Bushmills

So, Bill, bless him, finally got to do something he wanted to do on this trip: visit the Bushmills distillery. I let him get on with it. Soon after he set off it poured down. I've been to a distillery somewhere before, possibly in Scotland. 

Off to the village for dinner. THIS is how Ireland looks!

I think whiskey is putrid stuff. I can't even remember the name of this place, I keep calling it 'Burnhills'. The one thing I do think is interesting is that the Scots spell it 'whisky' and the Irish spell it 'whiskey' and that's about all the difference I need to know (I remember because Ireland has an 'e' in it and Scotland does not).





The second night we were in Bushmills we walked into the village (in almost fair weather) to have dinner at the Distillers Arms pub, or actually at their restaurant, they call it Tartine. I would call it heaven. 

Maybe it's two weeks in a motorhome that makes me appreciate this place!

Bill had goat's cheese to start and a beef and pork stew for his main course. I had smoked salmon and then supposedly duck breast, but I think there was about a half a bird there! Easily the best duck I've ever eaten. 

We had red wine and shared a dessert called cranachan which includes oatmeal, cream, whiskey and raspberries. Their variation had crushed meringue, which I didn't need, but it was still delicious.






The village was decorated with banners of historical figures they wished to claim for the area, including St. Patrick's confession (Bill pointed out this was outside the local protestant church), Francis Makemie, C. S. Lewis and John Steinbeck; I've already mentioned John Wayne. (BTW, before I forget it, somewhere on this trip I overheard a conversation between two Irishmen about movies. One of them allowed that The Quiet Man was his all time favourite! Made me smile.) 

Several lovely mill houses around!

One banner said:

The first attempt to emigrate from Ulster occurred sixteen years after the Pilgrim Father's landed at Plymouth Rock. In 1636, the 'Eagle's Wing' sailed from Groomsport with 140 Presbyterians onboard, after two months at sea bad weather forced them to return.
The main wave of emigration from Ulster to America began in 1718 when 'The Robert' and 'The William' sailed from Coleraine, and the 'The McCullum' sailed from Londonderry bound for Boston. This was a century before the famine emigrations.

Imagine, being on a ship for two months and then ending up right where you started. Misery! More recent events seem to focus my mind on the persecution of my Catholic ancestors by the Protestants, but it's worth remembering that for several centuries it was the Anglicans who were in power and non-Anglican Protestants were also under the Penal Laws, required to tithe to the church of the state and prevented from holding office. 

Another banner said: 

The ancestors of William McKinley trace to Conagher between Dervock and Ballymoney. He became the 25th President of the United States on March 4th 1897. On September 6th 1901 during his second term of office he was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz* while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. The family home at Conagher was rescued from demolition in 1996 and stored at the Ulster American Folk Park.

*Normally I take the position that killers should not be remembered in history; there should be no reward for assassination. On the other hand, people have trouble remembering that McKinley was assassinated, so I figure his murderer has no chance of being immortalized.

Clearly this village has its eye set on the American tourist, with all these banners linking the history of Ulster with the U.S. And why not?

Library Day

The next day I was champing at the bit. I'd studied the booklet they gave me and assigned Bill the task of finding all the non-microfilm stuff - books. As it happened I sat at a table scanning books and scribbling (sometimes photographing) until they kicked us out for lunch at 1pm. 

Donegal County Library at Letterkenny

I felt as though part of my brain was being extracted and left behind, leaving the library in the middle of my research! I got on the microfilm machine after lunchtime and looked at newspapers from 1835-1837, the nearest years I could get to when my people left.

"Unhappy Irish Pauper" being batted between England and America

The Derry newspaper was very like the ones for Lehigh, Oklahoma 100 years later: the front page was covered with doings in foreign countries, interest in what royalty were up to, though perhaps a bit more in Derry about the aristocracy than the for more socialist period in Oklahoma. 

