dry-stone wall, Black Head, County Clare

How do you tell a story true? This is the dilemma of anyone attempting to write about history. It is stone upon stone.

I pulled Thomas Flanagan’s fine book, Tenants of Time, off the shelf a few days ago – it has been fifteen years since I first read it. His historical fiction – an Irish trilogy – is masterful, poetic and sharp. And there, at the end of the opening paragraph, as if addressed to me (save for the gender of his principal character): “He had fallen in love with the past, a profitless love.”

But profitless or no, I am captive. And ironically, there’s no going back. Trying to decipher the past is a minefield of challenge.

Lately I’ve been intrigued by the ways in which other writers and researchers address the issue of discerning what was the truth of what happened in an event, a time, a life in which you were not present. What is the truth – in fiction and non-fiction? How do you find it?

Mr. Flanagan’s historical fiction, Tenants of Time, covers an ineffectual rising in Ireland in 1867 through the time of Parnell, by telling the story through the voice and lens of an assortment of characters, one of whom is the historian who is trying to get at the truth of what happened. Positions in society, clashes of culture and politics all color the event, each character a witness with partial vision: “He had come to believe that what had happened…had a shape, a design, a theme which worked itself out in the variations of a dozen lives.”

Timothy Egan’s recent Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher is an insightful history/bio, telling the story of  Edward Curtis, the great American photographer of the west. Curtis became obsessed with capturing the truth of the lives of native tribes that were systematically being destroyed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His medium was photography, working in close proximity and great respect with his subjects. Curtis lived for months with native tribes whose existence and way of life was threatened, particularly those along the west coast. In many cases, his photographs are the only evidence that these people lived and of their culture. He kept voluminous notes and wrote down languages that are now lost. Curtis risked his marriage, his family and his life to do this, so important did he feel it to be. He was trying to capture the truth of the past that America was daily eradicating.

Two lyrical works of fiction stand out for me in addressing the quest for truth through what is revealed and what is hidden. Both are very personal stories.

The first, Irish writer Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture, takes the reader on an emerging path, where assumptions that have held the authority of ‘truth’ are the briars that must be cut away. Roseanne McNulty is a 99-year-old inmate of a crumbling mental hospital in Roscommon; Dr. Grene, the psychiatrist who must decide what to do with her as the building is closed down. The story is told alternately from the point of view of each of them. Barry’s own statement speaks of the tension inherent in sorting out what we think we know from what it true, “History, as far as I can see, is not the arrangement of what happens,” he writes, “but a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth.”

The second is a small and perfect story, The All of It, one of only two novels by American writer Jeannette Haien. Written in 1986 and set in Ireland, it was reprinted in 2011 with a beautiful forward by Ann Patchett. A good priest, Fr. Declan, struggles with the story/confession of a female parishioner – what is hidden, what is revealed, what is true in the deepest way of the telling. Haien died in 2008, but she left us most generously with this almost mythic story – those I know who have read it are the better for the reading. Again, the tension between assumption and truth sit together uncomfortably at the center of the story. Yet revelation has the power to be an act of redemption.

Anyone who has tried to understand their own story or the story of their family will know the struggle to find the truth – “the all of it.” There are no quick and easy answers. You will trip over your roots frequently. No list of dates and names and places will tell you a life. If you want to know the marrow of a life or a time, you must put one foot in front of the other and start down the road. Along the way beware of false signs, cut away the briars of assumption and follow the path that seems most true. And always be ready for redemption.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,400 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

first prize

Potatoes. They’re the reason I’m here in North America.

I was born one hundred years after An Gorta Mor (the Great Hunger) began. I live in a world of material abundance, secularity, instant – and constant – communication, automobiles and airplanes. I can pick up a phone and reach friends across the sea as quickly as those down the street. It would be as impossible for my Irish great-grandparents to comprehend my world today as it is for me to understand the world they knew as children when the blight hit.

But I try anyway. I read and wonder and struggle to peel back the years to catch a glimpse of what they might have seen or heard or felt. I imagine there is an echo of their memory somewhere in mine.

looking back

The story of the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1845 – 1851 is not a story about potato blight. It’s a story about poverty, about the role of government and about a chasm between socio-economic classes so great that those at the top and those at the bottom may as well have been living on different planets.  Although the fungus that struck Ireland’s potato crop appeared with no warning, the famine it precipitated did not happen overnight.

My great-grandparents were children in 1845 when the first potatoes blackened and rotted on what had first appeared to be a healthy crop. Nine, ten years old, their parents were laborers and tenant farmers in the Irish midlands – the Farrellys in Cavan, the McKennas just over the border in Meath.  Patrick Farrelly’s family had been  growers and spinners of linen before the trade collapsed. Bridget McKenna’s family likely followed the same path. The industrial revolution in England and Belfast brought about the end of the cottage industry in Cavan – spinning and weaving – and those families who had depended on it suddenly found themselves in a frighteningly precarious position. They were poor to begin with, but they now had no safety net. As all people living in poverty, on the edge, they were one crisis away from destitution. They depended completely on the potato for their sustenance. And then disaster struck.

