Announcing a discovery

After a second day in front of a computer at the ScotlandsPeople Record Centre, I have developed a sore throat.

No that is not the announcement. Regardless of discomfort I walked to the Dalkeith Local Studies Centre, which is open to 7pm on a Thursday. Two objectives - find Esbank Lodge, where a Buchan girl was a servant to a local banker. Secondly look at burial records or monument inscriptions in search of where the Robert Buchan who died in a mining accident at the age of 74 is buried, somewhere in Newbattle Parish. He died in 1887, and because there is an Old and New Newbattle Cemetery which opened in 1813, I didn’t know where he was buried. There is one major deficiency with Scottish records - they don’t include the burial location.

As it happened I walked down a new road today on the way to the train. Close readers of this blog know that the Newbattle Cemetery is quite close to the station, but it has been raining every time I arrived back from Edinburgh.

I photographed a rather posh gateway, with unicorns, along the way - hey that WAS Esbank Lodge, it is now a housing estate but the gates remain. A asked a man walking his elderly dogs were the Lodge was, hoping it was a well-known building. Apparently not, but the librarian found it on the internet.

I followed the road to the New Cemetery. Lots of graves, probably loads of relatives with new names I did not prepare to look for. I knew there were no Buchan monuments in that cemetery from online sources. There was a gate, that seemed to enter a new world, one that was unmowed, wild, abandoned. 

Into the wild wood

 This was the path to the old cemetery. I tried to pull aside any ivy or moss to be sure there was no Buchan hidden there.

 

I found a plaque stating 1629 - perhaps when it opened or an early grave marker. This area included both Dalkeith Abbey and Dalkeith Palace (a more modern build than it sounds). Some family tombs were amazing, see below. 

A re-made plaque for the very un-Scot sounding Junkison and Romans families.

But no luck. My shoes were saturated, and my sox, and my trouser legs, because the heavy rain and the above knee grass all had contributed to allow the water to cling to me. 

Never mind, I was off to Edinburgh, trying to follow a Google path on my phone (many people know I am pretty hopeless with directions). So I asked an elderly gent who was heading in the right direction, to just confirm my choice at a fork. Well he was a Scot who lived nearby, but he had also lived in Australia for 52 years, coming home to be near two children. In fact he had visitors from the Blue Mountains staying - would I like to come to see Dalkeith Palace? How nice, but I was already booked elsewhere.

So later in the day, in the Local Studies Centre, in the Monumental Inscriptions book for Old Newbattle Cemetery, I found that Robert was buried in Section 7. I had walked over the area unknowingly. I doubt there is a marker, but he is there. Sadly there is no record of his father George’s burial in 1818 or his mother Jean’s in 1849 - but I expect they are nearby.

He is in 7/12, and the book had a map to guide me when I go back. It is just a few hundred metres up the road from Fawlty Towers.

Tomorrow I am meeting up with Helen. She is the lady who believed that this same Robert Buchan married her ancestor, but she could never find him anywhere. In my exuberance in the DNA course, and with Michele Leonard as my coach, I found Helen’s ancestor born illegitimately in a minor church, called the Leith Relief Church in 1835. Possibly just one year after my ancestor Robert who emigrated to Australia in 1852; the two were half siblings.

So this man, whose resting place has been found, didn’t acknowledge the daughter, Jane Drysdale, and her mother married a sailor in 1837. [Note - I have always taken this to indicate that he was still married to Janet McRae]. Leith is the Port of Edinburgh. I hope to go there on Saturday. So Jane is on the 1841 census under her step-father’s surname. Her mother died of cholera in 1848. In the 1851 census, she is now called Jane Drysdale Buchan, now living with her maternal grandmother, still in Leith. From this time forward, she includes the surname Buchan on all her documents, and even begins a tradition of giving Buchan as a middle name that continued down to Helen’s own mother! It must mean she cared!

Tomorrow we plan to visit the cemetery again, visit homes of Robert and his wife Margaret, in Newtongrange and Lothian Bridge, and pop along to both the Abbey and Palace, and I hope the Mining Museum. Helen has never been to any of these places. She lives 30 minutes away, so we’ll have a nice half day out together. Helen and I are half fourth cousins. I share 35cM with her, pretty healthy, but my brother Peter shares 98cM with her, which is off the charts.

Newgrange - awe inspiring

Internet back on - must have been all the thunderstorm activity in the eastern half of Scotland.

