Back and Back

We were going back. New York City, Dublin and County Cavan.

Back to the Manhattan tenement where my grandmother Mamie and her sister Margie lived.

Back to the Catholic Church of my family.

Back through records and old photographs.

Back to County Cavan, where my great-grandmother Ellen Flanagan, was born.

Back, back, back

The Paper Trail - The pilgrimage guide, family history, photographs and itinerary spread across the table.

I had worked on this trip for months, researching names, churches, farms and graveyards. I packed my research, some family photographs, and gifts for cousins I had never met.

Then our flight to New York City was canceled two hours before takeoff. We scrambled and found another flight. It went to Newark instead of LaGuardia. Fine. We were on our way.

West 37th Street today.

Before Ireland, Lisa and I went to West 37th Street. Mamie and Margie once lived there.

The old tenement is now in a fashionable neighborhood. The rent is higher than a million dollar mortgage. I wondered whether the bathroom was still in the hall, shared by four apartments.

I remembered playing jacks on the stoop, and sitting on the fire escape on hot summer evenings.

Afterward, we stopped at an Irish bar. There we met Irene Connolly, an Irish immigrant, from a county neighboring Cavan. She told us about going home each year with so many relatives that they take over the entire pub for the day.

That morning I had walked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral on a whim. Alabaster statues of saints Gold trimming. So beautiful that my eyes watered. Then I saw a line. It was for confession.

I had not been to confession in fifty years.

I got in line.

The priest talked with me through half a century of sins. It took a long time

Candles and St. Anthony inside St. Patrick’s.

I wanted to bring Oliver, Kathleen and Pat something from home. Maple syrup from Serge’s family farm would have been perfect. So would Finger Lakes Riesling. Neither worked in a carry-on. I bought books instead.

For Oliver, the Cavan Geaneologist I brought a gift edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A good American book and a small joke about the Finn name. My cousins Kathleen and Pat got a photographic book about New York and another about famous Irish immigrants. Scalawags all.

At JFK, waiting to board in the Aer Lingus lounge I had a stress headache. I kept thinking something would stop me from reaching Ireland.

Nothing did.

We landed in Dublin at four in the morning. Later Trace and Shayna arrived.

The Second Church

On Sunday, in Dublin, I went to Mass at St. Laurence O’Toole. The sermon was about being your brother’s keeper. It felt directed at me.

Lisa arrived during Mass. We both stayed after for confession.

The priest, Father Brandon, gave me his own rosary. He told me to stop trying to carry everything myself. Say the rosary each day, he said. Give the rest to God.

Entering the National Library of Ireland.

At the National Library, I followed the Flanagan and King paper trail.

John Flanagan and Margaret—or Margaretta—King married in Templeport parish in 1856. Six of their children are recorded in Ballynamaddoo. Ellen was baptized on December 1, 1863. She later left Ireland at about sixteen and became my great-grandmother.

The librarian said Cavan could be a black hole for records.

Still, we found several court cases involving a Hugh King. One accused Anne Dolan of interfering with Hugh’s cow. Another recorded Hugh being fined for public drunkenness. Only a shilling- it was his first offense. Other records suggest he was a collector of the small payments owed to the Poor Law union for upkeep of the indigent of the community.

Hugh King Petty Sessions record. Interesting, but not proof that he was Margaretta’s father.

I liked this possible ancestor. He had cows, a public job and at least one bad night.

But we still do not know whether he was my great-great grandfather. Thomas King also appeared in the records and seemed to interest the librarian.

The library gave me fewer answers than I hoped so it was on to Cavan.

Cavan - Lunch in Ballyconnell with Irish family, our local historian and the American branch.

The pub where we planned to meet was closed. We found a café instead.

Oliver Brady the Cavan Genealogist joined us there with my cousins Kathleen and Pat Dolan. We ate a long lunch and traded stories. One story suggested that an earlier ancestor was named Thomas King. Maybe. Kathleen offered to show us the King Ruin at Derrymore

The King-family home ruin at Derrymore.

Kathleen and Pat showed us the remains of the King-family home at Derrymore.

It was easy to miss. Trees and brush had swallowed most of it. A stone wall and a small red door remained below the green field.

Ballynamaddoo - On the road with our guide, trying to match old records to the land.

Oliver took us into Ballynamaddoo.

The records show a cluster of Flanagan holdings there. Much of the area has reverted to forest. No ancestral cottage waited for us. But the land was there.

The old farmland sat high on a hill above a lake. It was intensely green. We walked, looked and got muddy.

We visited Holy Trinity at Kildoagh. It was built in 1796 and was the nearest historic Catholic church to Ballynamaddoo, where John, and Margaret baptized their children.

Oliver had obtained a key to the abandoned church.

Inside, the paint peeled from the walls. A damaged statue of Mary stood in the dim room. I found a fragment of an old Bible in a drawer.

A damaged statue of Mary inside Holy Trinity

The graveyard in the green Cavan countryside.

Margaret was buried at St. Peter’s Graveyard at Port, but we do not know her exact grave. John’s burial place remains unknown.

There was no marked family plot waiting for us.

There were old stones, green hills and quiet.

On the old King farm I picked a blackberry and ate it. I put some seeds in a napkin and tucked them into my purse to plant back in NY in our food forest

Kathleen and Pat invited us to return and stay for a week. Oliver promised to hike the farmland and see what he could find we promised to return and stay longer but now it was time to head to the coast We had reservations at a country house in the Burren

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