Scenic views of my ancestral homelands

I used to commute to work by bike, from my home in Queens, through Brooklyn, and into Manhattan, a route which took me across the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge. This bridge separated the two most harrowing parts of my commute, connecting a poorly marked bike lane and heavy truck traffic with no bike line, heavy truck traffic, and an excess of double parking. The bridge itself has no bike lanes, and the incline is enough that once you've crested the hill on a bike, you're pretty invisible to cars coming up behind you. As a result, I usually walked my bike on the sidewalk, and took advantage of the delay to take in the scenery.

Newtown Creek from Greenpoint Avenue Bridge 02
Postdlf from w [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant
By Jim.henderson (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Inspiring, isn't it? It's not exactly the most picturesque part of Brooklyn, and certainly bears little relationship to Park Slope's brownstones or Williamsburg's trendy boutiques. And yet it never failed to move me, on some level. This industrial Brooklyn is my Brooklyn, my ancestors' Brooklyn. They didn't live in Greenpoint, of course; they lived in Red Hook. But here on the Newtown Creek in Greenpoint is where I felt the most connection to the gritty, industrial Brooklyn that they would have experienced.

I was once out with friends in Brooklyn Heights, and as we walked past the building that had been the Hotel St. George, I mentioned that it was where my grandparents had been married. A Brooklynite friend asked me, slightly exasperated, "Seriously Kathleen, why don't you live in Brooklyn?" As nice as it is to walk past the place where my grandparents were married, though, those special-event, one-of-a-kind locations are not what connect me the most to my family history. It's there on the Newtown Creek, where I wouldn't dare touch the water. It's when I got stuck in growing lines of automotive and bicycle traffic as they raised the Greenpoint Avenue drawbridge to let some industrial, waste-bearing barge pass beneath. It's the sight of sewage treatment plants, shipping containers, and storage warehouses that line both sides of the creek. These are today's equivalents of the shipyards and grain elevators that employed my Mulvaney and Toner ancestors along the Red Hook waterfront, the modern counterparts to the industry that would have been the backdrop to their daily lives, and these are the elements that make me feel the closest to them.

A visit to Turlough, Co. Mayo

Our last family history stop was the graveyard in Turlough, Co. Mayo. According to the 1929 obituary of my 3x great-grandfather, Martin Gillan, both he and his brother were buried there.

"With regret we record the death of above esteemed gentleman, which took place at his residence, Tawnykinaffe, on 30th January, at the ripe old age of 104 years. Deceased, notwithstanding his great age, was hale and hearty up to the time of his death, and was the possessor of a wonderful memory. It was a treat to listen to him recite legends which he heard from his father of the Irish rebellion of 1798, at which his father and two or three of his uncles joined the French forces to strike a blow for Irish freedom. He would also thrill you with tales of black ’47 (the year of the famine), when he was then a young man of 22. Hundreds of the people around his native place, and whom he knew well, died from starvation by the roadside, and in several cases were buried where they fell, there not being even a shroud or coffin to cover them. This was a time when disease and starvation were rampant in our country. But, as a lover of his native land, and its ancient language, he would tell of Castlebar a hundred years ago, which it was then a stronghold of the British and their sympathizers, and the change that has been wrought to-day, when there is not a vestige of the foreigner left. He was an ardent Catholic and died fortified by the consolations of our holy religion. His funeral took place to Turlough burial ground on Friday last, and his remains were laid to rest beside that of his late brother Thomas Gillen, Thomas Street, Castlebar, who also attained the great age of 99 years, and beneath the shadows of the ancient round tower. [emphasis added] The chief mourners were: Michael Gillen (son); Mrs. O’Donnell (daughter); Mrs. Gillen (daughter-in-law); Michael Gillen, Bridgie Gillen, Terrence O’Donnell (grand-children); Mrs. F. Chambers, Castlebar; Mrs. J. Hopkins, Crimlin; and Mrs. T. Staunton, Tawnykinaffe (nieces). The funeral was large and very representative, Rev. Fr. Neary, P.P., Parke, officiating at the graveside."