Famine Memorial, Dublin, by sculptor Rowan Gillespie

By the end, County Cavan lost close to 30% of its population from famine, disease and emigration. Accurate figures are difficult, if not impossible to establish – if an entire family died out or emigrated, who was left to tell the census takers? Cavan ranked number six worst hit of Ireland’s thirty-two counties. County Meath fared only slightly better.

Neglect and mismanagement by those in power in the British government – laissez-faire ideology and long held antipathy toward the Irish people – undermined genuine attempts by good people to address what rapidly became a national catastrophic event. Ireland had been governed by England since the Act of Union in 1801. The British Parliament’s approach for dealing with the Irish poor was to build workhouses. They were a dreaded place to go; many people died at home or on the road rather than enter. Upon entry families were split up, men from women, children from parents.  In 1846 there were 128 throughout the country; by the end of the famine, there were 163 workhouses in Ireland – designed for hundreds, they now held thousands in squalid conditions.

Between 1845 and 1855 one and a half to two million Irish men, women and children left Ireland for our shores; the experience of the famine seared into their lives. For many, it wasn’t talked about, but it persisted in the background of their emotional and political inclinations. Today is a new day. Ireland became an independent nation in 1922 after centuries of subjugation, joining the European Union in 1973. Ireland’s relationship with England continues to heal and strengthen. Even so, the wounds are deep and the famine – just two generations past – is a difficult topic to talk about.

tumbled cottage, Lisnabantry, Cavan

The land holds quiet reminders and remnants  - abandoned stone cottages, workhouse ruins, a memorial in the back of a cemetery, a briar covered mound in a field that hides a tumbled stone cottage. Many cottages before and during the famine were built of mud and thatch, and have been simply swallowed up by the earth .

When I visit – when I ‘come home’ as my Irish friends say – I know that life will slow down and I will be richly fed and watered with conversation, cups of tea and pints of Guinness. And I also know  that somewhere in the course of days, we’ll make a stop by the cemetery. We’ll pay our respects.

Moynalty cemetery

The photo above is of the “new” cemetery near the church in my great-grandmother’s village. In the ”old” cemeteries, there are memorials marking famine burials – one on the edge of the village of my great-grandfater and one high up in the hills.

“In memory of the three hundred & twenty sons & daughters of the parish of Mullagh who died during the Great Famine 1845 – 1849″

I realize I may have relatives here, under this ground, who died in the famine. I presume that I do and that there are friends and neighbors of my people buried here.

These old famine burial sites aren’t always easy to find – you need to search them out. Sometimes they may be noted in a guidebook, or marked by a small brown heritage sign along the road or mentioned in conversation.  They wait for their infrequent visitors.

I don’t know if other children of the diaspora search them out, but I can’t imagine coming to this country and not doing so.

There are larger famine burial sites in Ireland, and last fall we visited two of them.

In Kilkenny we looked for the Callan workhouse cemetery, which I’d read about in a guide book. A young girl at the convenience store gave us directions, with a warning that once we got there, not to drive down the road to the cemetery unless we wanted to get stuck in the mud. On a winding rural road two miles from the town center, past the ruins of its once massive workhouse, we saw the small sign that said, simply: “famine cemetery.”

We left our car and made our way down an narrow and deeply rutted dirt road. It had rained during in the week and the path was quite muddy – you had to hunt for solid ground for your next step, and eventually we saw stone gates up ahead. We went in to find two large open fields of grass separated by hedges and bordered by trees bearing small yellow cherry-like fruit. It felt remarkably peaceful.The sign on the gate stated that “uncounted persons” lay buried here in this huge mass grave which the workhouse had continued to use from 1841 until 1922. During the five years of the famine alone, 3,515 individuals died in the Callan workhouse and fever sheds.  It was not difficult to imagine the countless trips of the cart, the creak of it’s wheels under it’s load of bodies as it rumbled, sometimes daily, down that long rutted road.

Callan workhouse cemetery – mass burial site

Further south in County Cork, we took a side trip to Skibbereen. Along the Ilen river is the Skibbereen Heritage Centre. which houses a small interactive educational section about the famine in general and it’s effect on the local area in particular. Across the river from the Centre is the cemetery of Abbeystrewery, the site of a 13th century Cistercian abbey, which holds a large famine burial ground.

Anyone of Irish descent who has an interest in learning their own 19th century emigrant past has probably heard of Skibbereen. Although many areas of Ireland suffered as much and more during the famine, Skibbereen became nearly synonymous with the  famine primarily through the song of the same name, sometimes referred to as “the emigrant’s song.”

Today, the town’s website boasts: Skibbereen is a vibrant, colourful and friendly town where you can sample the very best of West Cork’s best artisan food and craft.

And so it is. But in its history section it describes its devastating past:
People crawled into Skibbereen from the country, in the hope of finding some food, and died there. The Workhouse became overcrowded, and though built to hold only 800 people, eventually it had 1449 inmates, and then had to be closed against any more. The mortality there was frightful, 140 having died in December 1846 and, early in 1847 there were as many as 65 deaths in one week.The Skibbereen victims were buried in the workhouse grounds, in the Old Chapel Yard, and even in the cabins and gardens where they died, but mainly in the Abbey Graveyard, where a large plot of ground was reserved for them near the entrance gate…

famine graves: Abbeystrewery, Skibbereen

It is estimated that 8,000 to 10,000 famine victims are interred here in mass burial pits.

