Ballinagore resident selected as ‘Centenarian Ambassador’
John Patrick McNaboe, a native of Rossduff, Aughnacliffe, who now lives at Forest View House Home for the Elderly in Ballinagore, has been selected as a ‘Centenarian Ambassador’, as the National Archives prepare for the historic release of the 1926 Census of Population records this Saturday, April 18.
Some 48 ambassadors have been chosen from around 100 people who were alive at the time the census was taken in 1926 and who contacted the National Archives.
The ambassadors were born between 1920 and 1926, and live all over Ireland.
There are also Centenarian Ambassadors representing the Irish diaspora living in the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.
Census 1926 Exhibition Tour
To celebrate the public release of the 1926 Census, the National Archives and Department of Culture, Communications and Sport announced a public engagement programme, which includes a book, The Story Of Us – Independent Ireland and the 1926 Census (Irish Academic Press), theatre production, The Good Luck Club (ANU Productions) and an RTÉ documentary, which will air next month.
The programme also includes exhibitions at Dublin Castle, as well as in London and Boston.
The exhibition explores the world reflected in the census to reveal what life was like in the newly independent Ireland of 1926, in towns, cities, the countryside and the islands, from urban tenements to the mansions of the aristocracy.
The Story of Us uses contemporary documents and images, audio-visual displays and the census returns themselves to present a picture of life in 1926: from sport and entertainment to language, culture, religion, gender and the working lives of the inhabitants of the Irish Free State a century ago.
The exhibition will also tour Ireland later in 2026 and will be at the Westmeath County Council Buildings from August 24 to September 5 this year.
It will also visit the National Ploughing Championships.
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