There was a regular report on the solvency of the local bank and a section of things being sold. What was very different was that Derry being a major port, there were lists of ships coming in and ships leaving for Liverpool, Glasgow, New York. Exciting stuff! (A steerage ticket to Glasgow cost 5 shillings). Where Oklahoma's papers had who visited whom, who broke their leg and was mending, who was in which (the smallest of) towns conducting business - right down to the ordinary folk I had in my family, the Derry paper's births, marriages and deaths were only about 'important people'. 





I later learned that Reverend was a title given to Catholic priests in writing if not verbally. I'd read earlier that priests were firmly in the middle classes. Professional people might appear in these listings, but major developments of this Earl or that Lord from anywhere in Ireland or England were reported. The only place I found 'ordinary' people discussed were in reports of the assizes - criminal court proceedings. I spent an hour looking at microfilmed newspapers and then returned to my books.

About Loughanure, near Braade / Annagry

If you're not a fan of the history of this particular place, there isn't much more I can tell you about this day. I really enjoyed trying to soak up information in the limited time I had. Sadly, the best books about the area were written by local people, self-published with limited copies printed and largely unavailable at reasonable prices. I suspect many of the authors are now deceased. I wish they or their family members would make these books available digitally on Amazon; I'm sure it would make them enough money to make it worth their while.

You can tell Bill was having a riotous time...

In the end I left before the library had shut and only realized when I was trying to go to sleep that I hadn't covered all I'd meant to. Too late to worry about those phone books, they wouldn't be available again for two days and we would be heading for the ferry home by then. We'll just have to go back...

Letterkenny

I was astounded to discover that Letterkenny is the postal town for Dungloe. I'm not making a pun on the name, I was surprised because it is about 40 miles away! 




If you ask Google maps how to get between the two you will notice that the roads avoid going through the Derryveagh Mountains: you can either go around to the south or around to the north. I found myself wondering what route people took to walk to Derry to catch the ferry to Scotland, or elsewhere. I read that it took them two days to do it.

The sunny weather was gone by the time we got to Letterkenny.

Letterkenny obviously expects her tourists to come by car, as the tourist information centre is well out of the town. We had to camp about 20 miles north at Rockhill, which was more an arrangement of cabins to rent and facilities to entertain children than a site for caravan camping, though apparently they are working on this. I came to really appreciate the dish washing facilities other caravan sites have. 

Can you see the green hills in the distance?

My reason for going to Letterkenny was to visit the main library in County Donegal. Unfortunately, the upstairs where the 'Heritage' section is kept is only open two days a week. So we made my microfilm machine reservation, went for lunch, then and then up to the caravan site.

Horses near the caravan park.

Another day we checked out a county historical museum that didn't allow photos. Most of it had to do with the events of 1916, but some of it predated that period and was of more interest to me. A poster mentioned the idea of 'assisted migration', which I'd not met before. Somehow the idea that a charity or government organisation's response to poverty is to ship people to another country seems reprehensible to me.




I've no doubt that the people whose ancestors moved abroad had better lives in the end, but this reminded me of a situation I heard of when living in Salt Lake City. It seems that some of the neighbouring states felt the way to solve the problem of homelessness in their communities was to give indigent people a bus ticket to Salt Lake City, thinking the Mormons could take care of these people. 





We had two lunches in the same place, called a Quiet Moment. Bill - ever the wit - remarked that it wasn't very quiet. It did a good trade, the food being decent and the decor above cafe average.

We had a short wander after lunch one day to check out the park dedicated to the famine victims. Not much there, but a nice thought.





Another thing we did in Letterkenny was the check out a photographic exhibit by an American named Richard Noble. I've never heard of him, but he worked on several cigarette ads, including Winstons, Tareyton's "I'd rather fight than switch" complete with black-eyes; and, most notably, the Virginia Slims adverts, "You've come a long way, baby" aimed at women smokers. There were some cool cars and some kind of whisky in there as well. If you aren't American or the right vintage, it wouldn't mean much to you, but it was like looking back at my youth. 

Our first night at Rockhill we were a solitary motor home in field next to the main road. It was surprisingly noisy, so Bill asked to move closer to the reception area into a car park overlooking Mulroy Bay. 