I feel a duty to go where these graves are, where these men, women and children who had  lives and names, now lie nameless. It is so very quiet and peaceful – a bird’s song breaking the silence.

I don’t know if my presence matters here to these many souls, but it matters to me. I came here to remember them, acknowledging that I exist because my great-grandparents survived and escaped the horror that took the lives of those buried here – and I will not forget them.

They will continue to remind me that those of us who live with abundance – when we have even the most basic needs of life met – that we are called, individually and collectively, to care for the common good and for the dignity of every person. It is the least we can do.

Civil War street names, Evanston, Illinois

In the south end of Evanston, Lee Street comes to an abrupt dead-end at Sherman Avenue. Appropriately, it was Sherman whose scorched earth “March to the Sea” was the beginning of the dead-end of any hope for General Lee’s confederate army in the U.S. Civil War. Not to be forgotten up on the north end of town, General Grant and President Lincoln are duly honored with dignified tree-lined streets.

Our city’s original street names – in addition to the customary Main and Central – commemorate war heroes, local founders of the city, landowners and several varieties of trees. Some American cities and suburbs get more creative: I used to live in University City, (the location of Washington University) just west of St. Louis. University City’s founder had big dreams of creating a utopian place of learning and named every street after an American college or university.

What goes into naming a place? Who gets to decide? What was the original meaning and what does it mean now? 

During the British mapping of Ireland in the Ordnance Survey of 1821-46, the need for ‘accurate’ place-names became a critical issue. How would a map make sense if the names on it were unintelligible by an English speaking world? So the British undertook a major effort to figure this out.

It was not that the Irish were lacking in the naming category during the 19th century. Every townland, field, mountain, hill, crossroad, rock, river and stream had been given a name; words or phrases in Irish, descriptive of the landscape or related to the history or mythology of the place – the meaning understood by every local person.

directions – County Cavan, Ireland

The ‘Age of Enlightenment’ was in full flower at the time of the Ordnance Survey. In Europe and America, the primary idea of the Enlightenment was that science could reform society and advance knowledge. It was an idea among the upper classes that was not only accepted, but celebrated.

There were two streams of thought in this Enlightenment concept. They went something like this:
#1: we (who are in power) determine that a particular society (you who are under our control) needs reforming and we (who are in power) know best how to do that.
or
#2: we (who are in power) are fascinated by a particular society (you who are under our control) and we (who are in power) want to study it, as we would study any object in a museum.

Neither approach recognized the particular society as having intrinsic value or accepted that it may posses a knowledge base of it’s own. Neither approach recognized the wisdom, depth, nuance or complexity of the culture it proposed to reform or study.

At this time in England and in America (see ‘noble savage’ concept), there was a heightened fascination with the culture of the ‘other,’ especially if one happened to be the colonizer of the ‘other.’ In the mind of the 19th century British elite, Ireland fell into this category along with Africa, India, Australia. The people of these colonized, yet ‘foreign,’ areas were studied along with the flora and fauna of the place. The Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Romanticism sat on each side of the scale. If Enlightenment made the subject a cold scientific study, Romanticism idealized it. Either way, the people whose culture was under the microscope or behind the rose-colored glasses were held apart: a culture as unlike that of those studying it as if it came from another planet.

Ordnance map, Curraghmore townland, Co. Cavan

This was the background in which the Ordnance Survey committee set out to do more than just make a map – to put down the name and to learn about each place they mapped. To scientifically identify each townland and ancient site whose name (either translated into English or sounded out phonetically) would exist on the map.

The obstacle was language. Very few English knew Irish Gaelic, which was viewed as a sort of relic, but ultimately backward and of no literary value. In a stroke of luck or providence, the committee put Thomas Larcom and George Petrie in charge, and they had the foresight to hire two important Irish speakers and scholars to lead the way. John O’Donovan and Eugene Curry, working closely with Larcom and Petrie, managed at least in their reports, to preserve the integrity of the culture of which they were both resident and observer.

The challenge was to learn the names of each townland (Ireland has approximately 60,000 of these small geographic divisions) and of physical monuments or ancient sites of importance. The end result was either an Anglicized attempt at the name which now made no sense or a transliteration of the original Irish word. For example, Crowhill, a townland in Kilkenny has nothing to do with crows or hills. It is simply a corruption of the Irish Creamhchoil, ‘wild garlic wood.’ An example of a good transliteration is Crossreagh, a townland in Cavan which is closer in sound and spelling to the original Irish name, An Chros Riabhach, meaning ‘the grey cross.’ Crossreagh has not lost it’s meaning as Crowhill has. Sometimes an Irish place-name was lost entirely, when the influence of the landowner took precedence as it did for Smithborough in Monaghan. No longer Na Mullai, ‘the hilltops,’ it was now known by the man who owned it.

In addition to the place-name work, some surveyors were also charged with creating a ‘memoir’ of cultural information. Little of the memoirs was ever published, although notes from surveyors have survived. They must be read with a discerning lens, sorting out the prejudice and ignorance of non-Irish surveyors – and yet, the notes remain a critically important window into Ireland before so much of the language, music and tradition was swept away in the wholesale cultural destruction of the famine which would come immediately on the heals of completion of the survey.