So on our last day in Ireland, the Republic, we went to my one ‘must see of the trip’ - the megalithic tombs of Meath. I would have said Newgrange but I have since learned that Newgrange is but one of many and not even the biggest passage tomb in the area.

First to say, these structures are over 5,000 years older, older than Stonehenge or the Pyramids. There are two tombs that visitors can go to. We were taken to Knowth first, the biggest tomb, with two passage tombs, one from the west and the other from the east. They do not meet in the middle. You cannot enter the passageways but you can walk on the top of the mound. Around the outside of this mound are 130 three-tonne rocks which all told amount to over 50% of the megalithic art in all of Western Europe! This was all done in the Stone Age, before any metal was used, and there were likely not wheels, although rolling logs was thought to be possible.

The three main sites, and many smaller sites are arranged on the bend of the River Boyne.

Looking up to the ceiling at Knowth, 6m away. We were a little misled on the tour that everything is exactly as found. 

Not quite. Everything has been put back exactly as found, after the archeologists dismantled the whole built structure. We have to trust them they did it accurately.

They also dug out a trench around the perimeter to build a retaining wall, to provide a concrete overhang in order to protect the externally facing rock art.

This was impressive.

Then we went to Newgrange about one mile away. It has an amazing quartz entrance facade - but this was largely the archaeologist’s interpretation of finding a lot of quartz at the site. Here though were able to go to into the passage tomb. It was squeezed at some points and no photography was allowed. Fortunately the visitor Centre is full of such images, so the one above is from there exhibit. 

Newgrange is well known as the tomb which brings light into the end of the passage, where there are three recesses, forming a sort of a cross. Human remains were found here, charred bones mostly, but they were also found in the mound. There are just  a handful of individuals buried at Newgrange, but there are over 300 at Knowth. Everyone is waiting in the coming months for the DNA results to look at how closely related the individuals are. There is an assumption that only very exceptional - god like leaders would be buried in such tombs, and so they probably are related.

Why was it so awesome? Along the passage way, about 4-5 feet in height there are occasional images, but in the end with the recesses there is a lot more art and the ceiling is 6m tall! There are stone basins 3-4 feet across. The ceiling and the sides have all been constructed like kids Lego bricks, getting closer and closer together till there is just one big brick, one metre long rock, at the top. The visitor Centre had a lot of great animations, as it seemed to me that many Irish places had these. Maybe it’s just the modern capacity for such vivid, engaging story-telling about the past. Think sci-fi in reverse.

But of course the most awesome thing about it is that it only allows light in for about two weeks around the winter solstice. In other words it is signal that the harshness of winter is ending. Light comes into a ‘roof-box’ above the passage way. Newgrange is built into a hill, so that the roof box entry lines up exactly with the horizon, so the first rays of the sun pass down the roof-box into the end of the passage way (20m?).

Whoever thought of that?

I particularly liked the immersive forest where shadows of creatures flitted in and out, usually soundlessly, for man was a-hunting. There were recreations of Stone Age life, families, trading, crafts, fishing, scraping animal hides. There was a lot of speculation about spiritual beliefs and music, which was better than choosing a single approach and peddling that.

Places alongside rivers are dense, wet and drippy. We saw that in Ireland, and where I am now in Dalkeith, which is built on a plateau between two rivers, the vegetation is thick, dense and drippy. But it has been raining.

Here are some of the beautiful images on the rocks, which were themselves made by scraping a harder rock across the surface very many times.

This is my photo of a complicated drawing, that some people think might be to do with the moon.

Internet issues

Warnings everyone - I have no hotel Internet. Thank god for free WiFi everywhere else! I am using my phone as hotspot but I am perilously close to my data limit on this UK SIM card.

I have tried to contact Basil, I mean Ewen, but tomorrow is a very stressful day for him - meeting with council bureaucrats about being closed down. So we will wait and see.

Am loving Edinburgh, the architecture, the sights and the Records Centre. Hope to be back on line soon.

Here is the Duke of Wellington statute outside the National Records Centre, where I spent today.

Got rained on catching train back to Dalkeith, again. So no visit to Newbattle Cemetery as planned.

Maybe tomorrow morning. It is tantalizingly close to the train station.

Yesterday I met up with Janice. She is the lady whose DNA matches I used to find her biological father. We both had lasagne which was delicious at her favourite restaurant Giuliano, which is about five blocks from the train station. 