Actually it was overlooking the mobile home park overlooking the bay, but we were much closer to the showers, so I didn't mind. Except there was another verbose cow we got to hear all night instead of the traffic!





We drove through the pretty town of Ramelton several times, but never did stop. Neither did we find the time to visit Kerrykeel, just up the road from our camping place. And Bill made sure I didn't get across the road to visit the Curlew Craft shop! So, we'll just have to save that for another trip...

Ramelton, via Google Earth.

Maghery

Most of our explorations during out stay at Dungloe were to the north, towards Braade and Annagry, but I was aware that we should also look at Toberkeen (sometimes spelled Tubberkeen; it seems to be pronounced something like tubber-KEEN). 




I was told there was a community centre at Maghery with a Heritage Room I should check out. I never did get the hang of saying Maghery. It's somewhere like MaGARRY or MagHAIRY...I'm never gonna speak Irish, I can tell you that.




Bill thought it might be a good spot for sunset photos so we went there one evening after dinner. The door to the Community Centre was ajar but because of the time Bill thought it might be a private party, so we didn't intrude. In hindsight perhaps we should have barged in and got some information, but we didn't. 





The sunset was worth waiting for, though it was pretty chilly and we had to listen to an unhappy cow for most of our wait. At least I interpreted it as unhappy; maybe it was just talkative. 




Just for a bit of variety I tried to photograph a signal tower. We saw a couple on our travels. One is said to date back to the Napoleonic wars; I think this one was just from WWII. 



We went back the next day and the Centre was locked up tight, with no opening hours published. I left a message on their Facebook, but never had a reply. A couple of days later Bill walked down to Toberkeen and found the Centre open. He looked around the Heritage Room but came away with the idea that it was more recent history than I was seeking and that the display was aimed at school children. 




Toberkeen's early documents had some interesting names and it would have been fun to investigate further, but I can't say I expected a great deal anyhow. 

Much as I love the warm colours of the sunset, I also love this lavender and grey picture as well.

Ballymanus Disaster

The short version of this story is that on the evening of the 10th of May 1943 a German mine turned up near the beach at Mullaghduff, near Braade. It was reported to officials but three hours later it exploded, killing 19 young men. The details of those lost have been difficult to pull together, in spite of looking at photos of the memorial, a newspaper report, various grave markers and a Youtube video. To the best of my knowledge, after triangulating the sources, these were the lives lost:

From Ballymanus:
John Boyle (17)

From Braade:
John Joseph Carson (15)
Hugh Duffy (17)
James Duffy (16)
Manus O'Donnell (16)
Anthony Sharkey (16) 
John Sharkey (14)

From Mullaghduff:
Edward Gallagher (22)
John McKinley (19)
John Roarty (24) 
Michael Sharkey (14) 

From Rannyhual:
Dominic Gallagher (27)
Owen Gallagher (21)
Patrick Gallagher (20)
Denis Harley (16)
Joseph Harley (17)
Owen Harley (16)
Anthony Rodgers (34)
James Rodgers (33)


Reports say victims' ages ranged from 13-34, but I didn't find a 13 year old. James Rodgers' grave marker suggests that he didn't die in this disaster but was lost at sea the previous January, still horrible for his family, and his name appears on the memorial. It is said that seventeen people died at the site, two others died later in hospital. Sources describe the relationships between the boys differently, sometimes brothers other times cousins. Regardless of the details, reading the names, the ages, the townlands can't not convey a sense of horror at the loss suffered by these communities, all within a few miles of one another.

This incident constituted the second largest loss of life in the Republic of Eire during WWII. Ireland was neutral during "The Emergency", as they termed it, an expression of independence from Britain. Another incident in Dublin claimed more lives. According to the documentary, over a dozen other mines landed on beaches in County Donegal alone, during the war, but all the others were handled appropriately, thus preventing many casualties. It doesn't seem to me that Germany acknowledged Ireland's neutral status; either that or their mines had a terrible tendency to wander off course.

