My Irish great-grandparents all "came over" around 1870.
Bridget Trainor of Ballymascanlon, Co Louth. Matthew Trainor of Ballymascanlon, Co. Louth. Margaret Joyce of Ballintubber, Co. Mayo. John Rogers of Ballintober, Co. Roscommon.
I don't know a ton about any on them.
Did Bridget and Matt, who surely knew each other back in the pokey little town of Ballymascanlon, marry in Ireland, or in Amerikay? (And just how close were these cousins, anyway? Or did everyone in Ballymascanlon share the last name Trainor? ) Did Matt come over first and send for Bridget? Or what?
All four of my paternal great-grandparents came over around 1870, so they weren't famine Irish, fleeing starvation on coffin ships, with nothing more than their grass-stained mouths and the rags on their back. And when they got here, they didn't live in hovels, in teeming slums, at bare subsistence level.
But just what did Matthew Trainor do when he got here? I know that, as a lad, he'd been a stable boy in the big Protestant manor house in Balllymascanlon. He had family in the Worcester area - cousins? brothers? sisters? - which is how he ended up there. Eventually, he became a foreman in a mill, where most of the workers were Irish immigrant girls. But what was his first job?
No one left to ask. The last of my father's first cousins on the Trainor side - and there were a ton of them - was Ned McKeon, who died about five years ago.
My grandmother Rogers, Nanny - born Mary Jane Trainor - had a few stories about her parents. I got the sense that she got along better with her father than she did with her mother. But for a family of talkers, there were things she never spoke about. It was only when I went poking around on Ancestry a few years back that I found out that my grandmother was one of eight children, not one of six. With the exception of Mag, who died before I was born, I knew all of my grandmother's siblings, at least the ones who still existed. Roseanne. Pat. Alice. Arthur. No mention of Delia and Matthew, who had died as children. Oh. They were never mentioned by my grandmother. Never. One died in infancy, but the other was five. (I've forgotten which was which.) Can you imagine having a brother or sister who died as a little kid, who you knew, and never acknowledging their existence?
My father's cousins on the Trainor side - first, second, third, distant - were all around, and popping in and out of my awareness throughout my childhood. A lot of them lived in the parish. We'd run into people related to my father all the time. How were we related to the Trainors on Eureka Terrace? What were they? Third cousins once removed? Neil Hanlon? What was he to us? And the McDermott brothers - who were the only vocations in the history of our family - what were we to them?
I could probably figure out all of the above if I resubscribed to ancestry.com. But it wouldn't tell me the stories I wish I'd asked my grandmother, or my great-uncle Arthur, or my great-aunt Alice, who were the sibs closest to Nanny, and who I saw on occasion throughout my childhood. (Arthur was a retired cop who moonlighted as a hearse driver for O'Connor Brothers Funeral Parlor. When he had a funeral at Our Lady of the Angels, he'd swing by my grandmother's (where we lived until I was six) for a cup of tea. Timing things so that he'd be back to the church by the time the funeral Mass ended. In his shiny black shoes and formal garb - did they really wear cutaways? - I thought he was rich. In any case, he was always good for a nickel for a popsicle, so we'd scrounge around when Arthur was at Nanny's.
Since I didn't ask Alice or Arthur - I was way too young. And since I didn't ask my grandmother, who died when I was in my late twenties, so I should have, I should have asked my father's cousin Ellen, the baby of Alice's large family. Thanks to my cousin Barbara, I saw her on occasion over the years. Or I should have pumped another cousin, daffy Mary Hanratty, when I saw her at wakes.
Instead, I'm left knowing precious little about my great-grandparents.
I can fill in some blanks. They were all country people, from large Irish families. They were all, if not famine poor, then still poor enough. There was little choice, when it came to emigrating. Someone in the family led the way, and most of the rest followed. American Wake. And, boom, you're gone.
Who brought Matthew Trainor over, or was he the pioneer? Or did Bridget Trainor get here first?
And what about Margaret Joyce? And John Rogers?
How in god's name did they end up with their dairy farm Barre, Massachusetts, the back-arse of nowhere?