When we met my Gillan cousins, they were able to tell me that more recent generations had been buried in the cemetery, but couldn't verify that the first (known) Martin Gillan was there, too. Regardless, we took the trip out there on our last day in County Mayo, the day before our flight home. We got a smidge lost on the way, but were able to ask a nice couple for directions and discovered we were actually very close.

The graveyard itself is unmistakeable, thanks to the presence of the "ancient round tower."
It's not small, and my husband and I split up to cover more ground. We came across several relevant family names, but most were very recent burials, and our extensive searching did not turn up any of the older Gillan graves.

 
The graveyard was not overgrown, but was apparently one of those places that only gets mowed a couple of times per year - and it had been a few months. It was a bit of an adventure, with uneven ground and damp, ankle-deep grass, but it was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed a pleasant hour or two looking at each stone.

Ben in the Turlough Cemetery

 It was only after that, as we were leaving, that we noticed the sign on the fence that had a history as well as an index of all the graves that had been legible as of the Irish Graveyards Survey several years earlier. 

A Visit to Tawnykinaffe, Co. Mayo

When we were in Ireland recently, we met up with some of my Gillan cousins, who took us out to the small town of Tawnykinaffe, Co. Mayo, where my great-great-grandmother Mary Gillan was born. Although the property is no longer in the family, my cousins had grown up there and so were fantastic tour guides. There are two houses right next to each other, the original one-room cottage and the larger house, built c. 1940. After the family moved into the newer home, the older building was used as a barn. Both are now abandoned.

The new house

The original house

After I got home, one of my Gillan cousins sent me this 1931 picture showing Michael Gillan (born c. 1910) in front of the same house we'd visited.

Michael Gillan, Tawnykinaffe, 1931

I'm not sure whether the appearance that the door is in a different place is just a question of angles and perspective, an indication that the entrance was moved at some point, or evidence that the picture was actually taken from the opposite side of the house (as I can verify that there are both a front and a rear door; I walked through both).

This little corner of Tawnykinaffe, with only a few houses, most of them empty, seemed quiet and isolated. It was a little surreal to hear stories of how bustling, active, and full of life the neighborhood had been as recently as the mid-twentieth century. It was also challenging to mentally eliminate the encroaching trees to try to picture the landscape as it would have been before the Irish government planted them en masse, at some point in the last 50 years. Though they look full grown, they're actually a very recent feature. It's easy, when visiting a town, to look around and identify new buildings and modern technology and realize that the scenery has changed in the last 50 or 100 years. Without my personal tour guides, though, it never would have occurred to me that natural features like trees - particularly in such numbers - might also not have been a long-standing feature of the environment.

I managed to peer through the trees for a glimpse of the view that predated them.

After visiting the family homestead, we went out to lunch in Pontoon. This was cool for me, because Tawnykinaffe is so small that Google Maps can't always find it. To get a general idea of the area I was looking for, I used to search for nearby Pontoon, instead. Pontoon is easy to identify because it falls right between two lakes that are very close together, separated by only a bridge. This is a feature that stands out on a map, and is easily identifiable as you drive across that bridge in your car!


View Larger Map

Ben and I on the Pontoon Bridge

We had a fantastic time and a lovely lunch and I felt so lucky to be able to meet so many of my cousins and have a personal tour of the place my ancestors had lived.

Our last Gillan family stop was a trip to the cemetery, but I will save that post for another day.

A Visit to Castlebar, Co. Mayo

When I was a kid, I learned that "Pop's family came from Castlebar and Nan's family came from Pallasgreen." This was just over half true; as it turns out, all of Pop's family really was from in or around Castlebar, but while Nan's most recent immigrant ancestor (Michael Mulcahy) was from Pallasgreen, most of the rest of her family had been in the USA since the Irish potato famine and everyone had long since lost track of their origins.

I had visited Castlebar once before, when my family visited Ireland when I was about 12. What we knew then was what we had been told by my grandfather (the aforementioned "Pop"): that his father's ("Grandpa JJ") last memory of Ireland was of being asked to run up the hill to the post office to mail a letter to the family back home in New York to let them know they were leaving. I know that at the time, I wasn't clear on whether JJ had been born in Ireland or the US - I may have assumed he'd been born in Ireland since he'd lived there, but that wasn't actually the case.