We are 5th cousins. She was lovely, very chatty and it was heart warming to put the person to the ‘research’.

I also met her 22 year old son, although he got lost while shopping and I hope they both got home to Fife.

Will sign off to save my data.

The Troubles in Belfast

We had just one day in Belfast. Half was taken with a walking tour, and some hours with the Titantic Experience. In truth the walking tour was the experience. 

Perhaps the best guided tour of anything, and a wonderfully fair, unbiased and moving three hours. 

It began in the rain, and it was a dark story, very dark indeed. This will not go in the blog, but I have tried to remember much of the detail. The overall theme was action - reaction - retaliation - revenge.

Our guide works from a script, but as a child of the troubles he was able to add his own experiences in a way that never intruded in the bigger story he had to tell. The company was Dead Centre Tours, named because for nearly 25 years Belfast was known as the Dead Centre, because the city was locked down between 6pm and 6am. 

In his efforts to be neutral in terms of explaining why the conflict took place over such a long time, it was hard to know whether he was born Catholic or Protestant. I guessed at one point he was Catholic, but after the tour he said he was born "a little Protestant, another Ulster man for the cause".

He told the story of the English in Ireland since 1100-something. He described how the planted settlers came to see themselves as needing defence from the natives. Over hundreds of years every action taken by rulers led to reactions by others which inevitable worsened the tensions between the Irish and the English and Scots.

We had nine stops in the Belfast centre, each the site of an atrocity that Steve clearly indicated where not unusual. Each stop was an opportunity to put one faction's point of view across, and as these changed over time. Two of the images he showed us that have not left me: two mums holding their children's hands walking to school. Just metres away was a  balaclava-clad gunman crouching behind a short wall; and the fresh faces in their British Army uniforms of three men who died after being befriended by an IRA rogue - two were brothers aged 19 and 17. 

There were a lot of groups and splinter groups to try to keep straight. The full humanity of each side was described. It got as bad as it could get. And then Bobby Sands was elected to the British Parliament in a by-election, while in jail. He later died there on a hunger strike. We have seen this by-election impact before. 

The centuries long war took a turn towards peace when people could express their wishes through the ballot  box. The English government realised that the IRA had a mandate of the people. But our guide felt that it was the intervention of USA president Bill Clinton to bring/force all parties to meet and negotiate. ?George Mitchell negotiated some good concessions for the IRA and good concessions for Rev Ian Paisely.

He felt some unexpected things happened to hasten peace. Punk rock brought Catholics and Protestants together to come to know each other; acid punk brought MDMA which apparently gives everyone who took it oxytocin rushes of friendliness; the internet in the 1990s opened lines of communication beyond the tight circles each side had existed in for generations; and people started to travel overseas.

And then there was Brexit, which the majority of Northern Irish voted against, but were forced to accept. The ties with organised religions are gone, and some of the ties to the British are also very weak. Our guide predicts that in the future Northern Ireland will vote to reunite with the Republic, although there is no time frame. An organic process is taking place, where economy more than religion is impacting on people’s view of the future.

A famine story

 Strokestown Famine Museum is a very good telling of a complex story. It tells the story of the Strokestown Estate. Due to the special circumstances of the estate the story was ever evolving.

Three generations of up-and-comers spent as much money as they could borrow in order to appear more wealthy than they really were.

Finally, in the 1840s an agent was brought in to make the estate solvent. One of his strategies was to remove tenants. Around the walls were the summary statements and wider picture of the estate and Ireland, while in the middle of the room were primary documents - bills, letters, petitions.

The second focus was on the state of Ireland before the Famine in 1845. It described that the vast majority of the Irish population were already living in abject poverty. They lived in either one room stone cottages if they were lucky, but the majority lived in mud cottages. Food was limited to the potato, over 95% of their diet. They might have meat twice a year and they lived off their wild vegetation, much worse than I imagined. By contrast a Belgium peasant only relied on the potato for 30% of their food.

It was displayed that in 1845 there were 935,448 people holding land. Under 10 acres - 505,173, 10-20 acres - 187,582, 20-50 acres - 141,819 and over 50 acres - 70,441. My McGuiness family had 45 acres, so they were probably living in Grade 2 housing, as shown below.

A second class house, as described in the 1841 census was “a good farm house, or in towns, a home in a small street, having from five to nine rooms with windows”.

