Tombstone Tuesday from Ireland

 Well, if it is Tombstone Tuesday, I have to share more of my cemetery photos from Ireland. Aw, shucks . . .

The Celtic cross was every where!
The variations were beautiful.  This was in the cemetery at Kilmurvey, Inishmore, Aran Islands, County Galway, Ireland.  Whew!  That should be a complete description.  The inscription is in Gaelic, but I have a lovely individual who has offered to translate it for me so I will include an edit later with that information.

This was one of the most elaborate at the cemetery around the Muckross Friary in the Killarney National Park.  The ruins of the Friary were a spectacular backdrop to the still used cemetery.



















Both of these were at the Rock of Cashel.  It is interesting that there are still about 30 people who have the right to be buried here.

                                     The IHS symbol in the center of the one on the left almost appears to be a dollar sign.  I like all of the shamrocks twining up and down.

I could post many more, but I think I might run the risk of boring even the graveyard rabbits.

A Sad Sad Cemetery

Well, I just cant' wait. I have to post some of my photos from Ireland. I'll get to my fourth and last family history trip later. (I knew I couldn't stay organized)

While my traveling companions joked about my pre-occupation with cemeteries, the truth is that I only visited two that weren't attached to ruins/abbeys/castles that we were already visiting. One was on Inishmore, and I walked from our B&B, the Kilmurvey House, down the road one morning as they finished getting packed. The other was down a side road in Dunquoin (Dún Chaoin) just before we got to the Blasket Island Visitor Centre ( Blascaod Centre) and museum at the tip of the Dingle peninsula. How did I know about this, you ask? Rick Steves, of course - the travel guru of "off the beaten path" experiences. There was a small sign that told us to turn right for the Old Burial Ground. I instantly directed our driver to turn. I did not take time to vote on this! Not far down the road we found this sad, sad, cemetery. It appeared as though I was the only one that found this Rick Steves suggestion appealing.

Notice the warning about the grounds being uneven. That warning is an understatement.

This is the "well worn" path up through the cemetery.

The familiar Celtic cross dominated every cemetery I saw.
Close-up of the hand carved Gaelic inscription. I wish I knew his name - or hers? I wonder what else it says? Many Blascot Island residents were supposedly buried here. Could this be a fisherman from the Blascots?

Remember the warning on the entrance sign? This is the reason why. This was the center Celtic cross headstone on a small hill in the center of the graveyard. It rose above the rest. Look closely at the GIGANTIC hole at the base and the fact that it appears as thought it had been moved. Eerie for sure. I could find no identifiable markings on either side of the grave, but it had a plaque on a base near it - all in Gaelic. As I looked through my photos, I must not have taken a photo of the plaque. As I walked back down the hill to catch up with my friends, I noticed many more of these holes in the hill some even larger. If you fell into one of these you would feel like Alice in Wonderland.









Detail of the fish relief at the top.


The back side of the monument at the base.


Angel or resurrection in the wall beside the grave.


This was by far the most beautiful grave in the cemetery. It was finely carved and had images on both sides. It is the resting place of Tomás Ó Criomhthain, a fisherman, author and famous resident of Great Blascot Island.

We discovered this connection when we went a bit farther down the road to the visitor centre, and there was a poster about his life hanging on the wall. Were there others at the cemetery that we missed? I'll never know. Cemeteries often fall into disrepair, but how could this happen to an Irish hero?
If you are ever on the Slea Head drive around the Dingle peninsula, look for the small sign pointing you to the Old Dunquin Burial Ground and lay a flower on Tomas' grave, but look out for the giant holes in the ground!

Hmmmmmmm. . . . . .

WARNING: This is an unusually long, rambling blog post. You might want to skip it. This is about the man with the beard above. Remember, I warned you.

Which of my intended blog posts should I do next? Should I continue, albeit interrupted, the family research trip thread? This would give a semblance of organization and continuity to this blog. Should I discuss the Geneabloggers challenge #23? - nope, I am still in the middle of that situation! Should I do a belated Father's Day because of the unending guilt I feel for not giving my wonderful father his day? Then there is the Ireland cemetery blog in which I could share many of the photos I took - only my favorite thousand, I promise! Hmmmmm. . . . .