It would seem that after watching this particular mine bouncing in the sea and against the rocks for a few hours, several of the victims decided to try to rope the mine and pull it in, away from the rocks. Obviously not a great idea. Their actions suggest they didn't fully appreciate the danger the mine presented. 

There were questions later about why the authorities didn't cordon off the area, why there wasn't an official inquiry (where the government investigates and apportions blame), why various officials didn't respond differently. No answers to those questions would bring back the dead, however the documentary concludes that there were educational materials not disseminated, protocols not followed and an unfortunate tendency by the local priest and politician to blame the victims for their own demise. 

This film about the disaster is both sad and beautiful. Sad, of course, because of the loss of so many young people. Beautiful because it shows the scenery of Rosses and you get to hear the voices of the people, many speaking Irish.

I was vaguely aware of this incident before we traveled to Donegal, as Facebook advertised a memorial ceremony that was held in the week before Bill and I arrived. I must admit I didn't go searching information about it while we are there though we must have passed near to at least one of the memorial markers and I did see mention of it in the Kincasslagh cemetery. I would certainly look for those should we ever return. 

I doubt that the local people will ever forget this event. I doubt I'll forget having heard this story.

What I Learned from Jimmy

There is a man named Jimmy Duffy who does family history research in this area. I had contacted him before we came and sent all the family details he asked for. He said he couldn't be certain which of the local families was mine, which seemed like an honest answer.

Bill has a 'found' cousin whose wife's family is also from County Donegal and she wrote about an amazing experience of her family search there, down south around Killybegs. Her advice to me was to talk to the local people. So I did. I talked to the people who had the caravan site, to the people at the tourist board, at the library, in pubs, men on the street...  Jimmy's name came up a lot, as in 'You should talk to...' Even knowing that he couldn't really further my search, I asked if he could meet up and we did. 

We talked for three hours. 

One funny thing was that the man he would guess was my ancestor lived next door to his ancestor in 1823. This came from a rent book in Dublin. I've not encountered this genealogical source as yet, but he says they are still pulling old ledgers out of dusty boxes so I might still learn something useful.

I mentioned that I never see my family name except in cemeteries. Not on business signs, football team photos, school band photos (I did find one of those in Letterkenny), not in history books. The one mention in the Atlas is of a woman who was killed down in Donegal town during the war in 1916. He said that was good, that it wasn't a terribly common name. Mind, the common names in the Rosses are everywhere: Gallagher, Sweeney, Duffy, O'Donnell, Sharkey, Boyle... I have trouble enough keeping my Patrick's and my Bridget's straight, but having seen the repetitive nature of the local names I wouldn't even attempt family history if I lived there.

It may be that the members of my family who didn't die in the famine had emigrated. Another reason there aren't many of my name around is that there was a generation around the 1840's that had seven daughters. This is why so many people I talked to said, I had a Aunty / Granny / my wife's family had ...  That and some of the male line got killed off in an accident, about which I'll write later. Everyone knew the name, it just wasn't in visual evidence.

A couple of things Jimmy said stuck with me, one I'd heard before: there was no famine, as in there was plenty of food around when people were starving. Yes, the potato crop failed, but there was a lot of grain and dairy foods being exported for profit.  There was plenty of food around, only poor people couldn't afford it. I had read this elsewhere, so it wasn't news. I still find it shocking.

The other idea he mentioned was that the Protestant landlords were no worse about collecting rents than the Irish chieftains had been. That was a new concept, but it makes sense. Renters never get a free ride, regardless of the landlord. 

We talked briefly about the Ballymanus disaster. He was describing that all the coffins were gathered in the local hall and all 'waked' together. I found out why it's called a 'wake'. He told me that back in the day peoples' biggest fear was of being buried alive (my grandmother used to worry about it, I remember). So the family would sit with them for a period - usually 2-3 days - in case they 'woke up'. I'd never heard that before and it makes perfect sense. 

