The Ballycastle Blog: Irish Genealogy and More

When researching your Irish ancestors online, be aware that transcription errors may occur when old handwritten paper records are transcribed or transferred to electronic databases. Prior to the Irish National Archives launching its searchable online 1911 Irish Census database last year, I already had my grandfather Martin Healy’s 1911 Irish Census record listing him, his wife Mary, and Mary’s brother John Sweeney, living at the same residence on King Street in Ballina, County Mayo. When the online 1911 census database opened for business, I decided to test it by entering “Martin Healy, male, County Mayo” to view the results. I was surprised when my grandfather did not appear anywhere in the resulting list of Martin Healys in County Mayo in 1911. After some repeated tries with no success, I decided to try John Sweeney, knowing that John appeared on the same record at the same address as my grandparents. Lo and behold, there they all were, Martin, Mary, and John, King Street, Ballina, County Mayo. It turned out that the National Archives records specialist, entering the handwritten record information into the electronic database, mistook the script “H” in “Healy” for a “K”. Thus, Martin and Mary Healy are listed as Martin and Mary Kealy in the database. I submitted a correction to the Archives for their attention.

Lesson Learned: Transcription errors are frustrating for the Irish ancestor researcher. They can throw you completely off track. If, at first, you don’t find your ancestor in an electronic database, you may have to try other spellings of a surname with completely different letters to find the correct electronic record. You may need to guess what errors the records specialist may make when entering the data in the database.

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

As a child growing up in 1940’s rural Ireland Christmas was a time of excitement and wonderment. During Advent the adults were required to fast but this did not affect us children. The Christmas season really started the Sunday before Christmas and one of the first manifestations of Christmas was a visit to the local shop with an ass and cart to purchase paraffin, flour, candles and other provisions for the Christmas period. My grandfather killed the goose and turkey and plucking, which took place in an outhouse took about an hour and a half. (When my grandfather became too infirm to kill the fowl I took over his duties as my father was too squeamish for the task and I performed those duties for the family for about 10 – 12 years).

Christmas Eve was a day of abstinence (no meat) but my mother believed in the Celtic day which starts at night-fall and so we had a special meal after dark to commence the Christmas festivities. After the war tinned fruit became available and a big treat at that Christmas Eve meal was tinned pineapple, to this day my favourite fruit. A huge excitement was caused by lighting the candles as two candles were lit in every window in the house and to look around the village and to see candles in every window except those houses that had a bereavement during the year. (Someone who was a bit tight- fisted would be described as “He only lit candles in his front windows”).

We were lucky and unusual in that Santy came to our house with a toy, a book, an orange (a huge treat after the war) and a garment knitted by my mother or grandmother.

Christmas Day we walked to Mass fasting and while I was an altar-boy a big treat was the shilling we got from the parish priest after Mass. (We were terrified of upsetting him and he did not know how to deal with children but in hindsight he was a most compassionate and caring man. When I got involved in local history I found out that as a young priest he had campaigned vigorously to improve the material lot of his impoverished parishioners).

We had Christmas dinner in my grandparents’ house next door. My grandmother cooked the turkey and my mother the goose in large ovens by an open turf fire. Glowing coals had to be constantly replaced on top and under the oven and the duties of keeping the fire blazing and providing a supply of hot coals was assigned to one of the children. How they managed to get them as perfectly as I remember is a wonder to me as even with an electric oven I still struggle to get the goose right.

On St. Stephens Day we dressed up as mummers (also known as wren-boys or straw-boys) and went round the village singing and dancing in each house. A neighbour made the classical straw-hats for us and in most houses we got a few pennies and some sweets or cake.

The candles in the windows were again lit on New Year’s Eve and we had the Scottish custom of first-footing where it was considered lucky if the first person through the door was dark and carried a sod of turf for the fire. All children old enough blackened their faces with polish or soot and came as an excited group all together. Ours was a tee-total house so there was no whiskey as is usually involved.

The candles were lit for the last time on the eve of “Little Christmas” the 6th January. It is known in Irish as “Nollaig na mBan” . “The Women’s Christmas” and on that day my mother and grandmother did no cooking.

I still put two candles in a window (I am tight-fisted) after dark on Christmas Eve to welcome the Baby Jesus. Join me.

Guibhim Beannachtaí na Nollag agus Ath-Bhliain faoi shéan agus faoi mhaise oraibh uilig

(I wish for the Blessings of Christmas and that Next Year will be content and successful for everyone).

