County Mayo

In addition to the connections to Tom's distant relatives and visiting the location of Tom's ancestors homes in Cullanaughton (details in a later post) we had a wonderful time "being locals" in Swinford, County Mayo.  There are not many sites to see in the area but there is a lot of history.  The most well known is the Great Famine of the mid 1800s which resulted in mass starvation, disease and emigration.  One million people died and another million emigrated during this period, reducing the Irish population by one quarter.  There were so many deaths that many people had improper burials in anonymous mass graves.  One of these mass graves is at the Swinford Workhouse (now a medical facility) which is marked by a single tombstone and plaque.  No one knows the identity of the people buried here.  Even more tragic is the "Procession of the Souls" memorial, a children's grave across the street that was only recently built.  It is basically a nicely done sign and path to the grave site of many unidentified children that died during the Great Famine.  As you can see in the pictures, the grave sites are only identified by an unmarked stone or rock.

Downtown Swinford

This part of County Mayo, in western Ireland (by the way, they spell it Maigh Eo) was the hardest hit area during the potato famine of 1857 (and off and on for a century to come) There is a major burial plot with hundreds of unidentified bodies rapidly buried in a mass grave, just up and behind the church. There is also a separate little field, "Procession of Souls", nearby that is marked only with small ordinary field stones, one for each of hundreds of tiny graves of infants and young children who died of starvation and disease during that terrible time. The death rate was appalling, people were literally dying in the streets. The economy was devastated and there was no money or time to permanently identify the occupants of those little graves, they were buried within hours of their deaths and marked with only a small stone picked up from the ground near the grave and placed at the head. They remain that way today. Now that all who knew who they were in their tiny plots have died,the occupants of those graves remain unknown now forever. 

The Swinford Workhouse

Mass burial site from the Great Famine

The memorial to the children's grave

Children's grave stones

In the town of Swinford, about six kilometers from Cullonaughton, is a pub called Mellet's that has been there since 1797 and was surely the prime watering hole for all of our Irish ancestors. The pubs in the small towns there are different from here in America, they are much more of a family gathering place, not just a bar. People are there to share time with each other and to talk so the noise level is always pleasant. Friends, family (including older children) and neighbors gather to share time with each other. We enjoyed sipping the famous Guinness beer while watching a wonderful (TV broadcast) Irish football match between County Mayo and Dublin, an amazing, energetic, fun experience that you'll see on the video. Talk about team rooters! They all wore County Mayo (Maigh Eo) team jerseys and wildly cheered at every play in the game. We got there early and as the crowd grew larger as game time approached people eventually asked if they could share our booth with us which we readily agreed to. Before long, during the game, crowded together, we soon had their arms around our shoulders and we found ourselves living in the moment with them, singing Irish songs and enjoying our Guinnesses. Some Irish pubs in towns feature evening authentic traditional Irish music sessions, the better ones are quite wonderful. 

Our visit coincided with the All-Ireland semifinal matchup in Gaelic football between County Mayo and arch-nemesis Dublin.  Gaelic football is a cross between soccer, Australian rules football and rugby.  Honestly, it's a bizarre game that looks more playground than professional to me, but I think all sports are like that when you think about them logically.  None of them make much sense until you realize they are all games and all have arbitrary rules.  However, the fun of it all is throwing logic out of the window and immersing yourself in the excitement of the moment; which we did as we became staunch County Mayo GAA football fans fully equipped with our County Maigh Eo flag and scarf.  Dublin started quickly in the game and Mayo kept it close throughout until near the end when Dublin appeared to put the game away.  But the Mayo fighting spirit persisted and Mayo scored a goal (3 points) and 3 one point something-or-others-that-look-like-field-goals and the game was tied at the end.  It was a remarkable comeback and it left the fans in the pub in good spirits and gave them a reason to hang around and merrily drink some more (the Irish are very good at that).  In Gaelic football a tie game doesn't not mean an overtime or shootout but rather a replay of the entire game a week later.  Sadly, we were not able to hang around for the next game and Mayo lost in a blowout.  But we remain avid fans and have our flag and scarf proudly displayed in our home office.

The game - the reactions are the same all over the world

The final score is 2-12 to 1-15, which is a tie (trust me).  Let's do it again!