Darn it, I started out with such intent to be organized. I set the stage for my blog name and planned to continue in the same way, putting together the pieces I have found in some orderly way. Remember, I told you earlier that I always INTEND to be organized. But, it always seems to fall apart in the middle somewhere. In reality I assumed that I would run out of steam, get bored with it, and stop for lack of ideas, but it hasn't happened so far. I now find myself in the position of "banking" blog post ideas because I don't have the time to write about all of the ideas I have. I think I also forgot some, but since I can't remember them, they don't count. Without Lisa Ellam of The Faces of My Family I would still be thinking about a blog. She gave me the nudge I needed to actually sign up and begin. Only time will tell if that is credit or blame?? I created this blog essentially for me - to help me organize my thoughts and create a record of my family research. I only pretend I am talking to someone else, but I will continue this illusion.

Back to my original quandary. What topic will I tackle today? Since, I have an upcoming family history research trip to Iowa with my brother - or without him if he backs out AGAIN. By writing out my options here, I can see clearly that my subject today should be a continuation of the saga of my four family research trips during the first year of my obsession called genealogy.

Today I will relate the story of my third family history research trip in which I traveled to Canada!
In my post about my first trip, I said that I shared information with my cousin about "the man with the long white beard". Much of that information came from another long lost cousin that I connected with on a message board. She had posted a question searching for information on James B. Allen, and when I responded a couple of years after her original post, that I thought this might be my g-g-grandfather, it started a wonderful correspondence with his family in Eramosa Twp, Ontario, Canada - listed in the census records as Canada West. She had been working on her family genealogy with her daughter for over 30 years, but they never knew what happened to James B., one of 13 children born to James Bush Allen and Anna Lyman. I was feeling pretty good about the fact that I had just identified him from the census records. Up to this point, we were only guessing his identity. The 1925 Iowa state census was the key to unlocking a flood of information. In 1925, he was living with his daughter, my beloved g-grandmother, and that made the connection. If you have family in Iowa during this time and have not checked it out, you must do so immediately. It is a goldmine! It is four pages long and includes the names of the parents, not just the country of origin, and where they were married.

Eileen, my new relative, and I corresponded by email several times, but then she mailed some photos she had. As I opened the envelope, a photo of my grandmother standing behind the "man with the long white beard" with baby Margel on his lap, fell out. It was a rush of feelings. Then I pulled out another photo of four distinguished men . . . my g-g-grandfather (on the left) and three of his brothers, Peter, Joseph and Israel. There was no doubt that this was the correct family connection. I began to flood her with questions. Then one evening my phone rang and it was Eileen. She thought we should chat over the phone. And we did for over an hour. She told me how James B. use to come back home to visit every couple of years and some members of the family still commented on his marriage to a Catholic. She told me about visiting the Old Stone Church in Eramosa and digging up the headstone of Annie Lyman that had sunk beneath the grass. Oh, I wanted to visit that cemetery. This was my g-g-g-grandparents! We had a wonderfully long talk, and she invited me to visit - Well, maybe I hinted that I would like to meet her. A plan was born. In the last week of my summer vacation, I hurriedly made plans to travel five hours north for a family meeting. Her daughter would be visiting, and she could drive us to the cemetery.

This was to be a solo trip without GPS, but I was confident. I had multiple printed Google maps and a large print spiral bound atlas. It was a sunny day and everything looked good. Then 2 hours into the trip, Boom, kathunk, kathunk, kathunk. I looked around and pulled off to the side of the road to check the car. As I rounded the back of the car I saw the rip in the sidewall of my rear tire. Thank goodness I had AAA - I did send the check in didn't I? I finally found my information tucked between a punch card for JoJo's pretzels and an old L.S. Ayres credit card. When I called they informed me that they didn't have a record of my current membership. Oh no, it had expired. Then the wonderful lady told me that they could reinstate my membership if I wanted to put it on a credit card, and they would send a truck right out. What do you think I did? I'm saved, but the truck had several other calls first and so the half hour wait turned into two and a half as Iwalked back and forth in the grass beside the car. I called everyone I could think of and told them my tale of woe to pass the time. After the truck arrived it was off to the local Walmart to get a new tire, because my mini spare wouldn't last. Finally, I am on my way after a five hour delay. I arrived at my destination moments before dark descended and was greeted with hugs and smiles from three complete strangers. . . . but not strangers for long. They wouldn't hear of me staying in a motel, they had a room all ready for me. Isn't family great!

