2023/36 ANOTHER SLEEPY LITTLE TOWN (CASTLETOWNBERE, IRELAND)

Her name is Dorothy. Dorothy, the Librarian in the Castletownbere Library on the lower western tip of the Republic of Ireland, who also works at the Copper Mine Museum close by. We love Dorothy, and she doesn't even know it.

Castletownbere tonight.

I'll take you back to forty years ago, when we were living in Pittsburgh PA. We were four years into marriage. John and Sarah were very little. This was before we moved to Utah. Dave was paying his dues as a young attorney in a major law firm, working very long hours in the city. One night, in the middle of the night, he shot up in bed. I was still nursing and sleep lightly anyway, so I woke right up with him. His heart was pounding and I could sense panic, like he had just had a nightmare. This has never happened before or since. Without taking the time to go into too much detail, it ended up that he had felt, in his own words, the spirit of Elijah warning him to not neglect his family, the one from which he sprang. You'd have to know that Dave is not a dreamer, nor is he a visionary man. He is quite practical and logical, though not past feeling by any means. He was so shaken that night that it remains in my memory... the layout of our bedroom, the blue wallpaper on the walls, the antique bed that we once used and is now in our guest bedroom. And that feeling remains.

David is the only member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in his very large Catholic family, at least that we are aware of. We are not yet aware of others in this large family who may have felt the desire to gather the past and the present together. His maternal grandfather was the eldest of 18 children from Quebec. He is 3/4 French Canadian. But the Connors clan, on his paternal side, claims 1/4 of his bloodline, and that's what was calling to us to come to Ireland.

My sister lent us their car while they stay
in London for a few days.
We took the car ferry over to Ireland. A four hour sail.

Inside the ferry.

Much more comfy for us than our ancestors.

We spent the night in Cork, in a charming hotel, visiting a pub for a few minutes of music. The next morning we stopped for a wee visit at Castle Blarney. That stop would require the full day to inhale, but he had holier plans. 

Our super groovy room at the Dean Hotel
had a record player with Tom Waits ready to 
set the mood for us. So cool!

Bells of Ireland.
A little Irish Spring.

A magnificent blooming apple tree greets us on the grounds of Blarney Castle.

Castle Blarney, built on the rocks from which the castle stones were hewn.

A handsome shadow of a man entering the castle caves.

Corkmalork ( a nick name my mom gave me) in Cork.
The weather does a number on ones hair here.

Mind your head!

So off we drove, through the rolling, windy streets of Southern Ireland, to the lower tip of the peninsula where David had discovered, just three weeks ago, his great-great-grandmother, Johanna Crowley, had been born. She and her family left here when she was 13, according to census records, and emigrated to the US. Many here, in the sleepy little town of Castletownbere, left the Emerald Island for work in the mines of Michigan. Some of them went on to mines in Butte, Montana. They had been copper miners here, in the mine where Dorothy happens to work in the museum. The mines are closed now. But her job includes finding records of the former miners here. In fact, she travels to Butte next month for some of that research.

We came down into this sweet little colorful village, not knowing what or where we would go, Frankly, if nothing else, we wanted to breathe the air and walk the streets and gaze over the waters that had once been familiar to David's ancestors. We searched online for a city hall, or a Catholic Church. We found no direction. So I said, let's look for a library.

Sure enough, there was a teeny library right in town square, next to the fire station. It is roughly the size of our kitchen. It  had the delicious smell of books when we walked in. Dorothy greeted us, and David told her what he was looking for, namely evidence that what he thought about his great great grandmother, was true.

A photograph of the original church
where she would have been baptized.
It was replaced in 1911 with a large rock church.

The volume written  by Ribald O'Dwyer,
who was a primary school teacher
who made it a life's calling to assemble
and record old church records and other histories
in the Ring of Bear, lower peninsula of Ireland.

Johanna's baptismal record shows she was living
in the Filedarrig area when she was born. 

MICHAEL CROWLEY and MARGARET MURPHY
were David's great-great-great grandparents.
Their oldest daughter, Johanna (born June 1848)
was his great-great grandmother.
Her son, John E Connors, was the father to Elwood Connors, (by adoption)
who was father to Dave's dad, Don Connors.

Dorothy immediately took us to a round table tucked in by a window looking out into town square. It was loaded with books and newspapers. She shuffled things over and made her way to a bookshelf, coming back with a thick book.

"There's a gentleman who lived here, he's passed on now, but he made it his life's quest to record all the records of not only our local parish but four others in this area. He collected stories from townspeople, and filled that thick book with information that would connect lives for generations to come." Dorothy said the book is an anomaly in the genealogical world, especially in Ireland. The Irish had not been good at record keeping, and a large fire destroyed many thousands of records in the capitol city during the civil war.

While we talked, Dorothy had to regularly pause and help people at the desk.

"Do you have Three Men in a Boat?"

"Can you please scan a few documents for me?"

Children querried, "Mummy, can I check out this book?"

The phone rang.

Texts came in.

"Oh, good," Dorothy said at one point, "This hat has finally found its owner. Good then!"

Dorothy had found a hat in the street last week. She had picked it up and taken it home, washing it and pressing it out to dry. Then she sent out word, in her sleepy little town, "Is anyone missing this hat?"

Always, she came back to our table and searched with us until we found it, a record proving David's great-great grandmother had indeed been baptized in this parish in 1848. Dorothy was able to explain all sorts of little tidbits you would never know just by looking at a record. How names were notoriously misspelled by English speaking record takers when listening to illiterate Irish persons say things. How illegitimate children were often left out of records, or were marked as being adopted. How people changed their names when emigrating and how they came up with their new ones.

Houses along Chapel Lane, on the hill behind the church.

I wonder if Johanna Crowley may have sat on this rock wall
once upon a time.

Was this her house? Was it her neighbors?
Was it even here then?

This boarded up house, now a garage...
was it here when Johanna was born?

I felt that same spirit that hovered in our bedroom 40 years ago come swirling past us in that little Irish library. Goosebumps rose up. In a palpable way, it sealed this little village to us.

Dorothy made a call to Dennis, up the hill above Chapel Lane, where it was recorded Johanna and her family had lived. Dennis owns a bed and breakfast. It sits grandly on the hill, overlooking the church, the town, the port and the island out in the waters. Island View House Bed & Breakfast. Here is where I sit, while David sleeps beside me, worn out from the physical demands of castle walks and driving on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road when those roads cut and wind with room for only one car to pass. 

The view of the village from our bedroom window.

I am sitting here, my back against a stack of pillows, my computer in my lap, clicking away as the town below us sleeps. I see the full circle in the scene. The man I love, whose name I also carry, is sleeping at home tonight. A long ago home. He has walked the streets of his forefathers and mothers. He has inhaled and exhaled the ocean air. I imagine molecules of breathed air, rotating in and out of generations of lungs. Fathers visiting children unawares. Inhale, exhale, the same wet Irish air.

the mains street, just above the docks at
Castletownbere

I told Dorothy if she ever wanted to come to Salt Lake City to do some research, she was welcome to stay with us. "You can tell a lot about a person in a short time," I said. "You know the character of a soul when you hear she picks up misplaced hats in the street, takes them home to wash them, then seeks to find the owner and get it back to them."

Hats, and people; People and people. Dorothy allows herself to reunite both.

Thanks, Dorothy.