that can benefit the wider research community, but especially our members.
Our emblem is a ship, chosen to represent the passage of thousands of people who have departed from Ulster over the centuries. Using the metaphor of a ship, we can say that the Foundation has come through some choppy waters over the years and at times it looked like we were perilously close to foundering. But ingenuity, imagination and sheer hard work have kept us afloat. The ship has now been stabilised and we hope that we are sailing in calmer waters.
With your support we believe that we can flourish, not only building on what we have achieved, but reaching out to a new generation of researchers and those fascinated by the history of the place we call home.
COVID-19
As the world begins to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ulster Historical Foundation now finds itself in a drastically different place than when we launched our fundraising plan in March 2020. Read more about our Plan for Recovery by clicking here
Donor Impact
Since 2010 with your help, and the help of a number of successful applications to charitable trusts, the Foundation has raised £74,000 in donations to help us realise some important objectives.
- The 2010 Buy A Brick appeal helped us acquire furniture and shelving that has already been relocated to Bradley Thallon House.
- The Scanner Appeal enabled us to purchase a large A1-sized flatbed scanner which has facilitated digital capture of valuable original sources such as church records, which are used to create online databases.
- The 2015 Buy A Brick campaign helped build up office equipment including approximately 140 metre-run of library shelving and 60 metres of storage shelving, all of which will house the enhanced library collection in Bradley Thallon House.
- The Adopt A Book Fund enabled UHF to acquire new genealogy titles for the research library and to make a start on repairing some library bindings.
Your engagement, support and donations have enabled the Foundation to continue to realise our mission as a leading historical and genealogical research and publishing institution on the island of Ireland with a worldwide reputation.
We have ambitions to go on serving our members, expanding services we provide to you and the general public, and providing access to resources and expertise that can help you to discover your story – the story of individual families on this island.
You can donate to us via the form at the bottom of this page or by clicking here.
There are four specific projects that we are working on at the moment. More information can be found at the links below. There is also a page giving alternative donation methods if you would prefer to use those.
- 1 - Website Redevelopment Fund
- 2 - Irish Migration Memorial & Create A Genealogy Hub
- 3 - Building for the Future – Our Five Year Building Fund
- 4 - Leave A Legacy That Will Make A Real Difference
- Alternative Donation Methods
We are profoundly grateful to our members, donors and supporters for the faith you place in this organisation. The financial assistance you provide helps to keep the Foundation self-sustaining and enables us to deliver such a diverse array of activities from year to year.