When I’m in Ireland, I pick up some of the language from learning place-names. And I learn from them something about the history of the place – something about what this particular place meant to those who lived here centuries ago. I am thankful that once true independence was secured, the Irish Republic made the decision to maintain Irish as the national language. The recognition of the value and knowledge inherent in language made that decision a clear statement of national independence and integrity.

Today on most public signs in Ireland, you can count on finding the true Irish name along with the anglicized version that the early Ordnance Survey created. When I drive across the bridge that spans An Abhainn Rua, ‘the red river,’ (it’s meaning lost in the Ordnance Survey’s anglicization to Owenroe)and approach the small village of my ancestors, known as Moynalty, I am aware that I am really coming home to Mágh n-Ealta, tothe ‘plain of the flocks’ – and that means something to me.

If you’re interested in learning more about The Ordnance Survey of Ireland 1824, I recommend the following books:
“The Irish Ordnance Survey” by Gillian M. Doherty; Four Courts Press, 2004
“Civilizing Ireland” by Stiofán Ó Cadhla; Irish Academic Press, 2007
and if you’d like to know more about Irish place-names and their origins, these are two helpful references:
“A Dictionary of Irish Place-Names” by Adrian Room; Appletree Press, 1994
“Irish Place Names” by Deirdre and Laurence Flanagan; Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2002

Welcome to the plain of the flocks – Moynalty, Co. Meath

upcoming posts:
paying my respects (visits to the famine dead)
after the ship docks (landing in America)

Awards for me? Really?

Thanks to Morgan Mussel at The First Gates for nominating therootsystems for The Versatile Blogger Award, and to Robert Santafede at Robert Santafede Photography for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

I’m honored, especially as these are two of my favorite blogs.

The nice thing about blog awards, is that they give you an opportunity to nominate blogs that you admire and that others might not be aware of.  (A side note: if you have already received awards, or would rather not, my apologies – feel free to accept or ignore)

So here are my nominations for the Versatile Blogger Award and the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

These are all great blogs – I hope you’ll check them out!

The Versatile Blogger Award:
HundredPics
Photography by CJP
Shootabout
Emerald Pie
Lens and Pens by Sally
Photo Nature Blog

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award:
DianaJHale
The Word Hoarder
Cornwall – A Photographic Journey
Claire Atkinson
Remember
Pieces of Me and Other Sundry Things
TimeNexus

so many places, so little time…

Maps. I can get lost in them.

My first encounter with maps was through TripTiks – Triple A’s wonderful little travel guides that our family always took along on road trips. From age 8 – 12 or so, being the only kid at home, I got the role of navigator. Or at least I assumed that role. For the uninitiated, the TripTik was a vertical spiral bound booklet that followed your road plan – address to address – with tips along the way, places to stop for dinner or lodging. They are still available from AAA, online and interactive of course. (and you can find the old ones on eBay.)

I loved following the road, flipping the page, looking for the town signs coming up, watching for the rivers, train tracks, any sites of historical importance along the way. We should have had a bumper sticker that said, “this car stops for historical markers.”

Flat maps, globes (spin it and you’ll go where your finger lands) and huge atlases you could only read on the floor – all promising adventure for the taking. They were the stuff of imagination and the inspiration for travel-lust.  I keep maps of places I’ve visited, and confess to buying maps of places I long to go. In my bookshelf you’ll find an old Paris metro map and the wonderful “Plan de Paris” from a couple of trips for work. I can open the fold-out map in back of the Plan, and trace my figure over the Pont Saint Louis from Ile de Cite to Ile Saint Louis, remembering the street musicians on the bridge playing an old upright piano and accordion on a spectacularly bright golden day. I can find the outdoor cafe on the rue Cler that served the best cafe creme ever and not far away, the Metro stop beside the little crepe station with the yummy Nutella crepes.

Once I did a little google map experiment. I googled the address of the small house where I grew up on the north side of St. Louis, and wondered if I could find my grade school by “walking” to school.  I “walked” down the street, turned the corner, up three blocks to my girlfriend’s block where I would stop by her house, and we would walk the rest of the way together. Then several more blocks, across the “big street” and onto the Walnut Park school grounds. The whole experience had a comforting feeling, like running into an old friend.

But the maps of my dreams? Hands down, they are the Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland. They are a family historian’s (with Irish roots) goldmine of information.

Ordnance Survey maps of Ireland, old and new

Begun as a massive project in that expansive British way, it ran from 1825 to 1846. The idea was to map all of Ireland. 6 inches to a mile. Map everything that exists – ancient standing stones right down to eel runs. And in the process, get the names of townlands and place names of holy wells, rivers, mountains – in short, everything. The primary purpose was to enable a valuation for taxation purposes.  ”Precise measurements of the country’s 62,000 town lands and 2,500 civil parishes were taken. Meresmen marked out the mereings or boundaries; these were often the collectors of the county cess, unpopular figures compelled to work at 2s. per day to conduct surveys along the boundaries.” (Stiofán Ó Cadhla, Civilizing Ireland)

In addition to the maps themselves, two written records of this enterprise remain. The Name Books and Letters from the Field. The Name Books contain the attempt by the British to translate or Anglicize the Irish language place names, which were then used on the map. Brian Friel’s fine play Translations illuminates the problems that occur when the colonizer attempts to “translate” the language and culture of the colonized. Letters from the Field contain notes that include folklore and local history gathered from the people by the field workers (especially Irishmen O’Donovan and Curry) assigned to the task.

