After the hell of last years summer, it was a welcome break to get a text one Sunday afternoon from a favourite cousin. I hadn't seen this particular cousin for nigh on 28 years. The boy who left Ireland had returned - a family man, and the thirteen years difference in our ages (me being the elder) had disappeared. Among a host of traits we discovered we shared, including the colour of our eyes being our Granny's colour, a love of family history was a major factor in a happy reunion.
The text read..."Seeing as how you are the only one of my relatives who seems to have any idea of where our mutual ancestry comes from originally, and according to cousin X, you have the details at your finger tips, can I drop out next weekend for a chat about our shared ancestry?" A week later and an adventure started.
He had signed into one of these sites that tells you who you are. A few listings were a bit shaky as in such details as our mutual Grandfathers birth date, the surname of a great-great-grandmother and the birthplace of another key ancestor. He argued that the information had come from verified records and census.
I brought forward a diary kept by one of the many grand-aunts and my personal knowledge and memories of a grand-uncle and his sister, a spectacular lady who died at the age of 96 when I was twelve and with whom I had spent a lot of time listening to her reminisences of her family...and computers do not come any more effecient than her brain. Sharp as a razor right to the end.
Her sister, who died aged 87 in 1947 and who was her elder by a goodly number of years, had kept diaries since she was in her teens. Sharp tongued, and on occasions nasty, her daily commentary on life here were informative and interesting. That she spoke of people who were her friends was of particular interest to me, as their grandchildren were the friends I grew up with from childhood. There was a gap in the diary keeping around her twenty first year. She had met a young man from the local town, and had fallen deeply in love.
Unfortunately for her, her sharp tongue and a penchant for jealousy sent him flying into the arms of someone with a better control over a sarcastic tongue, and it was only some years later that he admitted to my grandfather that, sarky and all as Norah was, she was never as bad as the "one I married". Cold comfort to Norah. That was the last of her chances.
Diary keeping resumed and commentary could be knife sharp on occasion. One of her biggest annoyances was the fact that her brother, my grandfather, chose to marry late in life, a lady some 18 years his junior, and he was no longer available to be ordered about.
So, The Cousin and I started on our trips across the land, to visit the hometowns of those who came before us. It has made for interesting visits. Grandfather x 4 times hailed from the borders of Counties Wicklow and Carlow, a mountain farming family who married a Wicklow sheep farmers daughter. Wexford has featured prominently in the history, and, as I have always known, my married name is the same as my great-grandmother's maiden name. She and her husband moved from Wicklow to the house next door from where I live. Nothing like keeping it in the family.
The Cousin, God love him, is totally confused by all the forebears on grandfather's mother's side. She who shares a name with me. The two names that keep coming up are Simon and Kate, and there are so many of them that he now lists them as Simon The first, and so on. Or he did until he found out more of that branch of the family tree. There are Simon's crawling out of the woodwork. If you'll pardon the expression. My mother-in-law used to graciously inform me that I should be honoured to have married into the family name she also had married into. Suffice it to say that when I informed her, bluntly, that I didn't need to marry her son to have that name, I already had it in my family tree, we heard no more about the matter.
So, The Cousin and I shall be off on our trails again in either September or October. Great grandfather, he who married the namesake grandparent, hailed from the West of Ireland. We shall be travelling through Galway and Sligo and probably a drop down into Clare as we pursue our investigations. I am loving the whole journey in company that is very much on my wavelength.
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