The next day we traveled to the Old Stone Church, but since Eileen couldn't remember the EXACT route, I saw a fair amount of the local area first. I loved it. As we pulled up to the country church, she explained that the records for the church had been lost in a fire when the caretaker took them home for safety and then her house caught fire taking the records with them. I gathered together my camera and purse, opened the car door, and then reached back in for an umbrella. Yes, it rained the whole time we were there, but, on the up side, it makes the headstones easier to read. She showed me the headstone of Annie Lyman, and it had deteriorated quite a bit since she uncovered it. It was almost unreadable. I'm glad she had a photo from when she first uncovered it. Next to hers was her husband, James Bush Allen which was in better shape. As we walked around the cemetery, dodging the worst of the puddles she pointed to this brother, that sister-in-law, an aunt or infant from the family connecting the family relationships. The downpour couldn't dampen the emotion of this experience.

This time I brought the scanner and laptop, and it was a good thing. I could barely comprehend the amount of information that they had assembled. We started by making copies, but soon decided that scanning was the logical solution. It went much faster. We worked late that night, and I was so very grateful for their generosity with their 30 years of research. Comparatively, I could only share a small snippet of information about James Bush Jr. and my family with them, but they seemed happy to get it. I am still trying to sort out everything they shared. Early the next morning I packed the car, they fed me breakfast and gave me drinks and snacks for the trip home. This was an uneventful drive home, for which I was grateful.

Over the course of two days, Eileen and her daughters went from strangers to family -a wonderful transformation indeed. Can I think of another reason to return? Hmmmmm. . . . .

Slip Sliding Away. . . .

Time that slippery rascal . . . keeps racing past me. Where is the pause button for my life? I have planned and missed several intended blog posts. I didn't post for Father's Day, many Tombstone Tuesdays, the next installment in my novice family research trips, an update on the outcome of my Challenge #23, and many others that pop into my brain just as I am trying to turn it off for the night and sleep. I need to make better use of the "save as draft" feature and write during the short snippets of time I can get on the computer. I do have a laptop I could use, but it doesn't have my photos - something else I need to do. The photo below is the cemetery in Kilmurvey, Inishmore, Aran Islands, Ireland. I don't know of all that is necessary, but I wanted to be sure and give complete information! The gate stays locked and you enter by way of the short steps and the hole in the wall. My B&B, the Kilmurvey House, a historic home, is at the top. It rained almost continually during our one short day and overnight there, but we didn't let it stop us. However, the downside is that my photos are all gloomy looking, but our raincoats acted as sort of a color code so we can tell who is who in our photos from a distance. Every local resident kept telling us how the weather had been unusually bright and sunny the previous weeks, and that the island was in the middle of a drought. Water was being shipped in the next day.

Ireland was fabulous, but the only headstones I was able to photograph belonged to the family of someone else. It became a joke with my traveling companions that I wanted to stop at all the cemeteries. Conveniently, for me, many of the ruins/castles/abbeys had cemeteries surrounding them, and I always found myself wandering around reading and photographing ones I found interesting. A future post will feature some of those I found.

Then a day and a half after I returned from Ireland, my youngest son and daughter-in-law arrived for a visit from Seattle. I am enjoying their visit, and we are following the Tour de France daily. I told them they need an spreadsheet to keep track of their scheduled visits with friends and family. They agreed.

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Challenge 23 - Create Your Own Challenge aka "A kick in the butt"

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Challenge 23 - Create Your Own Challenge GeneaBloggers: "52 Weeks To Better Genealogy – Challenge 23
Come up with a personal genealogy challenge of your own. Each person has different research goals and experiences. Use this week to come up with your own challenge, and then take the steps to accomplish it. Genealogy bloggers are encouraged to share their ideas and challenge their own readers.
This challenge runs from Saturday, 5 June 2010 through Friday, 11 June 2010."