This is a picture of the McGuinness house in Feakle, which was built ‘over 200 years ago’ when Daniel and I visited Ireland in 2008.

Of course it has been renovated. It is still lived in by one of the McGuinness boys born in the 1950-60s (John I think).

Another thing that led to the Irish potato blight to be so devastating was that there was never any cross-pollination of plants. Next years crop came from seed potatoes kept from the previous crop. Although there were already different varieties of potato, Irish people almost totally relied on the lumper potato which grew on the poorest quality soil. We were constantly amazed when farmers and other locals commented on the poor quality of soil, when it seemed to us that the land was abundantly green and covered in vegetation.

The new agent intensified his efforts to push tenants out. Historically the landowners of any place were responsible for the care of the poor, unemployable and the starving. They had just built workhouses across Ireland, before the famine, as part of a move to make the poor more institutionalized and seeking any sort of poor relief totally undesirable. Unfortunately just as they were opened, the famine hit and thousands of people needed the support of the parish and the workhouses. People were given ‘fake jobs’ really being to build roads and dykes etc - civil infrastructure. It was the only way they could afford to buy food of any sort.

Tenants implored the landowners for either work or food. They were starving by 1846. By 1847, the agent decided to pay for the tenants to emigrate to Canada. However, he did not pay very much, and a great many died before arrival. About 1400 tenants walked for six weeks from Strokestown to Dublin. As a tribute to these people, in modern times an annual pilgrimage takes place in June that follows their path along the Royal Canal. (We were interested in canals later in our holiday, and whether our own ancestors might have used the canals too).

Getting to the ship was the safest part of the journey. Half of the group died on the voyage, or on the quarantine island Grosse Ile. They went in four ships, with the mortality rate in brackets: Naomi (46%), Virginia’s (56%), John Mann (41%) and Erin’s Queen (28%).

The next twist in the tale was the murder of the agent, shot one day when returning to his home from a Board of Guardian meetings. Quickly a number of men were arrested, and someone was executed. The exhibition posed that he  may have been innocent.

The characters above are the modern narrator, the arrested man, the wronged son-in-law, and the bereft mother of the arrested man. His family claim that he worked tirelessly for the tenants, but from a further distance of time it is hard to see that.

There were many responses to any famine story. This exhibition was made intense by the primary sources underpinning the wider perspectives. Petitions, quotes from eye witnesses, 

The Tale of Finn McCool

 Susan, only a trainee tour guide, was very, very good. She told us all about how the Giant’s causeway was formed from volcanic rock, cooling quickly on the top, but much slower at the bottom, and how one crack appeared in a hexagon and before a few million years passed, all the rocks had continued to crack in that same pattern. 

Finally she told the real story which was about the giant, Finn McCool. He was 54 feet (about 18m) and had a lovely wife, Mrs McCool and a son who was young. One day he spied another giant over on Scotland.

Brief diversion- on a clear day you can see Donegal to the west and on a very clear day you can see an island of Scotland. Well our day was cool and intermittently cloudy, but we could see Scotland for a five minute period and I was watching very carefully.

So the two giants got into a bit of a slanging match, about who was the best giant and the biggest giant. And one day Finn started throwing rocks at the other giant, and because he was a giant these were very big rocks and built a sort of walkway to Scotland. They call this path a causeway. He ran across it. When he found the sleeping giant in Scotland, he saw that the other giant was twice as tall as him!

He ran away as quick as he could, but because he slipped and got his foot wet, and giants hate getting wet, he screamed - which woke the other giant. The Scottish giant ran after him. So Finn now begged his wife to help him, and she told him to wrap a white blanket around his naked body, and lie down in the son’s cot. So when the Scottish giant arrived she said, “Oh my husband is off fishing. But would you like to see our son, who is having his nap. When the Scottish giant saw Finn dressed up as a baby, he got quite a fright. “If the baby is that big then the Irish giant must be massive, so I had better get home as quick as I can”. And in running away he caused the causeway to crumble into the sea.

So ends the tale of Finn McCool and his very clever wife.

We were very surprised at how many hundreds of people were climbing all over the rocks. But they have been there for 65 million years and only deliberate quarrying has ever harmed it.

Now the rocks are recognized as a major tourist site. This started in the late 1700s after a female artist came down to draw them.