Mapping by the British in mid-nineteenth century Ireland – as mapping done by any colonizer – had as its core purpose the control of the places and people mapped. Spain mapped the Americas as they moved in to colonize.  In America, when Lewis and Clark were charged with mapping the newly acquired West, it was not for academic reasons. The places traveled by Lewis and Clark and their young Shoshone guide Sacagawea would never be the same (nor would the Shoshone people) once maps were available to those who would “settle” the American West.

But as laden with historical import and cultural ambiguity as the early Ordnance maps are, today they provide a window to place and time for anyone looking to understand the world in which their Irish ancestors lived. At least that is what they have been for me. The Survey was happening at the time my great-grandfather was a child (he was born in 1836), and continued up until the second year of an Gorta Mor (the Great Hunger; the Potato Famine.) I wonder how it felt to him and his family to see British soldiers in their bright red uniforms suddenly appear with their surveying tools on his familiar roads and land.

1901 Ordnance Survey map, showing Mullaghtown and Skearke (townland of Bridget McKenna)

Those original Ordnance Surveys were under the auspices of the British up until 1922. Since then, Irish survey maps are revised and reprinted by Ordnance Survey Ireland. The entire country of Ireland (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) is divided into 89 mapped sections. They are excellent detailed resources when you’re traveling in the country. And if you are fortunate enough to find a copy of one of the old Ordnance maps before 1922, you can compare it to the present map of the same area. The new one will help you get there and the old one can show you what you would have found in the mid-1800s and early 1900s.

old and new Ordnance Survey maps of area around Virginia, Co. Cavan

Have you ever had one of those moments when things unfold in a ‘more than just coincidence’ way? I find that when I’m in a particular root-seeking mindset it sometimes happens. I’d like to believe that some intangible force draws me like a magnet when I get close to something of importance. Like a ghostly divining rod.

I had one of those experiences that led to a map. An old ordnance survey map was waiting for me in the basement of Catach Books in Dublin last fall. It was a cool and rainy October day last fall, and wanting to get away from the Grafton Street crowd, my husband and I turned onto Duke Street. We popped into  a bookstore to get out of the rain and dry off for a moment. I’d been in this shop years ago but hadn’t remembered where it was. After browsing the rare books upstairs, we went down to the basement where they keep old prints. As I turned to go back up the stairs, my eye caught a little shelf on the counter with what looked like Ordnance maps, their covers old and worn. There were maybe 10 of them. You had to open them carefully to see what area they covered. Most of them were of Dublin, one of Donegal and oh my goodness – one that covered part of Cavan, Meath and Monahan. I opened it carefully to find that it covered the entire space of my family’s early life in Ireland. This is not a large area. Probably we’re talking a few square miles. We bought it of course: 20 Euro. It was the treasure map of my treasure hunt. The rain had stopped and as we left I silently thanked the invisible force that led us in there.

It’s beautiful. On it you can find the old flax mill, the holy well, dots representing tiny cottages and the “lodge” of the only landowner in the townland. And now, along with the information from the fragment of the 1821 census I’d found earlier in the week at the Irish National Archives, I could start to piece things together.

Currghmore townland, old ordnance map

I’ve been to this tiny part of Ireland so many times – driven the little country roads around and through Curraghmore, the sleepy townland where my great-grandfather was born and raised. But there was always something missing. I would look out over the fields and wish  that they would just lay open their past, tell me their secrets. They’re silent of course.

But now my bookstore basement map helped fill in the picture of my family’s history I’ve been struggling to paint in words. I can almost see them there – working hard growing and spinning flax, struggling to pay their rent to the landlord, just living their lives through good times and harder ones and hoping against hope that calamity would not visit their door.

The land in Curraghmore hasn’t changed much – it is both beautiful and rugged. Far off the main road – “the back of beyond” as my Irish friends would say – the small townland has a quiet peaceful feel that seeps into the rolling hills, the little stream, the ruins an old abbey, the abandoned flax mill, the woods that surround the holy well.

Getting lost in maps – well, this time it meant getting found. It’s important of course, to do your research and get your feet on the ground – but in the end, it’s often just plain serendipity that helps you get where you’re going.

I found the “before” picture of one family (mine!) in one small place in one particular time – a picture that would break apart in just a few years as the distinct smell of potatoes rotting in the fields brought misery – and eventually the emigration that brought my family to this side of the Atlantic.

National Famine Monument at Murrisk, Co. Mayo, Ireland

Hard to let this day go by without a mention. Another motivation, not that I needed one, was an article in today’s New York Times, by Peter Behrens, author and resident of Maine: It’s About Immigrants, not Irishness.

It is about Irishness, but in America and Canada and Australia, it’s also very much about immigration. And that’s the point Behrens is making. The Irish National Famine Memorial (above) by John Behan, a moving sculpture of the infamous “coffin ships,” immortalizes the experience of many immigrants during the Great Hunger – the “potato famine” of the mid 19th century.