Throughout the peak Irish emigration years, it was very common for a number of Irish people from the same Irish village to settle in the same American city when they emigrated to America. For example, people from a small village just west of Belmullet, County Mayo, Ireland, all came to Holyoke, Massachucetts and settled there with their friends and families. Likewise, people from Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland, all came to Cleveland, Ohio, when they emigrated to America. Hence, today you’ll find a large sign on Achill Island proudly proclaiming that its sister city is Cleveland, Ohio, USA. It is estimated that up to a quarter of the population of the Ohio city can be traced back to the West of Ireland and to Achill Island in particular.

Knowing where one Irish American family in an American city originated in Ireland, may lead to the origins of other Irish American families in the same American city.

Let us know what Irish villages sent Irish emigrants to your city.

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

When reviewing and extracting information from an old handwritten U.S. or Irish document, you should look at the entire document to determine the unique handwriting traits of the official who completed the document long ago. From these unique handwriting traits, you can identify how the official formed the individual letters in words on the document. For example, on a handwritten birth certificate, a person’s surname, written in script, appears to have the letter “r” in it. On closer inspection, comparing the script surname with other script word entries on the certificate reveals that the “r” is actually an “e”. If there is any doubt or question about an illegible name on a document, it is smart to look at all of the handwritten words and entries in the document to help solve the mystery of the illegible name.

The English translations of Irish village and town names have taken different spellings over the years. In the early 1800’s, engineering and map surveyors traveled throughout Ireland, translating Irish place names into English, with varying results (see previous posting about Translations: The Play). The Irish word for “head” is “cean”. Irish village names starting with “cean” translated to “cane” or “keane” in the English versions. In the 1901 Irish census, the grandfather of one recent client lived in Canearagh in County Kerry. The same man’s 1878 birth certificate spelled his birthplace as Keaneiragh. Both of these spellings are correct spellings for the same place. Discovering and knowing these spelling differences make Irish family document searches that much more satisfying and interesting to do.

Note: The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

(This is a loose translation into English of an article I wrote in Irish some years ago for a local antiquarian publication. From my two short and most enjoyable visits to America, your laws on alcohol are more draconian than our own).

I have a theory that the skills of making poteen came into the Gaeltacht from English speaking areas as all of the terminology associated with its making, used in Irish, are English words such as still, worm, wash, mash, cap, first-shot and round. In my youth, the old people, speaking in Irish or English, called poteen “fuisgí”, and the legal variety they called “Parliament”. (i. e. a Parliamentary tax had been paid on it.)

I never saw poteen being distilled, but I often heard my father describe how it was made from barley. There is a lot of time-consuming preparatory work before the barley is ready fore distillation. In this post, where I am not sure of the quantity or time, I use a question-mark. Two (?) hundredweight bags of barley were required for a full round (four and one quarter gallons of poteen). They took one third from each bag and placed them in a third bag.

Steeping (3 days)
The barley has to be steeped in water for three days. Running water was preferred. During this time the barley expands 20% to 25%. This is the reason that a third bag is required.

Sprouting (10 – 12 days)
After steeping, the Barley is spread out on a dry floor to a depth of four or five inches. The top layer has to be kept wet. This is accomplished by raking the barley every day and by sprinkling the top layer with water. The barley gets very hot during the sprouting process. After three days or so, 4 or 5 rootlets, no thicker than a hair, emerge from the broad end of the seed. A couple of days later the sprout emerges from the pointed end of the seed. The time is dependent on the weather, but the sprouting continues until most of the sprouts are about one quarter inch long. The rootlets are about an inch long by now and the barley is matted together in a single mass.

Drying (2? days)
The sprouted barley has to be dried to stop the germination and to allow it to be ground up. It was dried in the big pot used for spuds. They had to stand with it all the time and stir the barley every 10 minutes.

Grinding (2? days)
The dried barley was then ground on a quern. A good grinder, usually a woman, could grind two stone in an hour.

Fermentation (5 - 7 days)
The ground barley was put in a big barrel together with 50-60 gallons of water and half a pound of bakers yeast to start the fermentation. When the yeast starts to work, little bubbles are released, forming foam on the top. Fermentation takes 5 – 7 days. At the end the alcohol content is 4 – 5%. This is now the “wash”.