We were very brave and walked out to nearly the end of the biggest causeway, where the sea was getting rough and the algae was looking slipprier’. 

So as so-so as it might look in my photos, it was pretty spectacular. On to Belfast.

The Mass Rock

 Gerry Flynn got chatting to Kelly and Nick, and offered to open the church for us. A plain church on the outside, but “the second oldest church with continuous use in Ireland”. Does that explain the rigor with which the Drumragh cemetery was maintained?

We were duly impressed. The plaque on the wall said “erected 1764”, ie during the penal times. Inside was plain but respectful, Gerry genuflected and crossed himself as he passed the altar. It had been renovated regularly, and it had a toilet. Gerry, who was about our age, described how as a child he and his Daddy would sit in one arm of the church, while his Mammy and sisters would sit in another. This tradition does not continue, and families are now united.

Sheepishly, towards the end, he offered to take us to the Mass Rock, which as it turned out he lived not far from. So we followed him up to Pidgeon Top, left the car, walked through a gate onto a maintained pathway, currently accommodating some sheep, and walked down into ‘the glen’. Before he left us he pointed out the location - you see there - see the green shrubs.

Closer questioning provided the detail that the dark green clump of trees was where we had to go. Of course. And he told us there was a song about “ The Mass Rock in the Glen” , sung version to be heard on YouTube (links to come), on and Boneys something. Kelly wrote it down.

Apologies that I seem to have lost the power to move images around at present. I will correct when I can. The tableau includes a high white cross with a Jesus figure hanging there, a lumpy irregular rock about 3x2 feet in dimensions, so pretty small but which you might image could have been an altar, a smaller cross, and a large modern square concrete altar-proper. The Mass rock itself was protected by the later mortared stones around it. I wonder how many people attended Mass at this place in 1731?

Mass rocks were peculiar to Ireland’s Catholics in the 17-19th centuries when they were forbidden to build churches or at times even have Catholic priests (some fled to the Continent like the Earls). See acnireland.org If you google “Irish Mass Rocks” for the background and an image of a modern priest saying Mass in the woods.

Gerry told us that they still have Mass at this rock, about once a year - next one is in June. It was private land, donated to the congregation in the 1987.

A rock of a very different size and publicity was our next stop (sorry Derry the Mass Rock) robbed our time for ye.

Carrick-on-Where?

 How lovely to be staying in a place with coloured towels and flowers on the coverlet. We are in regional Leitrim, just over the border from Roscommon. The rooms are small, a bit of Tetris to shower, clean face and teeth by opening and closing doors. It is small and cosy and quite relaxing. We have everything we need. I slept all night again. I actually did miss much most of Roscommon as I might have slept part of the drive.

Irish B&Bs were lovely. The wife cooked and the husband served. Our waiter was Sean (or James) and he hovered sensitively. The breakfasts were great, whether the standard Irish Breakfast or omelette with salmon. Delicious. I would have like two eggs but I only got that with my Scottish Breakfast. Actually the two dishes are identical except that they added haggis! Yes really. Instead of black and white pudding. I loved black pudding and tomato sauce as a kid.

See a picture of my Scottish Breakfast at the end of this post.

 

I got to use this lovely sitting room on our second night in Carrick-On-Shannon, when I chose not to get another restaurant meal - and missed great Irish street singing!

To compensate, TV and a few history books. I discovered that Hugh McTernan was one of the landowners compensated by the English Government after Cromwell took away his lands.

(Hugh is the name of Kelly’s immigrant ancestor, and lovely to see this continuity). More details below.

While I slept on route, I am sure there was a lot of green, stone walled fields, sheep more than cows but they are big cows, and a ruined house every 2.7 kms. The latter is in their EU grant conditions. This B&B was upgraded with an EU grant but we all know the charm of ruined buildings. Sadly since most of the roads have 100km/hour speed limits, I am not capturing many on my camera. But I am drawn to them - that’s why they must stay.

As John of Feakle told us “the Irish like to build new, but every other nationality likes to renovate the old buildings”. This is no back water, although there is water and it is popular sailing holiday destination. Our meal last night had goats cheese, beef rib, salted caramel mousse etc etc. 

Today we go to Drumkeeran to look for McTiernans. They were early residents of Burra, quite fertile (17 kids) and take up most of Michelago Cemetery. Kelly’s other early Burra residents were the McNamaras, with the London Bridge property and Katy Flats. The McTiernans were at Hill Top - all names still in use today and not far from Geordie’s home. The unremarkable thing is that the McTiernans joined the McNamaras within a generation of immigration.