The house shown further along in the video at the "Heritage Museum" depict more closely what the McGowan house originally looked like and we were told the interiors and exteriors of those tiny older homes were all the same so if you see one you've seen them all to a very good degree. I suspect that the houses shown at the Heritage museum are a little larger and more deluxe than the actual McGowan home must have looked like because these are about twenty years or more newer than our family home was. The grey two story home presently located there now is the third to exist on the property. The original home (1830-40?) was torn down by one of the McGowan's in about 1970 when most of the large farm was sold off. One of Kathy's uncles built a newer version of the smaller old original home for the remaining McGowan's living on the property at that time but that too was razed when the property sold again and the new owners (living in England most of the time) built the current larger home. There are still remnants of the old original home existing, though fragmentary and the flagstone floors and stairs as well as a small stuccoed original cow shed (now newly remodeled and roofed) that still stand as they have since first built by our great great grandfather in the early part of the 19th century. I asked for permission to remove a small piece of the limestone flagstone wall to carry home as a souvenir of our visit. 

Homes of that time consisted of only three small connected rooms. The center room was the living area (I'd guess it to be about 8' X 6') which contained one double bed in a covered alcove, a few pieces of furniture and the fireplace for cooking and heating.To one side of the living area (the lower room) was a room that was the part of the home where the livestock were kept in most family homes, yes...indoors.You will see a rusty horseshoe imbedded into the original inside wall of the McGowan "lower room" of the old house. The reason for the horseshoe (and there were probably a number of the horseshoes originally) were to tie the animals to that to contain them inside that room. The animals were the most valuable family possession and in the evenings they were usually herded indoors and secured with a harness to one of the horseshoes imbedded into the wall for the night. The "lower" room was set about 2" below the level of the main living area and had no windows. 

Tom Hennigan's family home built in the 1870s.  (Brand new thatched roof)

To the other side of the living area there was a room referred to as the upper room, about 2" above the living area. This room was reserved for the elderly or the most senior members of the family. In some cases it had one small window, in most cases there were none. Everyone else slept where they could find a corner on the flagstone floors. There was usually a small loft above the "lower room" that was primarily used for storage but younger children, who could manage it, scrambled up there to sleep. Families with ten and sometimes fifteen children were common so it was crowded.

At that time most of the British colonies, Ireland, Wales and Scotland were taxed heavily by England. One of their taxes was, believe it or not, on the amount of  glass in a window. (called a daylight tax) Because of that the windows were usually very small. We were told by the museum curator that the more creative of the people used dried and stretched animal placenta to fit within the small window frame instead of glass. While it was opaque and obscured the view it did allow a small amount of daylight through and that wasn't considered taxable. Someone eventually remembered the idea of the Dutch door that opened in half from top to bottom. The Dutch door became common, that way the top half of the door could be left open to allow light to enter the house while the bottom half was closed to keep small children inside. This gave birth to the phrase "daylight robber" which has now passed into history, I had never heard of the term until we were there. The British felt cheated of their tax by the Dutch door.

Many people died of tuberculosis (and cholera and dysentery) in those early years and it was only discovered after modern hygiene was understood that the reason became apparent. Having animals closely confined within the house with few (or no) windows to ventilate the resultant unpleasant conditions was a prime cause for many unnecessary deaths. The windows shown in the "Heritage Museum" homes in the video are larger and more numerous than what would have been common in most small homes. That home is authentic by the way, the owner of the museum and his family had all grown up in that house and he has lovingly restored it to preserve homes of that style that are now crumbling and disappearing all over Ireland. The reason that the small homes were usually bright white was they they were covered in lime (not paint which was unaffordable and unavailable) to keep fungus and sickness under control. The roofs were always thatched straw and though they too are rapidly disappearing in newer dwellings today. The thatched straw roofs still exist but the insurance premiums are prohibitive so only the "determined Irish who insist on tradition" retain them. They are commonly seen in the smaller villages however. The thatched straw roofs last for seven to ten years and then they must be replaced.

One of our final stops in Mayo was the Addergoole Titanic memorial to the local people who were on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, eleven of which perished and three survived.  Two McGowan's were part of this group:  an aunt who perished and a niece who was rescued.  This story is a published historical novel, The Girl Who Came Home.  The protagonist of the story is based on Annie McGowan, the surviving niece.