What did John Rogers do when he first arrived? Did he work in a mill to save enough up to buy that farm in an area that looks an awful lot like Ireland, by the way?
I believe Margaret Joyce had some brothers over here.
Coming to Worcester I can understand. A large city, full of immigrants, many of them Irish, and full of mills. But what brought anyone to god-forsaken Barre?
While there were Trainor relatives galore, there were fewer relations on the Rogers side to begin with. Two of the sons of John Rogers and Margaret Joyce, my grandfather and his brother Jim (Ann's grandfather) both fled Barre, moving to Worcester, where they owned a saloon. They both died young. The other brother, John, had "absconded with the milk money" to Hammond, Indiana. (Thus, from a young age, I knew the word absconded.) I.e., he had stolen the proceeds from the dairy farm and taken off, seen only when he came back for his mother's funeral. According to my grandmother, he arrived with a suitcase that contained a clean collar and donuts. Who knows what to believe.
The one to ask there is my cousin (second cousin) Ann, who I think has the Rogers' history down.
But she wouldn't have much more first-hand knowledge than I would, other than that she's a bit older than I am so may have met the one Rogers sibling who lived beyond their forties.
That would be the only Rogers sister, Lizzie, who never married and who died before I was born. Lizzie ended up living with Ann's family. Ann would have been a very little girl at the time, but there may have been stories she heard, from Lizzie or from her own mother.
My grandmother, Lizzie's sister-in-law, had nothing to do with Lizzie, even after Lizzie decamped from Barre to live with the Kellys, just down the hill (in the same parish) as my grandmother. They didn't get along. I suspect they were both strong-willed, opinionated, tart-tongued. Both were "career women" in an era when most women didn't work outside the home. Nanny was a school teacher; Lizzie was, I believe, a bookkeeper.
Back to my great-grandmothers.
Bridget Trainor may or may not have worked as a maid in someone's big house when she got to the new world. Margaret Joyce may or may not have worked as a maid in someone's big house when she got to the new world. At least one of them did. Thanks to cousin Ann, I have a copy of the reference letter that Father Brown, the parish priest in Ballintubber, County Mayo (not to be confused with Ballintober, County Roscommon) wrote to recommend Margaret Joyce for what sounds like domestic work.
There was some talk about Margaret - or was it Bridget? - working as a maid in the house of some lace curtain Irish relations, who were either Hagans or Whites, putting us in relational proximity to the late, great mayor of Boston, Kevin Hagan White.
It's Saint Patrick's Day, so of course I'm thinking about my Irish forebears.
This is Bridget Trainor's trunk, the trunk she took with her. It contained everything she took with her when she left home. Not a lot, but not nothing either.
It's a pretty little trunk, lined with pretty little wallpaper. Was it wallpapered in Ireland, or later on? And those decals? Did they have decals in Ireland in 1870, or were these added by my grandmother or my Aunt Margaret (who had the trunk before my sister Trish got it)?
It's also pretty fancy, so someone had a few punts to spend on it.
What could you fit in the trunk? A few changes of clothing, a second pair of shoes, a coat, a hat. A pillow, a blanket, a sewing kit, a mirror a comb? Did the leprechaun doll that my sister Trish inherited come over with Bridget, or was that sent to her by her own mother. My grandmother did tell us that her grandmother - something-or-other Trainor - would send a clump of shamrocks, kept alive for the journey across the pond wrapped in damp newspaper, each St. Patrick's Day when Nanny was a girl.
Although I'm half German, I grew up Irish.
My neighborhood was largely Irish American. Virtually all the nuns and priests who staffed the parish were Irish American. We sang corny Irish songs in school, and were taught that the very best ethnic group was - ta-da - the Irish.
My German family, my mother's side, was back in Chicago. We saw them once a year. There were no Germans in Worcester. Plus this was the 1950's, not long after the end of World War II. If you were going to pick a side to identify with, it sure wasn't going to be the Germans, who in most people's minds were equated with Nazis.
So Kiss Me, I'm Irish.
And a glorious Paddy's Day to you.
Just wish I knew a bit more about Bridget, Matthew, Margaret, and John, those four young souls who packed their trunks and ventured off to America.
No comments:
Post a Comment