We knew that the McTernans were from Drumkeerin. So we drove there, only two places to get food and drinks from despite half a dozen outlets existed (most not operating). Kelly went to the Post Office where the young officer informed her that her mother was a McTernan. Kelly spoke to Paddy McTernan there on the spot. We knocked on a random house in the country, the owner was related to a McTernan within two generations.

Street scene of Drumkeeran, and above. It was an overcast day.I thought it was a lovely little town, although quite a few stores and businesses were closed. 

There were just two places to eat, “Lucy’s” ( a polish lady apparently, and a corner store where the worker made our sandwiches - Kelly does prefer just made, not pre-packed. I visited their MARBLE LINED BATHROOM. REALLY. I am very impressed with Irish plumbing overall. Good flush and so much variety in how to operate the taps.

All told we went to five cemeteries, always told of another one every time we stopped to ask for directions. We needed to recall that Loch Allen was near Mount Allen (now a power station), and Hugh McTernan - he who came to Australia - named his property Mount Allen. It is in Burra, Australia still, about to become a residential estate.

We found McTernans, because they are everywhere, but not THE headstone of a John McTernan and Julia Groves, suggested as possible parents of Hugh. One graveyard had just been whippersnipped, allowing us to actually read them. The saddest graveyard was around an abandoned ‘convent’ (a very tiny building, and covered in thick ivy). Here the majority of the tombstones were slabs on stone, the length of a person, lying flat on the ground. Many were covered in moss or ivy, but we could not even see if writing was even on them. An exception was a stone off to the side, aren’t they always, which did have writing. “John McKernan died 1851 aged 86 years and his wife Bridget”, although a known variant it was probably not Kelly’s John.

Another day another townland, and a new name Barrett. Drumragh Catholic cemetery is a shoo-in for tidiest cemetery in Ireland. The bevy of people with cleaning utensils in their hands was a give away. One of the chatty locals was Gerry Quinn whose family had lived in the area since 1730, but that was not the most extraordinary thing he had to show us. But that must wait for another post.

Before leaving Carrick-on-Shannon, a name Oarsmen and the Australian-Irish couple with her dire warnings about being kneecapped in Derry! And the extraordinary system of one way roads that had us criss-crossing, or perhaps spiraling around this little town to be able to leave on the very same road that the B&B seemed to be very close to; and similarly never allowed us to get to the church on the hill.

This is what our typical cooked breakfast involved. Add mushrooms.

Travelling needs energy!

Ennis - Finding Mary Ann Herrolds Madigan

 I have but one actual connection to Ennis apart from the by-election of 1828.

Mary Madigan was tried in Ennis on 28 February 1848. This I knew from her convict record and from her Dublin gaol record. Tracking her down took a few surprising turns.

The first full day in Ennis started with a private tour with historian Dr Jane O’Brien. After finding out my connection, she expressed surprise that we could go so far back in our family trees. But then she said …….

“You know the gaol used to be in your hotel”. Yes it’s true she said that. But not quite true as the ‘Old Ground Hotel’ was a bit of a Lego build. Lots of additions. 

Our rooms appeared  to be in an 18th century manor house but an ugly one, and best covered up with ivy. The reason there is only one image of the hotel on the website - it is quite ugly. And not in an historic way - a more square and modern-like.

But there was a tower block from the 15th century, and our guide took us up by the back stairs to see a storage room with a lovely medieval feel to it and a fireplace - dated 1553 - although from another ruin. Then there was the story about finding dungeons below the Old Town Hall restaurant when they were renovating. Chains intact. I have clued up the reception to staff to ask the owner Mr Flynn when he gets in this morning.

Just look at how thick those walls are in the 15th century tower block.

See below for a bit about the hotel, Mr Flynn buying at age 29 because he used to come here with his mother, accountant PWC in USA, but from Cork, I think. Renovations THR in the 1990s , broke through a wall, found the shackles and chains abandoned on the floor. They were given to Clare Museum in the 1990s, but have since been lost- I am on the trail.

I think this is more likely to be one of the gaol buildings. On the other side it is on O’Connell St, which used to be known as Jail St. prison buildings where on both sides of Jail St, with cells on one side and exercise yards on the other. There was a bridge across the street to allow movement of prisoners.