This was when my great-grandfather came to America, a sixteen year old laborer at the tail end of the calamity. It’s remarkable that he got here at all.  When his ship sailed into port there was no Statue of Liberty holding up her beacon to welcome the tired, poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. He would have appreciated the welcome – he was one of those huddled masses for sure. There were no immigration laws, no “processing” places, no Ellis Island, not even Castle Gardens. You just got off the boat and hoped for the best. And the best was rarely what you got.

The famine Irish were wretchedly poor, hungry, and often in a state of shock from what they had survived – the only resources they brought are what we now euphemistically call “unskilled labor.” It’s hard to imagine the culture shock of these mostly rural poor as they left the boats and entered the large city – the worry, the fear. The established Americans seeing what was happening to “their country” were horrified, threatened, and predominately unwelcoming. The newly arrived found safe haven as quickly as they could, staying close to their own. They built churches, schools, lived in Irish enclaves, ghettos. Like many of his fellow Irishmen, Patrick eventually joined the army – as immigrants often do today – it was a job, it was three squares, it was a way to be accepted as part of this new country.

Tonight my husband and I are celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with Jewish friends. It’s fitting. Because we all have immigrant roots and immigrant stories. Some Americans came by choice, but many more came in slavery or from countries where forces unimaginable left no choice but to leave all that was close to their hearts – all that was home.

We clearly need immigration laws in this country today. But they must be smart and fair and above all compassionate. We must never forget what our ancestors sacrificed. We’re all part of the parade. Behrens closes his fine article with a reminder to those of us who posses Irish ancestry: “St. Patrick’s Day reminds us to celebrate, not despise or fear, immigrants. And the hyphenated-Irish, descendants of the first “immigrants,” ought to lead the parade.”

Loughcrew, Cairn T- Orthostat L1

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” ~ Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi

An Irish judge recently fined a Kerry farmer 25,000 euro for destroying a protected ancient ringfort and souterrain on property he had purchased two months prior. The earthen ringfort, estimated to be 1,000 years old, was identified on the register of national monuments of historic importance. This was the first ruling of its kind to be brought in Ireland based on the 1994 National Monuments Act. It is hailed as a major victory for preservationists.

Did the excesses in building during the Celtic Tiger years, and subsequent loss of landscape integrity in the countryside play a part in the decision of this ruling, and the seriousness in which it was taken? Perhaps.  And yet…there was also a recent proposal to de-list any post-1700s buildings nationally due to budgetary constraints. So what to keep and what’s expendable remains an ongoing conversation.

One of the many things I loved from the first moment setting foot in Ireland was the comfort level of people living alongside and sometimes directly within physical references to the past. Fields with signs inviting you to climb over a fence to walk among the ruins of abbeys, farmers with beehive huts, passage tombs, ogham stones, and yes, ringforts in their fields, who left out a small bowl or box with a handwritten sign asking a euro for the trouble of allowing you a closer look, but often just inviting you in. Ancient monuments in the landscape with no fence surrounding them (as Stonehenge has sadly needed), no seeming worry about graffiti or destruction. Once on a work related trip to Dublin, I took a few extra days and drove out to visit friends in the midlands and stopped along the way to find the Loughcrew cairns, having been enticed by Lonely Planet. Driving up a narrow and fairly steep road, I found the small pull-off to park your car, a decent sign explaining the history of this place, and the pathway up. As I climbed the path from parking lot to hilltop, a couple of visitors were descending. An easy climb, it’s only a 713 foot elevation but the vista is open and clear on all sides. It was a cool, windswept November day, and as I reached the top I realized I was the only person there. I was alone on this great hilltop, dotted with passage tombs built 5,000 years ago – I looked out over the same 360 degree view of the Meath countryside that it’s builders enjoyed.

Loughcrew, Oldcastle, Co. Meath

That this space and these monuments had been preserved and respected while, not far below, people went about their normal lives for all those 5,000 years still amazes me. That they have not been commercialized is all the more remarkable. The more extensive site nearby at Newgrange, is preserved and maintained by Bord Failte (Tourist board of Ireland) for visitors – and that’s appropriate – it educates and manages the area around the Boyne river. It is perhaps the most important ancient monument in all of Ireland and a world heritage site.

But Loughcrew, like so many other ancient sites in Ireland – Carrowkeel, Knocknarea, countless abbeys, castles, forts and on and on, is just…there. As vital a part of the landscape as it is a vital part of the culture.

Where I live, just north of Chicago, there is precious little that survives earlier than the 19^thcentury. We sit atop layers of history – many of our roads follow trails used by native peoples; names of rivers (as well as states) hint at the tribes who predominated here. But generally, we go about our day and have no clue, or if we do, we don’t think about it.

old wood pilings along Lake Michigan shore

I’m a particular fan of one little mundane monument, a good walk away from my back door – it’s a little stretch of a few brave remaining wood pilings that keep their heads above water along the shore of Lake Michigan. Dating back to the mid or late 19th century, they once supported rows and rows of piers that stretched out into the lake, welcoming sailing and steam ships unloading merchandise, building materials and people and picking up more to head out once again. I like to visualize the scene 150 years back as I walk along that part of the lake.

