Brian Trainor: brilliant and energetic archivist

Brian Trainor, who died on August 22nd, devoted much of his professional life and indeed his 30-year retirement to making good the almost-irreparable damage done to Irish archives by the destruction of the Four Courts during the Civil War in 1922.

Initially as archivist from the mid-1950s, then director of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland 1970-1987 and as chairman of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and of the National Archives Advisory Committee, he was at the forefront of the campaign to improve the quality and awareness of historical sources whose availability and interpretation have played such a vital role in the improved understanding of the island's past.

Bernard Ignatius Trainor was born on May 28th, 1928, in Coleraine, the son of a railway official. In 1939 the local church funded scholarships to St Columb's College in Derry for Brian and older brother Frank. He obtained a first-class history degree at Queen's University Belfast in 1949.

After research in London at the Institute of Historical Research he was appointed assistant lecturer in history at Queen's in 1951. In 1956 he was appointed assistant archivist in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and from then until the late 1970s embarked on an extensive and energetic campaign throughout Northern Ireland of identifying and accessioning historical records from solicitors' office, businesses, linen firms threatened with extinction together with thousands of individual family records.

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Dr Trainor succeeded Ken Darwin as director of PRONI in 1970, and seized the opportunity to realise his vision as the office moved to purpose-built premises in south Belfast. Now the major holdings of documents could be stored under proper conditions and accessed by students, academics, genealogists and casual researchers alike. An accrual of additional staff to locate, acquire and process new documentary collections on an unprecedented scale facilitated the dawning of a golden age as he oversaw PRONI becoming an outstanding source of academic riches, producing studies in the field of social, economic and political history.

This mission was initially carried out with the minimum of intervention from officialdom in Stormont. That began to change, however, when collections of governmental records dating from the foundation of the Northern Ireland state began to be added to the PRONI holdings. The 30-year rule for access to these holdings, and the need to act in conformity with practice elsewhere in the UK, inevitably introduced constraints on the use to which some of these records could be put: controversy arose as academics were denied sight of what they suspected was information reflecting adversely on former unionist administrations. Such constraints were contrary to Trainor's instincts. He took early retirement in 1987 to devote himself to the work of the Ulster Historical Foundation, an independent historical and genealogical research and publication agency, formerly part of PRONI.

Among his contributions to the foundation's development were the annual lecture tours 1989-97 in the United States (44 of the 50 states visited) and Canada, involving travel by Greyhound bus and hired car, delivering lectures to audiences with an increasing appetite for information on sources that would inform their interest in Irish heritage. He also championed the foundation's formative involvement in the landmark Irish Genealogical Project, an all-Ireland initiative compiling databases from church and civil birth, death and marriage records.

He retired as research director in 2006 but continued with the famous lecture tours until the age of 85. His archival vision incorporated a strong all-Ireland identity, something that was recognised by Dr Garret FitzGerald in 1987 who appointed him chair of the Management Committee of the National Archives Advisory Committee. Throughout the 1970s he served on the Irish Manuscripts Commission and twice served as its chairman.

He ensured that the records arising from the very successful Irish Manuscripts business records survey were entrusted to the National Archives of Ireland. Dr Trainor was awarded two honorary doctorates, in 1984 by the University of Ulster and in 1986 by the National University of Ireland.

He is survived by his wife Pilar, originally from Madrid, his children, Rosana, Pancho and Katrina and five grandsons, Santi, Milo, Jacob, Beni and Sami.