Challenge 23 may be a life changing challenge for me. Although I haven't registered my blog with GeneaBloggers, I do follow along and try to participate in most of the suggested challenges in an effort to improve and expand my research skills. I have briefly looked at the National Archives, poked around Find A Grave, ignored some and patted myself on the back for already using some of the suggested resources. Then came this week, and as I read it, I was already dismissing it in my mind. I was too busy planning my upcoming trip to Ireland and nothing instantly jumped into my brain.

But sitting quietly at the back of my mind was a memory of the last meeting with my genealogy group. I was telling them that I didn't know where my father graduated from college or high school. My parents divorced when I was eight, and I never saw anyone from that side of my family again except for a single brief visit with my aunt during a trip to Florida and a one hour lunch with my cousin over 20 years ago. Several people made suggestions as to how I might find the information. I wrote down the resources they suggested, but then one person suggested contacting a relative from that side of the family. I instantly started with excuses: They died several years ago. I don't know anyone else. Well, I only know one name. I think she moved. Her name? She possibly divorced. The excuses were rolling off my tongue faster than they could ask questions to try and help me. Then, from the other side of the room a head popped up from behind a computer, and I heard, "Here she is." She said my cousin's name, address and told me I could pull up a Google Earth image of her house in the Chicago area. There was a pause. How did you find that, I asked? She then told me she found it by using PIPL and went on to tell about her success with "cold calling". I am usually the talkative type, but I mumbled that I would have to try it and thank you so much. It suddenly dawned on me that in the two years that I have been working on my family history, I have never tried to find a living relative on my father's side of my family. I found obituaries for my grandparents, sent to Kansas State for photos from a 1907 yearbook, searched through census records and followed the family migration from Pennsylvania, to Ohio and finally to Kansas as my ancestors went from Quakers to Free State activists and then Civil War soldiers. But a living relative. . . . . and my first cousin at that. So even though I now had the information to make a contact, I did nothing. After all, I was too busy right now. It was too noisy now. There were too many people around now. It was too late or too early. In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "I'll think about it tomorrow".


Then came the Geneablogger challenge. My first thought was that I couldn't think of a personal challenge and passed it over. As I was sitting at my computer one morning in the middle of the week with my coffee mug in my hand and the screen on Iowa GenWeb, the words "cold calling" popped into my brain. I knew what my individual challenge was. The real challenge was making myself do it. I looked up her name and went to Google Earth. Maybe, this wasn't even her I told myself, but just someone with the same name. I breathed easier when I realized it was too early to call because they were an hour behind us, so I went on to other activities. Later when I came back and checked my Google Reader for new posts, that dang gone GeneaBlogger challenge was mentioned again. Okay, it was now or never. As I dialed the number, I could feel myself breathing more deeply. It rang. . . . and rang . . . and rang, then the answering machine picked up. As I left a message explaining who I was and who I was looking for, I started to choke up and knew I was sounding waaaay too emotional. It was so unexpected since it has been 54 years since my families divorced. I ended the message and hung up.

By now, I was committed to making this contact. When I didn't hear back that day, I searched the next day on Facebook - a site I loathe. There she was and with a photo. I think it might really be her. I quickly sent a message and quickly got a return message. It was my cousin!! Email was definitely easier. She can't see the number of times I rewrite my message, and my voice doesn't crack unexpectedly in an email. Pauses to grab a Kleenex don't show. I tell her that I will be travelling to Ireland in a few days and hope we can see each other when I return. She asks if I will be in County Clare where the McCoys were from - I didn't know that. I didn't even know they were Irish. We make plans, and I mention that I might need to bring tissues. She responded that she might need them also as she cried while she wrote to me thinking of the lost opportunities. It seems she was glad to hear from me too. . . .

My personal challenge was to "cold call", and I challenge others to try it also. Don't lose the opportunity.