When English colonizers first came to our shores, they came for a variety of reasons – religious freedom for some, commercial interest for most. The drive to conquer and plunder was cloaked in the religion-soaked idea of manifest destiny, although that specific term wasn’t applied until later. They were uninvested in the people or the rich cultures that had inhabited the continent for centuries. They saw our first peoples as uncivilized and in the way.

Starting out like that, it’s not surprising that we take a light view of our own physical history. In America, those of us who are not native people are impressed with anything over 100 years old and still standing. It’s all very relative.

Does any of this matter?

We name buildings and developments for what used to exist there – although it has a more official name, a nearby shopping center is still euphemistically called “old orchard.”  Because there was an old orchard there before it was bulldozed for the sake of Nordstroms and other consumer enterprises.  Here in America, we have a “pave paradise to put up a parking lot” mind-set. Thanks to Joni Mitchell’s prophetic voice, at least we are reminded of what we’re doing. I’m betting on Ireland having a better long range plan. They’ve been at it much longer – and because they were for so long on the losing side of history, rather than the conquering side, they’ve fought to keep it intact.

I have a strong need to know what and who came before me, whether it’s my house, my city, my country or my family. It hurts to see history lost. I’m reminded of a collector of local stories who said, “when an old person dies, it’s as if an entire library burned.” In the end, it’s all about respect – about knowing that we stand in the footprints of others.

We should thank those whose perseverance and vision created and secured America’s National Park System – which has increasingly moved to preserve our historic sites and buildings, like Ebenezer Baptist Church, in addition to maintaining our national heritage areas, places like Yellowstone and Yosemite.

We gain meaning when we see ourselves in context, as part of a continuum that includes all the stories of history and change: the good, the bad, the heroic and the horrendous. Without that I worry that our culture – at least in the U.S. – becomes simply a dialog of marketing.

a sense of place

‘Terroir’ is the effect that sun, soil and strata – the history and substance of the earth – have on things like wine, coffee and tea. It is the “sense of place” from which they come. Something you can taste. Brought right up through the roots.

It makes you wonder…do people have it too? Is there some kind of human terroir? 

We are such a mashup in America, our gene pools must look like some sort of DNA jambalaya. Not everyone is interested in sorting it out, in separating the strands or in learning the ways they were woven together. But the desire to do so runs deep for some.

It may be that in much of America, we move around so easily and so often, that our ties to extended family are stretched or broken and we have this longing for familial connection. Ask anyone to tell you where they come from and the stories start to flow. The NBC series (first run in the UK, then in the US) “Who Do You Think You Are?” was a surprise hit. Sort of an “Antiques Roadshow” for family history. Not what’s in your attic, but who’s in your closet.

About that “sense of place” – I know people who have traveled in countries where they share in the local gene pool and who return, saying, “it was so strange, I was looking at people who looked like me.” I once had the odd experience of having casually mentioned to someone that I had Irish ancestry, who told me that I had “Cavan eyes.” Well, that was weird, since that’s the county my family is from.

Most people who get into family history do so on the far side of middle age. And most of us who have, regret that we didn’t do it sooner since a lot of the people we seriously needed to talk to are no longer around. It’s the rare person who picks up on it earlier. (Side note – one of the funniest and more insightful books I’ve read on the topic is from a thirty-something who did pick up on it earlier: “Shaking the Family Tree: Black Sheep, Blue Bloods and Other Obsessions of an Accidental Genealogist” by Buzzy Jackson. It’s a great read. And you’ll learn stuff.)

So what drives the desire to know one’s ancestral past? Is there a little tug of terroir in our makeup? For me, it comes from the need to understand my own identity – who did I think I was, really? And the need to feel connected to something beyond myself. There’s a feeling of incompleteness in not knowing who came before, particularly for those of us whose ancestors are immigrants. As I learn more about them, it’s akin to finding a long-lost brother or sister, or maybe what adopted children feel when they find their birth parent. We don’t exist as isolated beings – our lives are set on a continuum – a thread that reaches back and reaches forward.

The job description of a root is to anchor the plant and to provide a system that draws up nourishment from the soil. And there’s that reciprocal thing that happens, too – the leaves pull in light and moisture that goes back down into the root, mixes with the soil and moves back on up. Not enough of the above and the plant dies. Obviously, this metaphor isn’t perfect – few metaphors are – but it does make you think. Interesting that it’s always been part of the lingo of genealogists: the family tree and all.

But the idea that fascinates me most in the root metaphor is this idea of terroir – a sense of place. That like wines or coffees or tea that have the taste of a particular soil and history and climate – a person might have more resonance with a particular geographic place and time than with others. I have multiple European DNA strands in my cellular mix. But one speaks much louder than the others. So that’s the soil I’m digging in.

Last week was the National Week of Migration, officially declared by The U.S. Catholic Bishops. I’m thinking we need more than a week, but I appreciate the effort. And it made me think again about the migratory routes of my own family.

I was also thinking what a luxury it is to spend time researching this migration story – what were the reasons for, where are the records showing, etc. And how baffling this would be to the very people I’m trying to understand. I figure they would either think I was crazy or hopefully appreciate a little, that I cared. Their livelihood and sometimes their very lives were at risk, while I’m in my warm home (thank you, central heating), curled up in a comfy chair, cup of coffee by my side, pouring over essays with titles like “The Transfer of Land and the Emergence of the Graziers during the Famine Period.”