Image of Jail St, post 1860s erection of O’Connell Monument at the end.

I spent a few hours in the Clare Local Studies Centre. The only newspaper at the time was the Clare Journal (it is not in the NLA). I found just one paragraph about Mary but importantly it gave the date of her crime, her co-accused, the name of the victim and his location! Would this finally nail Mary down to Killofin (home of Catherine Madigan)? Well as the librarian explained, many lesser-known place names being Irish, were mis-heard by the journalists of the day - not generally Irish speakers,

So here are the facts as reported in the Clare Journal, Monday February 1848:

“Arson.

Margaret Leary and Mary Madigan were indicted and given in charge for having set fire to the house of Michael Morrissey on 4 December last.

Michael Morrissey – lives at Kilchelane; was at home in the early part of the night of 4 December last; went out to watch corn that night; on my return home. I discovered my house on fire; when I came up I saw two women one near the house and the other about four or 5 yards from her; they ran away and I ran after them; overtook one of them. Her name is Margaret Leary identify her asked her why she burned the house and she made no answer. Don’t know what became of the other woman witness went back when he saw the house so much on fire and Margaret Leary tour herself away saw the prison next day at the widow Hayes house did not know Mary Madigan the night after the fire  they were arrested by the police soon after, and they then admitted they had burned the house. Several other witnesses were examined in support of the prosecution and the jury without leaving the box found the prisoners guilty. The court then rose.”

I can name her jurors - all men, of course:

William Adams Brew, William Arthur, James McMahon, John Westropp, Jonas Studdert, John Blood, John Gabbett, Robert H. Burrowes, strettle Scott, Hewitt Bridgman, Daniel O’Grady and Matthew Canny. I must assume they acceded to Mary’s wish to be transported. So they gave her 15 years, a long sentence for a woman (well teenager really).

So Mary was imprisoned from 5 December 1847 to some time after 28 February 1848. I have some descriptions of the jail from Clare Library …….

Mary was held in Grangegorman Prison in Dublin, from where she was transported upon the Kinnear 2. The ship did not leave till June 1848, so maybe another three months in a second jail.

Grangegorman opened in 1836 as the first all female prison in the British Isles. Its records are detailed, and provide the detail of her siblings. Strangely an attendant at the Collin Barracks museum in Dublin told me that Grangegorman had never been a prison, but it had been a mental asylum! Its function in relation to convicts was to prepare the women to be useful workers in Australia.

Michael Talty, executive librarian then spent half an hour looking for that location. Because of the clue of Killofin, he focused on the parish of that name in mid Clare, where we had been earlier. He thinks that a possible location is Kilkerin, number 12 in the map below.

It has townlands called Killofin and Kilkerin, which is the one he thinks sounds most like kilchelane. I can’t see it or hear it myself.

However he then went to see what records of Madigans were in Killofin and he says there were ‘many’. Several John’s and Patrick’s were married at about the right age. I have much to do browsing through the parish records on the National Library of Ireland site. But I do think ancestry has an index.

Galway City is vibrant

We went to Galway City for its rich medieval history, so unique on the western side of Ireland. It was said to be a vibrant town due to its music and 20% student population. I liked it. From the views from the top of the multi-storey parking lot, to the castle walls incorporated into the shopping Centre (yes I thought it looked fake too) and the cheerful pedestrian malls. See for yourself.

The deal with the walls. Galway City was an English enclave during the medieval period. 

The first rulers were the de Burgo family (Normans of course), who became the Burkes. They took the land of the O’Flahertys and the O’Hallorans, and built the town walls. All paid for by taxing trade.

Galway was eventually ruled by 14 trader families, who each year elected a mayor. In general there was a lot of co-operation between them. They received a charter from King Richard III giving them more control over their affairs, they were not popular with the Irish outside the walls. The city did poorly with Cromwell in the 1660s.

The deal with the bear - who knows.

I think it was cheerful, lots of claddagh rings, peace and harmony, happier people. An onsite story-telling Irishmen waiting for tourists to walk into the Hall of the Red Earl. In 5 minutes he gave us an amusing but fact-filled history of Galway and all Ireland really.

It is an archeological find preserved by the office blocks around it, indeed discovered only when the office blocks were found. Now where did that happen before? (It was at Wood Quay in Dublin).