Another thing we talked about was naming conventions. A couple in the pub Bill and I met had said that the first child was always named by the father, the second by the mother, the third by the father, and so on down the line.  Jimmy said that the convention was that the first son was named for the father's grandfather, the second son for the mother's grandfather, the second son for the father, the third son for the mother's father. The exception might be that a child would be named for someone who had died very young...and every family has a Bridget! Not sure how all this applies in my family, will have to look at that.

We talked about the name Grainnie (pronounced GRAW-nee) which is Anglicized to Grace, Graicy or Gertrude. Manus is not a usual name, it tends to be unique to a given family, which is helpful. Bryan (pronounced BREE-an), in this area is a variation of Bernard / Barnard / Barney, common names in my family. 

We talked about DNA testing, the possibilities and the obstacles. He reckoned only younger persons would be up for it; older people would worry that they would be cloned! 

And finally, Jimmy's wife might be a member of my family! Must see if she minds being cloned -- I mean tested!

Cemetery Day

Across from Sharkey's Bar was the Catholic church (the only kind I was interested in this trip) named St Mary's Star of the Sea. Lovely name, eh? I was told it had been built in the early 1900s and that the older church was at Kincasslagh.

St. Mary's Star

So one day that is where we headed. We found a small graveyard with some conveniently placed boards on the front listing who all was buried there. Actually, it probably only listed those whose burials were in the records and/or had a marker. Funny how we take things at face value and don't question the details. There was no one on the board with the name I wanted. A nice lady there asked who I was looking for, then explained that this was the new Kincasslagh cemetery and directed us to the older cemetery at Kincasslagh, on the other side of the old church up the road.

'New' Kincasslagh cemetery

While we were there, Bill said he saw a truck driving across the wide sands that connected the sides of the bay. 

'Old' Kincasslagh cemetery

Later, I saw someone walking across. I discovered that the vast stretch of sand that separated land from sea was called a 'strand' (not a term commonly used in land-locked Oklahoma). I remembered the stories that long ago people used to walk across the River Tyne at low tide, between North Shields and Sound Shields, near where we live in England. I found plenty of names on stones and on the board for this cemetery. There were also a number of stubs or wooden crosses which couldn't be read. 




There were loads of people around doing various things related or not to the cemetery. A couple of men came up and asked whose graves we were seeking. One man, named Logue, recounted the Ballymanus mine incident  - about which I'll write later - and said he'd attended the recent memorial service. 



Another man, Gillespie, seemed to think we were 'chasing straws' - true enough - but then he thought the census began only in 1901, which is wrong. 




He talked a bit about Rannyhual as having originally been communal cattle grazing in the hills outside Annagry. Some of his family were from Rannyhual as were some of the people whose names interested me. He said it was where people moved for cheap housing after all the seaside land was taken. 





He also told us there was yet an older cemetery on Cruit (pronounced something like critch or crutch) Island, so we went there, driving over a small bridge beside which children and dogs were playing in the beautiful blue-green water. The cemetery there was called St. Bridget's (Cill Bhride). 

St. Bridget's cemetery on Cruit Island

Bill pointed out the large bare area at the front of the cemetery, with no markers in sight. We guessed that this area may have been where the famine victims were buried. If you can't afford to buy food, it seems unlikely you can afford an engraved stone marker. The board listed a few burials as old as 1830 so the time frame seemed right for this cemetery. 




After examining the board by the gate we walked over the field towards the sea. 






It looked like green grass, but it was spongy, like moss and wonderful underfoot. 






There had been a runner on the worn paths earlier and I envied him his route. We were passed by a man driving a car with a trailer that Bill thought looked full of sand, probably not a legal enterprise.

Errigal Mountain in the background!

One thing I noticed in several of the cemeteries was mention of family members in Australia, America or Scotland. In fact a number of head stones were placed by people from those places.



And then, since we were passing anyhow, we went ahead and visited St. Mary's Star of the Sea cemetery to collect names there. The graves were all so close together, it was hard to navigate. I have a feeling they'll be needing yet another cemetery soon!