My Second Family History Trip

As I said in a previous post, a chance phone call lead us (my brother and I) to a visit with my mother's first cousin. She and her mother moved back to live with her grandmother at 2338 W. Washington Blvd. after her father died. It was a very emotional meeting, and we planned to get together for the weekend a few weeks later. Again, my only preparation for the trip was excitement, enthusiam and some hastily scrawled questions. My brother took his laptop with his genealogy files on it, scanner, and his wife to act as the general all round go-fer. He is so lucky to have her! I vowed (and was warned by my brother) not to forget anything this time.


Thanks to his GPS we travelled to her house with no trouble. She ran to greet us with hugs and smiles. A real bonus was that two of her daughters and a granddaughter also came over for part of the visit. We asked about family history information we had collected, and she allowed us to scan every photo and scrap of paper that she had found. She related family stories, and I kicked myself for not having a voice recorder - another item for my Christmas list. I would try to have something by our next visit. I scribbled notes as fast as I could and my brother scanned continously - too bad he didn't notice that the edges weren't scanning until we returned home. We even found a letter she kept from our mother asking for family history information for my brother and our mother explaining that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. We scanned the notes she put together, even those on the back of envelopes. We never found out from whom she got the information. There would be time when we saw each other again to ask questions. We were so happy that we had reconnected after all the years she and our mother had been distant. This connection was important to both of us. The weekend went by way too fast, and we all agreed that we needed to have a family picnic, but we would keep in touch by email until then. She passed on funny jokes, and I asked questions about the family. Then one day, a few weeks later, she didn't answer my email, so I wrote another, and another. Please tell me you are fine but just busy, I asked. She wasn't. How could this happen so quickly? I remember how impressed I was that she walked three miles a day. I felt "fit" when I could do two. We teased her about being a spoiled child with so many Christmas gifts - see photo above - but we knew she had had great heartache as a child.


The next time we saw her was at her funeral only a short time -too short - later. At her funeral we met another cousin of my mother's and exchanged email addresses. We also met many relatives but the names and faces swirl together. Several told stories of our grandparents. It was an emotional day on many levels.


As I read family history blogs now discussing their upcoming family history trips, I have read that a successful trip includes lists, forms, GPS coordinates, with a time schedule. This will always be my most memorable family history trip, and I was utterly unprepared. My advice is to just go . . . . meet your family, enjoy their company, and take a voice recorder so you can visit without notetaking and a camera for the memories.


This was a very difficult post to write. I find that I still cry when I think about it. I wanted to include some photos, but don't want to offend her children. I hope the one above is acceptable.

Hiatus and Excuses

Well, I am back, although it doesn't seem like I have been away. In my mind, I have written several posts and filed them in the back of my brain for "when I have time" . I always think I need more time than I have, and so I put it off. I am not very good at just doing a smaller project, taking a shorter vacation . . . . or posting a shorter post. I always find myself waiting until I have time to do what I have envisioned. It is all suppose to be so organized, even when I am not. This fatal flaw of mine causes me to dream big but often pass by the small opportunities. I am going to work on this.

This next paragragh is the excuse paragraph. I'll make this short. My husband and I took a short vacation to the Blue Ridge mountains to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. I can't believe it. The time away together was so relaxing, and he planned the whole thing! He was also very tolerant of my conversations (Is only one person talking a conversation?) about my upcoming trip to Ireland. I am really obsessing and over analyzing that. And that is what has taken up any remaining time I have.

Now back to the subject at hand. There is so much that I want to find out how to do to this blog. For instance, I would like to change the look and have a family photo at the top. How do I put some links on the side like the other bloggers do for things such as email, tags, blogs they read, etc.

One blogger told me to search the internet because the buttons were all over the place. Yes, but how do I get it on my blog??? Of course, if I had more time I would be able to figure it out . . . let's not get into that again. But wait, this is the advantage of having an invisible blog. I have only told the family, and they aren't interested. My brother is noticeably bored and underwhelmed when I ask if he read my blog and HE'S the original genealogist in the family. My daughter warns me all the time about BORING people with my genealogy talk. So who do I want to impress with a new snazzy look with all the bells and whistles - why me, of course!