Emoh Ruo - Iragh

 Iragh is a townland in the Roman Catholic parish of O’Callaghans Mills, in County Clare (of course). The village of O’Callaghans Mills straddled the road from Killaloe to Ennis, but the road is not straight due to mountains. It is relatively small, and we stopped there yesterday. The village has changed since 2008 - there are more new houses, but there are all the old ones, and I did not see the pub which in 2008 was next to even-then disused petrol station.

This signpost in O’Callaghans Mills shows the distances to both big towns, like Ennis and Limerick City, as well smaller regional towns of Tulla and Broadford.

There was no-where to eat in O’Callaghans Mills, so on our way to the Killaloe Bridge we had a late lunch at Broadford. Quiche all round, the longest microwave in history, but it was very nice after all that.

Part of the 120km walking track, the East Clare Way, shows the townland of Iragh just north-east of the village.

Some of the unattended buildings in Iragh.

The McGuiness family in Iragh:

The first record of a McGuiness was James Magennis who was enrolled on the Voters List for County Clare in 1816. His tenancy was 40 shillings a year, and there were about 7,000 men. The majority were Roman Catholic, and when called to vote would do so in open view of their landlords, who generally determined who would be the candidates. Such lists were drawn up after Ireland joined Great Britain in 1801 to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and as such men of property were eligible to vote in the country’s Parliamentry Elections. Voting took place in the market square of Ennis.

Turners painting of Ennis market place about 1820.

James may have been there (if still alive) to vote in a crucial political shift in the history of Ireland. Lawyer Daniel O’Connell born in County Cork, encouraged enough of the Catholic majority to vote for him in a by-election for the Parliamentry seat of Clare. He was the first Roman Catholic elected to the British Parliament, although he was unable to sit due to the existing Penal Laws which overall aimed to deny power and authority to any one of that religion.

Once elected, he was able to advocate for repeal of these laws, thus bring in the Emancipation Act of 1829. Catholics could now build churches, educate their children, create registers of their religious actions such as baptisms, marriages and burials - records much loved by genealogists. In consequence to prevent another Catholic getting into Parliament the property criteria for eligibility to vote was raised from 40 shillings to ten pounds. The vast majority of tenant farmers were now disenfranchised, and no McGuiness stayed on the voter lists. County Clare is extremely lucky that a paper record of the register was found amongst a Bishop’s papers. It was not kept for many other Counties.

The other McGuiness man who may have voted in Daniel O’Connell was Patrick McGuiness of Feakle. His land was also valued at the minimum 40 shillings annual rent. I have traced Patrick’s family a few generations before I lose them. But one of his daughters, Catherine, married James Pepper who ran the Peppers Bar since 1810 in Feakle. When we visited it, I met Gary Pepper, still running the show and to be succeeded by his son Joseph - making it a continuous family business of 214 years!!

If his line goes back to Catherine McGuiness and James Pepper, then he is a distant relative of mine. It was enough to get his email details, but I also know where he works. See my future post ‘On the Pepper Trail’. The building has been repainted when the new double glazed windows went in.

Back to James McGuiness in Iragh. In the 1820s he is noted on the Tithe Aplottment Books, being a register of how much money he needs to pay TO THE RIVAL CHURCH OF IRELAND - when his religion is virtually unlawful, or at best ‘penalised’. Anyway this record does say he had meadows ‘across the road’, and there is only one road. There are only seven farms on the Tithe books, and James has the most ‘first grade land’.

In the 1820s, James has at least three adult sons. One is married in 1821 and will go on to have ten children, including nine boys. Later in the 1820s, son Daniel will marry Mary Tuohy and they will have the first of six children, James named after his grandfather. Another son, John, will marry and have his boys in the 1830s. All told there are many mouths to feed through the famines of the 1820s in county Clare, and into the strife of the 1830s. 

Daniel and Mary will emigrate as ‘Bounty Emigrants in 1841, taking their two eldest children, but leaving at least three behind. Then the famine hits. His eldest brother James, of the ten children, will emigrate to South Africa for three years leaving in 1849, and reach Australia in 1853. I can not find their brother John and his family. All ten children survived the famine and the voyage.

Images of greener times:

The following images are scenes my McGuiness families would have seen, all green visions snapped on the eastern side of O’Callaghans Mills, where the townland of Iragh began. Somewhere along that road is the McGuiness farm.

An uncommon sight this tunnel

So green it hurts your eyes