It’s been said that there are only two stories on earth: “a stranger comes to town” and “a person goes on a journey.” Either way, someone’s leaving home. 

The migration story of my family, the Farrellys, as the story of all Irish famine immigrants, has elements of both. The stranger in this story is, of course, is the English. Colonization is born of the desire to build power and security for the colonizer. What happens to the colonized is of lesser importance unless they interfere with those primary goals.  How all that plays out to the locals is determined by a stew of variables: geography, who holds power, the political and economic philosophy of the power holders and unpredictable natural events (see potato blight).

Etched in stone in a remote famine graveyard in Culllen, Kilkenny is this quote by Dessalegn Rahmato: “Famine is the closing scene of a drama whose most important and decisive acts have been played out behind closed doors.”  

If famine is the closing scene, here’s part an earlier act that played out in the life of the Farrellys:

The dawn of the 19th century in Ireland was marked by several events: the quick and brutal crushing of the 1798 rising, the Act of Union (abolishment of the Irish Parliament, transferring all power and decision making to Westminster) and the emergence of the industrial age. The population of Ireland was about four million. It would double, reaching more than eight million on the eve of the famine in 1845.

1821 was the first year an official census was taken in Ireland. You can begin to get a picture of a place and time by reading census reports. Most of this first census was destroyed, along with all other Irish census records up to 1901. However, the tiny parcel of Ireland on which my ancestors lived is part of the remnant that survives. (My eternal gratitude to the person who snatched this bit from the flames of the Irish Civil War in 1921).

Here’s the picture: small tenant farmers like Thomas and Rose Farrelly lived on a few acres of land, raised their children on potatoes and supplemented their income by growing, harvesting and spinning flax. They pay their rent to James Hunter. On the day of the census, Thomas and Rose are found at home with their adult daughter Rose, son Patrick, and two young granddaughters. Another family, Pat and Catherine Smith and their daughter share the Farrellys’ land. In the 1821 census, the town land of Currghmore has 14 dwellings. Some families live on lots as small as 1/2 acre; others like Thomas Farrellys’ range between 6 and 15 acres. In every house but one, the occupation of the man of the house is “farmer,” the wife and daughters “spinner,” the sons “laborer.” Nearly everyone in this tiny neighborhood is occupied with the appropriately named “cottage industry” of flax work. One house, on more than twice the acreage, where no spinners live or work, belongs to the family of Nixon, a English landowner. Thomas and Rose’s daughter, Elizabeth, is one of four house servants working for the Nixons when this census was taken.

The Farrellys’ look to be moderately secure, able to share their space with another family. But their stability and survival was precariously tied to a plant we barely think about anymore: flax. Linum usitatissimum. 

It was a labor intensive crop, as this video on Irish flax farming demonstrates. Curraghmore had the prerequisite for flax growing: a lovely stream running along it’s border, which ran the mill and also served as a way to create the flax dam or hole to “rett” the plant, enabling the fibers to be separated and worked into what would eventually become linen. Sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s the mill was built along the stream and the fibers were “scutched” then by machine in preparation for spinning. The mill must have been a wonder at first. But it heralded the coming demise of the Farrellys’ tenuous economic security.

old flax mill, Curraghmore

This fall, when we were exploring the area, we followed the old “flax road,” a winding lane  running along the stream near the Curraghmore bridge, wide enough for only one car or tractor. We suddenly came upon the old flax mill, noted on a 1901 map of this little area that we’d miraculously discovered in the basement of a rare books shop in Dublin just a week before.

Hard to see until you come right up to it, overgrown with vines and whitethorne, it was at one time a thing of glory – it must have hummed with life, its wheel turned by the cold, clear water, the beating heart of the local industry.

mill stream beside overgrown flax mill

I imagined people working here, walking down this road, hearing shouts and noise – this strong stone edifice that expressed the vitality of the community.

As the industrial age gained speed and the demand for linen in England and North America increased, larger mill complexes were built in the major port cities of Belfast, Dublin and Cork. Home spinning could no longer keep up with demand. At first, the younger women spinners left home, moved to the cities to work at the mill on spinning machines; eventually the machines took over the spinning. Ironically, to create more and more linen, the fabric of these small townland communities began to tear. No longer anchored by the linen trade, living conditions for the small farmer and the laborer quickly began to deteriorate. In spite of this, population continued to expand as food and land grew scarce. The stage was being set for the calamity to come.

It’s likely that there were Farrellys living on this land (Curraghmore townland, Lurgan parish, County Cavan) long before that first census in 1821. Rural Irish families identify strongly with their townland. Thomas Farrelly of the 1821 census might have still been alive when his grandson, my great-grandfather, Patrick, was born in 1836. Their family can be found in the parish records through the late 1830s; the baptisms of my great-grandfather, his sister and brothers are all recorded there. After that Fr. Tom, the parish priest, told us “they seem to have just fallen off the books.”

And so, the Farrellys migration journey had begun. It isn’t that their story is so unique but that, looking into it – getting a glimpse however imperfect, of the personal cost that outside and often arbitrary influences took on the lives of my own migrant ancestors – opens my eyes to see the cost of the journey of others.