We found a post office in Castlebar that was situated on a bit of a hill and figured it had to be the right one, since it was an older brick building, not one of the newer green buildings that house so many of Ireland's post offices. We took a picture. It was closed, because it was a holiday. Then I think we left.

This time, I tried to do a bit more research before arriving. I knew that the family had lived in Ireland from about 1900 to 1902, and had by all indications not been enumerated in the 1901 Census. When JJ's brother Patrick was born, their address was given as Castle St., in Castlebar. I contacted the Castlebar branch of the Mayo Public Library and asked whether they could provide any information via e-mail. (Our itinerary unfortunately had us in the city only on Sunday and Monday, days when the library was closed.) After I provided what little I knew about my ancestors' years in Castlebar, the library staff was able to send me two articles from the Connaught Telegraph that mentioned my 2x great-grandfather, John O'Hara. (His name is given as O'Hora in both, as well as in Patrick's birth announcement.) One lists John among business owners who applied for a liquor license and were all denied, due to the official's temperance sympathies. The other, included below, was published several years after the O'Hara family returned to the US and announced the sale of their property in Castlebar. The Baltic Street address given confirms that it's the right family, as the O'Haras lived on Baltic Street in Brooklyn for many years.

30 March 1907 Connaught Telegraph

When we got to Castlebar, we soon found ourselves driving past the same post office I'd seen years ago. Practically the next thing I saw was the sign for Castle Street, which was only a couple of blocks below the post office, just down the hill. For once, everything fit the story: the post office was in the right place, it was properly situated on a hill, Castle St. was at the bottom of the hill, etc. It was perfect!

Old Castlebar Post Office

Me, at Castle St.

Looking down Castle St.

I had hoped to mail our postcards from the same post office where my great-grandfather had mailed his letter, but it's no longer an operating post office. There was a sign on the door directing patrons to the new location. Instead, we dropped the cards in a mailbox. None of my research had allowed me to pinpoint the street address of the O'Hara's home and store on Castle St., so I wasn't able to get a picture of the building itself. Still, the street is only 2 blocks long, so I know I couldn't have been far away, and was walking the very same streets that Grandpa JJ did as a young boy. JJ was one of my two great-grandparents to live long enough to meet me, and I have memories of him and Grandma Molly from when I was a very little girl. Some of our other stops began to feel a bit academic in comparison to tracing the footsteps of someone I had known and loved.

A Visit to Pallasgreen, Co. Limerick

After Kells, the next of my ancestral hometowns that we visited on our trip to Ireland was Pallasgreen, Co. Limerick, where the Mulcahys were from. My 2x great-grandfather Michael Mulcahy had emigrated from Pallasgreen, likely in the 1880s, and he had returned for a visit with two of his sons, including my great-grandfather Joseph Mulcahy, in 1905. As a result, we have a somewhat closer connection to Pallasgreen than to Kells - I grew up knowing that my family came from Pallasgreen, but had to do the research to learn that we also came from Kells.

I had visited Pallasgreen once before, when I visited Ireland as an adolescent with my parents. We had been told that our family's old home was "the first house outside of town, on the road with the school." When asking for directions, we had this exchange with a local:

Dad: We're looking for the house where the Mulcahys lived. We were told it was the first house outside of town, on the road with the school."
Local: I know the house you're talking about, but there's no school on that road.
Dad: Can you tell us how you get there?
Local: Just stay straight on this road until you pass the school, and it will be on your left.

During our brief stop (in 1998), we had a bite to eat at the local pub; stopped by what we thought was the old Mulcahy house, though we were a bit unclear on that (no one was home); and my dad talked for a few minutes with the local town historian, who was since passed away. He brought my sister along for that conversation, and I kick myself regularly for not having joined them. I wouldn't have taken notes or anything, at that age, but I might have remembered something. I was at an age, however, when the embarrassment of knocking on a stranger's door and introducing ourselves far outweighed my interest in hearing what said stranger might have to say. That local historian has since passed away.

This time, the town seemed somewhat larger and more developed than I had remembered it, but I don't know if that was perception or reality. My husband Ben and I stopped and had lunch in the local pub, where I took a picture of an old handbill hanging framed on the wall, advertising 1869's fairs and pig markets. 

