Knocking on a stranger’s door

“Talk to everyone” was my mother-in-law’s parting advice before our trip to Ireland. Her advice was more for the great leads and new historical information that comes from talking to people and less for the fact that I’d rather hide in the archives. When we set off for a day trip from Templemore to cross over into County Clare on the western side of the Lough Derg, we had a whole day ahead of us knocking on strangers’ doors.

Our first stop was in O’Brien’s Bridge. My mother-in-law wanted us to visit Micky Madden. A few years back a cousin of hers had stopped off in the village and enquired with the local butcher on where to find Micky Madden. These were the instructions given to us, not Micky’s address from when the cousin tracked him down, oh no, but to go to the butcher in the village. The butcher did not know of Micky Madden, but directed us to speak to Christie Crotty in the house across the road. Knock, knock…. Christie sent us on to see Tommy Tuohy in the first house over the bridge. Tommy knows all the local history and should be able to help us. On the very short drive to Tommy’s place, we commented on how empty the village felt. We knocked on Tommy’s door, not knowing what to expect. How strange it must be to receive a knock on your door from a random Australian couple? Tommy invited us in and we sat perched on the edge of his old worn couch.

Tommy didn’t know Mickey Madden either, despite his stories stretching back to the famine days of 1850s. His tales of hardship from the famine were spoken with such conviction and emotion, the intergenerational trauma of the great hunger seemed surprisingly raw and we were concerned that we had dredged up such sorrows for him, particularly when he told us, we were the first people he had seen that week. This revelation reverberated the emptiness of the village across the bridge. We had called in on a Thursday and my heart broke for this kind, lonely soul. Our only consolation was the hope that our unexpected visit somehow bolstered his spirits.

We eventually found Micky Madden* and again we were offered cups of tea. Micky took us to the house that was on a property occupied by my mother-in-law’s paternal ancestor’s family**. After bidding farewell to Micky, we journeyed on to have a leisurely late lunch in Killaloe in a little café that was surprisingly busy and full. Energy revived and calling hypocrisy to our introversion, we set off for Whitegate to the ancestral lands of my people, the Sheehys.

The mysterious Sheehys

There is a mystery surrounding the Sheehy’s that stems from the tragic death of Margaret Sheehy, two weeks after her son, my then three-year-old great grandfather John Sheehy Meagher arrived in the Australian colonies. She had been in Port Phillip colony for three years, having immigrated not long after having her second child. The children initially stayed in Ireland and came to Australia with another family in 1866. As a consequence, my family’s knowledge of the Sheehys was zero. Official records told us she was from Whitegate. Only her surname was passed down the generations. I had gathered a little bit of information prior to the visit. Griffith Valuations revealed where the family lived. Armed with this scant knowledge, I became the first descendant in my family to visit Whitegate. The homeplace of Margaret, my great-great grandmother.

Now accustomed to super quiet villages, Whitegate seemed even smaller in scale to O’Brien’s Bridge. The old church is derelict and used as a lumberyard and warehouse, and a new smaller church on the other side of the road with a graveyard of new headstones marks the arrival in Whitegate. We studied the local map looking for Gweeneeney, the location of the Sheehy’s residence in the 1860s. We passed a lovely looking pub called the Nightingale in what would be Gweeneeney and found our way to the old walled cemetery of Clonrush.  We wandered around this cemetery attempting to methodically look at every gravestone for the Sheehy name. I noticed a gravestone almost like a table and yet did not look at the inscription, the daylight slowly, but surely starting to recede.  We were keen to get going before dusk, given we were an hour and a half away from our accommodation, a long way in a little country.

We stopped at the Nightingale to take photos and had driven off in the direction of the motorway when I saw a man come out of a door of the closed pub. I said that I should ask him if he knows the Sheehys, so we reversed back and I got out to ask him. He said that he didn’t know of any Sheehys in the area but I should ask Mary at the convenience store, as she’d know. So we backtracked to the convenience store to make enquiries with Mary. She told me I should speak to the local historian of the area, Alfie O’Brien. He’s a farmer and the local historian and he’d probably be home now – since it was close to dinnertime (evening meal). After a few false starts, a bad line and some communication issues, we were invited to call in. Alfie supplied us directions to his place in Meelick, not far from the Clonrush cemetery, and once again, we followed the lead to see where it would take.

Nightingale Hotel, Whitegate

To another stranger’s door

We could tell by the smells of a hearty meal, we had interrupted Alfie’s dinner, but nevertheless, he asked us in and started to check his index book. Meticulously kept and transcribed from the old Church registers, we waited patiently, wondering what was in store. What would Alfie know about a family from the 1850s?

He gave me some births, deaths and marriages, showed me a picture of a familiar gravestone reminiscent of a table, a memorial to Nancy, my great-great grandmother’s sister erected in 1843[1]. And, he told me Margaret’s father, John Sheehy, had been on a Famine Relief Committee in Whitegate and that the Nightingale was the original home and grain store of the Sheehy family. 

I thanked Alfie profusely and promised to send the scant details I had i.e. one marriage notice in the paper. We travelled to a nearby village restaurant. I had to record my experience straight away… I wrote feverishly in my notebook whilst we waited for a delicious pizza and red wine.

Following up on Margaret’s family is a way of honouring her memory. For years she has languished unknown, unidentified, effectively a ghost hovering over the family tree chart. To be on the cusp of learning about her family is truly exciting. My face flushed with the excitement having just been to a farmer’s house where a gold mine is unearthed. Information spilling out of his meticulous notes, an index book faithfully transcribed from the old Church registers.

 Ah that historian’s high is really something! Echoes of the original Sheehy breakthrough I experienced a few months prior, which you can read more about here.

*I’m not sure how, I wasn’t really paying attention – I just wanted to get on with searching for my family…

**Consistent with the haphazard directions we received, we didn’t note down the address of the ancestral home Micky took us to, so my mother-in-law was forced to send a letter with a picture of the house on the envelope hoping that it might find its way to the owners…..

[1] http://www.clonrush.net/Pic%20140.htm