IT IS AGAINST THE LAW IN THIS COUNTRY TO DISTILL ANY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE

Distillation (8? hours)
A still would usually hold 10 to 15 gallons. Alcohol boils ay about 80C and water at 100C so therefore they did their best to keep the temperature of the wash at about 85C so that the alcohol was boiling briskly and only a little steam coming from the water. They tried to keep the thread of fuisgí coming from the still as fine as possible and at any rate less than a linen thread. The first cupful had to be thrown on the ground for the fairies. This was very wise as the first cupful contained poisonous, volatile, higher order alcohols and esters.

They found the wash was exhausted by lighting a dry tráithnín and putting it to the thread of fuisgí. If there was still alcohol coming from the wash, the flame would flare up; if not, it would quench. They had to fill the still six or seven times before the round was complete. They fed the solid material left to the pig. It was said that the poor pig could not go out a gap without banging his head

At the end of the round there should be four gallons and one quart ( taking into account the amount drank) If there was very much more, say six or seven gallons, they had to do another run, which did not take long as the alcohol content was high. If there was less than four gallons they made it up with water. Fuisgí has a proof rate of 55 compared with 40 for Parliament. At this strength if you drop a little drop into a glass it will make individual beads around the bottom.

IT IS AGAINST THE LAW IN THIS COUNTRY TO DISTILL ANY ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE. GOD HELP US.

But if you are a farmer in France you can distil as much brandy as you like for yourself and your friends. In some states in Germany you can even sell up to 60 litres of homemade schnapps to tourists. Harmonisation? How are ya!

(Harmonisation of its laws is an objective of the European Union and some progress has been made in the areas of transport, health and safety, and labour laws though harmonisation of taxes and excise duties are decades away.)

See more Irish family history articles and Irish genealogy lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

One interesting aspect of Irish children’s first names, is this name pattern tradition that a large number of Irish families followed in the 1800’s and 1900’s:

1st son was named after the father’s father
2nd son was named after the mother’s father
3rd son was named after the father
4th son was named after the father’s eldest brother

1st daughter was named after the mother’s mother
2nd daughter was named after the father’s mother
3rd daughter was named after the mother
4th daughter was named after the mother’s eldest sister

I’ve seen this tradition in the numerous Irish family document searches that I’ve conducted, while examining Irish records from 1850 through 1920.

While working with a client and searching for the client’s mother’s Irish birth certificate, I spoke with a representative from one of the many Irish Family History centers in Ireland. From these conversations, I learned that it was not unusual for the mother-to-be to travel to her parents’ home village or town to give birth to her baby. Consequently, an infant appearing on a census record may not have been born in the village of record at the time of the census. The family may have moved there after the child was born, prior to the census, or the mother returned to her parents’ home to give birth to her baby. Therefore, in either case, document record searches in locations beyond the census recorded home location are necessary and required.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time:

Saving the year’s supply of turf, (we never called it peat), was a family exercise extending over several months each year. Soon after St. Patrick’s Day my father would arrange to have the turf cut. At this stage a sod of turf is about 16 inches long and 4-5 inches square, and black sodden mass 80% water. Our bog was a fairly shallow blanket bog (about 5 feet deep), so we got only three tops ( three vertical rows). Two of the tops were thrown in two parallel vertical heaps on the bank and one in the bog hole. The next process involved “spreading the turf” where the sodden turf sods were spread out in a single layer to dry. This was very messy and heavy work and at the end of the day you and your clothes were covered in black muck. With my father and brothers working, it took 4 or 5 days to complete.

After about three weeks the top layer was dry while the bottom was still very wet. The turf was then “wreckled” that is the sods were stood on their ends in groups of 10-12 . I enjoyed this part of the process as you could be creative and develop your own “signature” wreckle. After about a month, the turf was dry and ready to be moved from the bog to the side of the road, though the time it took to get to this stage could be seriously delayed by bad weather.

The first ass cart I remember working on (assisting with the filling and emptying) had metal shod wooden wheels, but shortly after that my father replaced the axle and wheels with a car axle and rubber car wheels, which was regarded as a major technological advance. One part of our bog could not be reached by cart, so the turf was removed by ass and pardogs (wickerwork panniers). I was put in charge of this part of the operation at age ten. Two years later, I was put in charge of the ass and car and my younger brothers inherited the ass and pardogs. We had to move 140-150 cart loads a distance of 30 to 300 yards to the side of the road. This took place in June and took us about three weeks to complete. The weather seemed better then, as I recall hot sunny days working with the turf. In the next bog were three boys about our own age. As our carts passed each other, both groups were greeted with a fusillade of clods (small pieces of turf up to about 3 inches long). After a warm day in the bog we were covered in turf dust which stuck to your sweat and the way we had to clean up was to go for a refreshing swim in a large rock pool where the water was significantly warmer than the sea.