Before we left, I asked at the bar where we could find the graveyard where I'd been told the Mulcahys were buried - the graveyard "with the old church." They sent me down the road to the Old Pallas Cemetery. I'm pretty sure that on the way we would have passed the house where my family had lived, but I didn't recognize it from either our first visit or the photo I'd seen. It certainly was no longer the first house outside of town - a couple of new developments seemed to have sprung up just outside the main area of town. I already had a picture of the Mulcahy headstone, but I wanted to visit in person and look around the graveyard some more, and I was glad I did.

I'd been warned that this area of Ireland was overrun with Ryans - Michael Mulcahy's mother was a Ryan - or I might have been more excited when we entered the cemetery and noticed that every 2nd or 3rd stone seemed to have the name Ryan on it. I found the Mulcahy gravestone relatively quickly - it helped that I'd already seen a photo of it.

Mulcahy headstone, Old Pallas Graveyard, Co. Limerick

Mulcahy headstone, Old Pallas Graveyard, Co. Limerick

The people listed are my 3x great-grandfather James Mulcahy; his wife Margaret Ryan Mulcahy; two of their children, Ellen Mulcahy O'Brien and Johanna Mulcahy; Ellen's husband William O'Brien; their daughter Margaret O'Brien McMahon; and Margaret's husband Michael McMahon.

Then I looked around at the nearby stones to see if any of them might be related, and while I haven't had a chance to investigate what I found yet, there were several that looked promising. The nearest stone memorialized an Ellen Dwyer, which happens to be the name of one of the sponsors at my 2x great-grandfather's 1860 baptism. Nearby was another Dwyer stone. The next closest stone belonged to an Ellen Ryan. Although Ryans are everywhere, this one seemed significant both for its proximity to the Mulcahy plot and the names of the couple. Margaret Ryan Mulcahy had among her children both an Ellen and a Michael, and this stone was erected by a Michael Ryan to his wife Ellen, who appear to be of an age to have been in Margaret's parents' generation. Neither of these stones was particularly legible, and the photographs don't reveal the inscriptions at all, so I transcribed them to the best of my ability.

Tombstone of Ellen Dwyer, Old Pallas Graveyard, Co. Limerick

Of your charity

Pray for the soul of 

Ellen Dwyer

Who died on the 22 Dec 1865

Aged 47 years

Deeply regretted by her husband

Wm Dwyer Cobelish Pallasgrean

Who erected this as his affectionate

memorial

Headstone of Ellen Ryan, Old Pallas Graveyard, Co. Limerick

Erected

by

Michael Ryan

of Kilduff in mem of his

Beloved wife Ellen

RYAN alias HAYES who

Departed this life June

20th 1845 aged 51 years

After we left the graveyard, we drove into the nearby village of Nicker to visit the church where Micahel Mulcahy would have been baptized. It was beautiful inside, but I only got a picture of the exterior. However, I made a note of the plaque mentioning the church's builder and its history, which confirmed that this was the church building that was around in the Mulcahys' day:

Very Rev. Thomas O'Mahony

P.P. 1812-1849

Built this church in 1820

Died 4th Nov. 1849 and

is buried here

R.I.P.

Nicker Church, Pallasgreen, Co. Limerick

A Visit to Kells, Co. Meath

My husband and I just returned from a trip to Ireland. We aimed to visit all of our ancestral hometowns, though we fell a bit short. There were too many things to see, too little time, and no street signs in Dublin. (The hours we spent driving in circles or many miles in the wrong direction knocked at least one destination off of our itinerary.)

We met some cousins, and tried to take lots of pictures of the places we did visit, so I'm going to devote a post to each hometown we visited. This one is for Kells, Co. Meath.

My Mulvan(e)y and Rothwell families are from Kells. James Mulvany married Bridget Rothwell and John Mulvany married Ann Rothwell in Kells, Co. Meath in 1850 and 1851, respectively. I still have not nailed down who any of their parents were, or whether/how the two Mulvanys and two Rothwells were related to each other. I wasn't there to do research - I mostly just wanted to see the town, get a feel for it. I thought I might ask around to see if there were anywhere that a historically-minded visitor might like to see, or try to find the graveyard and take pictures of any Mulvany or Rothwell stones - even though I didn't know what first names I was looking for.