Braade

Now I don't honestly know where my ancestors came from in County Donegal, but my cousin Sharon and I have done a lot of researching and our best guess is that the earliest records surviving place them in a townland called Braade, in the Rosses.

I thought we should be able to cycle up there as it was only about 6 miles. I don't think we took the 6 mile route, if there was one. We stopped and asked directions of anyone we met and the old joke about asking an Irishman directions and being told he wouldn't start from here, is fact not fiction.

On the map Braade looks like it sits at the end of the runway of Donegal Airport and it kind of does, though the airport says it is in Carrickfinn. Then again, we saw a 1906 Ordnance Survey map at Donegal County Library and back then the land ended at Braade. That sticky-out bit (I think it should properly be called a peninsula) with an airport and a village beyond it is apparently all reclaimed!





I did have a bit of concern about trying to cycle up there, but thought since I'd run six miles just a few weeks previous I should be alright. Also I'd recently read a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that you should do something that scared you every day. I was right to be nervous. The six miles didn't take into account the hills. They aren't any of them terribly high, they just never stop upping and downing and by the time we got up to Braade I knew I wasn't going to cycle home.



I managed to fall over and bloody my knee and the nearest resting place was Sharkey's Bar. I knew about this place from Facebook. It's been a family run bar for 100 years; before that it was a family run grocers. There were half a dozen men wandering in and out at any given time having a chat over a pint. Bill left me with a restorative G&T while he heroically cycled back to camp and brought the motor home up to transport me home. At that point I didn't care if I ever saw my bike again.

Just as in County Antrim we saw a lot of new houses in The Rosses. One difference was that many were built next to old stone huts. We overheard a man say it was cheaper to buy land with a house than land alone, this guaranteeing all the proper planning permissions; one could get a lot for as little as €30,000.

I was interested where there were clusters of small houses, thinking they might be an old fashioned clachan, as described in the Atlas as a cluster of stone huts, generally owned by members of the same extended family. The farming system in place before the widespread plantation of Protestant landowners in the 1700s following The Flight of the Earls, was called the rundale system. It involved the division of communal land in an inner field into strips, where food was grown. The outer field was for grazing animals during the growing season, but over winter animals were brought into the inner field to help fertilize the soil. Each year the strips were re-allocated for use by each household, according to its need.

Landlords abolished the rundale system and apportioned a plot of land for each house, thus being able to charge rent for each individual house and plot. The land wasn't rich enough in the Rosses to farm on the small allocation and people had to look for other ways to make their rent. Thus the habit of 'working away' in 'The Laggan': western Donegal, eastern Ireland, western Scotland. Children as young as 9 or 10 were sent to hiring fairs and from there went to work on wealthier farms or to pick potatoes in Scotland, from May to November. They brought their money home to pay the rent. Hiring fairs continued up into the 1940s. Working away continues to be a tradition in the Rosses. The new homes we saw are hard earned, but there is so much beauty there it is easy to see why people would fight to stay.

Peat extraction.

I've never seen peat being harvested. I was thinking this practice was frowned upon, but Bill says the EU is against industrial harvesting; that for personal use is still permitted. We ran across some men standing outside a house in Dungloe that had a stack of dried peat sitting outside. I paused to take a photo and they insisted I take a piece of it with me. What I will do with it, I've no idea.

Gorse looks much the same to me as broom, which grows all over Scotland. Apparently they are both members of the pea family. I asked Bill how he knew it was gorse, not broom, and he said because gorse has sharp spiny bits. Isn't he clever?

If you can't get a plot by the sea, get one by a lake. I've no idea if they are fresh water - probably not, but they are the same vivid blue. I used to say my mom's father and her brother had swimming pool blue eyes, but now I know they had Donegal blue eyes.

Before I leave the subject of hills, I must remember to tell you about Errigal Mountain. I knew it was there (from reading the Atlas) but hadn't appreciated what a distinct landmark it was from The Rosses. Looking at it I knew I was seeing what my ancestors had seen. I'm guessing it was about 10 miles east as the crow could fly.

I never could get a good photo of it; this is of course nothing as dramatic as these.