Our bog was three quarters a mile from our house, and, as you could put much more turf in the cart, we had about 70-80 cart loads to get home. I hated it as it seemed to take forever. We could get maybe 5 or 6 carts home in a day. Things seemed to cause delay. The ass might tire and fail, and would need the next day off. We had one ass that would work away happily for three or four days and then would just stop and would not move any farther. You just had to un-harness him and leave the cart there until he had his day off.. On the sharp stones the wheels regularly punctured and occasionally a wheel seized. On one occasion I was walking ahead of the ass when the reins were jerked out of my hand. When I turned and looked back, the cart was on its side in a deep ditch and the poor old ass was on his back with his legs up in the drain.

My children have very good memories of bringing home the turf for their grandfather. We were living in England at the time and during our summer holiday a brother would borrow a tractor and trailer, and with a team of from 10-15 children the job was completed in one day. My children thought it great to ride with their cousins in the trailer to the bog and to run home barefoot through the bog. My brothers went with the tractor while I stayed with my father to build the stack. The children were completely banned from throwing clods (my daughter had lost half a front tooth from a direct hit from a cousin). At the end of the day my brothers and I would start throwing clods at each other and the children were allowed to have a bog fight with us which they all remember. They were fascinated at the way we caught the in-coming clods and threw them back.

What I have described is the process of saving turf in North Mayo in the era of the ass and cart. With different types of bog the process was somewhat different.

Readers are welcomed to share their bog and turf stories with us.

See more Irish family history articles and Irish genealogy lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.

The following was contributed by an Irish relative in County Sligo, Ireland. He will be a guest contributor from time to time. The following was written in response to a comment on an earlier blog post of July 22, 2008.

A visitor has made a welcome comment as to what evidence I have regarding St. Bridget’s status. There is no direct evidence, but there are two bits of deductive evidence which I consider compelling.

What direct evidence we have comes from the Lives of the Saints and these were written a hundred or more years after the death of the Saint by a successor with a view to strengthen the particular institutions claim to primacy. Copies exist many hundreds of years old with some fragments going back to the eighth century. They are, however, regarded as not very reliable and as being full of exaggeration and dubious miracles. In St. Bridget’s life we are told that she was a head-strong independent young princess in conflict with her father when she met St. Patrick and was converted from paganism.

Another powerful Celtic woman was Queen Maebh (Maeve) of Connaught. She personally assessed the prowess of one hundred princes before deciding to marry Ailill and then went to war with Ulster because Ailill had a better bull than she had. The story of that war is told in the Táin. In pagan Celtic Ireland it was impossible for a princess to reach adulthood and still be a virgin.

One of the series of legends we have are the Imramha. They are a series of curragh voyages of adventure and they are a bit like a James Bond film in that they follow a formula. Among others they usually visit the Island of Apples (apples were a symbol of abundance in Celtic times), the Island of Fire, the Island of Ice and the Island of Women. The Island of Women was considered to be full of magic and mystery. In the Voyage of Bran the women did not want the men to return so when they tried to row away after a year the women threw magic ropes that stuck to the curragh and hauled them back. One time a crew member grabbed the rope before it touched the curragh and with his sword Bran chopped off the crew member’s hand and so they escaped. However, when they got home a hundred years had passed and as soon as they stepped ashore they became very old men.

In another story there were three women for every man and the men found the women’s demands so exhausting that they went on strike. The strike was settled when it was agreed that the men would be allowed to hunt for one day a week. In another there were seven women to every man and with his crew half dead the skipper went back on his own to get a second crew to relive the pressure on his first crew. St Brendan the Navigator’s voyages are in this tradition and he visits the Island of Fire and the Island of Ice but unfortunately missed the Island of Women.

I have tried to imagine the monks in their freezing scriptoriums solemnly writing down the sexual antics contained in the oral legends.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a community which had the last echoes of a Gaelic past and the cult of St. Bridget. Her cult had absorbed much of the Celtic goddess Bríd the fertility goddess, mother earth the mother goddess. I was genuinely taken aback when I walked into the church in Portugal and saw St. Bridget the Virgin because I had an image of St. Bridget as a mother figure and giving a mother’s protection to Ireland.

See more Irish family history articles and lessons learned in earlier posts below and in the archives.