It was a Sunday afternoon when we arrived, so the entire town was dead. There was almost nothing open, and people were scarce. However, we took these pictures:

We missed the "Welcome to Kells" street sign, but got a picture of this in the window of the local bookstore.

Town of Kells

Town of Kells

We did visit the ancient monastic enclosure and the Kells Round Tower, and looked around the cemetery on the off-chance that we'd run across some Mulvany or Rothwell headstones. Their dates ranged from the 1700s to the much more recent. We didn't notice until we left graveyard that the church - and thus probably the cemetery - was Church of Ireland. My people were Catholics. 

On the way to the round tower and St. Columba's Church.

Kells Round Tower

Gravestones

Ben neglected to tell me that it had stopped raining.

Family History Tour: Park Slope

Over Memorial Day weekend, some friends and I had a picnic in Prospect Park to celebrate our many birthdays (several of which fall in the last week of May). Afterward, I dragged my husband (and he dragged the cooler) on a family history tour of the neighborhood. (That's what you get to do when it's (nearly) your birthday.)

I started out taking excited pictures of St. Saviour's School, where my grandfather, William James O'Hara, attended elementary school. Then I noticed the cornerstone, proclaiming that the building had been built in 1956, the year my 26-year grandfather was married.

We later ran into a gentleman who I think was the parish priest, when he mistook us for a couple searching for the baptism prep class. (Not quite yet, Father!) I asked about the original school, and he told me that a large house that had been used as the school had stood on the same spot where the current building now stands. I found a very brief history of the parish and school, complete with a sketch of what I might guess is the original school building, on the school website, suggesting that my grandfather would have attended grammar school in the old brick house known as "The Little Red Schoolhouse."

St. Saviour's School, Park Slope, Brooklyn

 We also took pictures of the outside of the church, which is where my grandfather was baptized. I tried to get inside to take interior photos, but at 6:30 in the evening on Memorial Day, I wasn't surprised to find the doors locked. (I was surprised that the parish was actually expecting new parents to show up to baptism prep class at that hour on the holiday!)

The cornerstone, dated 1906, shows that unlike the school, the church building was actually standing during my grandfather's childhood.

I also took pictures of 505 6th Street, the building where my grandfather spent his childhood. It was owned by his grandparents, John and Mary (King) O'Hara, and his parents, John and Mary (Quinn) O'Hara were tenants in one of several apartments in the building.

Unfortunately, there was scaffolding on the building next to 505 6th., and so it was impossible to get a picture of the entire building. Instead, I took a photo (above) of the door and address, and a photo (below) of the upper part of the building.

My grandfather used to tell us that because they lived across the street from the hospital (New York Methodist Hospital), there were often cars on their street at a time when cars were not necessarily common on other streets in Brooklyn. He told stories of playing stickball in the street and asking hospital visitors to move their cars, because, "Hey Mister, you're parked on third base!" (In the stories, they always moved their cars. Whether this was because it was a simpler time, with easier parking, or because of rose-colored nostalgia glasses, I'm not sure.)

View of NY Methodist Hospital from outside 505th 6th Street.

My great-great-grandmother, my grandfather's "Nanny," or Mary Gillan Quinn, lived on the next block at 524 5th Street. (My great-grandparents lived with one set of in-laws upstairs and one set around the corner. Blessing or curse?) I took several photos of that building as well. Mary Gillan Quinn lived there in 1940, as well as in 1941, when she died. She lived with "Uncle Terry," her son Terrence Quinn.

I hadn't been to Park Slope since I was a very young child. Growing up, I heard lots of Pop's stories, and when I went back over the holiday weekend, I was able to situate those stories in space for the first time. As Ben dragged the cooler up and down the streets, I was reminded that Pop once told me that they don't call it Park Slope for nothing: when he was a boy, Grandma Molly used to do her shopping at the bottom of the hill. She'd bring a wagon, and the boys could ride in it as she pulled them down the hill to the store. Then she'd fill the wagon with groceries, and they would get to pull it back up the hill. (I'm not sure that Ben found that connection to my grandfather entirely comforting!)