The Final Installment: In Quest of the Sainteds

By now many of you are probably thinking, Are we there yet? You're already home, for god's sake, when are you going to wrap this up???

I promise you that this is, if not the last, very close to the last, entry. But I can't stop before at least giving you a sense of our last couple of days in Ireland when we actually did search for the McQuaids, MacMahons, Kellys and Clerkins (sometimes actually spelled Clarkin, but always pronounced "Clarkin").

Dinner the first night at the Hilton Park was a lovely affair of lamb chops, fresh veggies and potatoes, salad, cheese, dessert--the full monte. By now I had fairly well figured out that the "cook staff" consisted of Lucy, Johnny's wife, and Fred, the son. We had met Fred earlier, but Lucy had not emerged. A Swiss lady and her young daughter had arrived after we did, so the four of us had a most congenial dinner in the immense dining room while Johnny served the food, poured wine, and otherwise was pretty unobtrusive. After dinner, we were invited into the Drawing Room for coffee and brandy, but we wisely chose to go to bed instead. Breakfast the next morning would be at nine, not before, we were told, but there was a tea service and cookies in the room if we wanted it. I was thrilled to have time to muck about in the room, dip into the many and sundry books, and examine all the objets d'art that filled it.

The next morning we made our way down the formal steps and through the doorway that had been pointed out previously and there was a set of old concrete stairs that sagged in the middle, having been worn down by several centuries of servants running up and down answering the calls of the masters and mistresses above. We descended and entered the bright and charming "servants quarters", now the breakfast room, festooned with fresh flowers, places set for the four of us, fruits and juice, porridge and meusli already set out--and then we met the charming Lucy. It was like we were instant friends. She took our order (bangers, rashers, white and black puddings, any kind of eggs, tomatoes and mushrooms, even Irish kippers and smoked salmon were available). Served with aplomb not to mention lovely conversation, we enjoyed a perfect Irish breakfast and then waddled back up the cement steps to begin the search.

We drove into Clones with the intention of going to the County Library which sits on the square, but we popped into a pharmacy first to buy some toothpaste. Having learned that the best way in Ireland to accomplish anything is to ask questions, we told the pharmacy clerk we were searchin' our roots and did she think the library was the best place to start.

"Start at the Forum," she said, "they'll have the information you need. It's just there across the street." We went in the direction she pointed and inside the front door was another closed door with the words Community Forum on it, so Tom opened it slightly and inside were about eight ladies having tea and scones or something. He mumbled So Sorry and tried to close the door, but not before a lady jumped up and said, No, no, please come in and have some tea and how can we help ye? "We're searchin' our roots," he said, and she said, "Aye, ye need to start at the Cassandra Hand Centre. It's just around the corner, let me get me coat and I'll take ye there." So before we had a chance to protest, we were being escorted by one Dempla (I never did get her last name) into a tiny church which she said wasn't a church at all but a former schoolhouse recently turned into a Community Centre for, among other things, genealogy! Inside was Mary Cosgrove, who dropped what she was doing, listened to Tom's summary of what he already knew, made a phone call or two, served us coffee and biscuits, and in about 45 minutes we were off to Glaslough (Green Lake) to peruse the Donagh Graveyard.

As I mentioned earlier, the difficulty with finding ancestors in Ireland is that they didn't keep records much before 1860 and unless you know the "townland" or the specific parish church they attended, you're pretty much out of luck. But, again, Tom just wanted a sense of the place and had no illusions about actually finding anything.

We drove the short distance to Glaslough, which coincidentally is the home of the Castle Leslie, a posh five-star hotel where Paul McCartney got married a few years ago. It too is under renovation, but we drove past the construction, walked in the front door, and I think we met one of the Barons Leslie himself, although I can't be sure. These large homes/hotels are almost always family affairs so it is a pretty good bet that the nice-looking middle aged man was a Leslie, though we didn't ask. He gave us some literature about the Castle and we left to find the graveyard.

Glaslough is a very small village and there was even a diagram of it on the corner which showed the Old Donagh Graveyard, but we still couldn't find it in the maze of country roads. Keep in mind that there are churches everywhere, not all of them Catholic, and each has a graveyard or cemetery on the premises. We checked out several but we knew that none was the Donagh. In the meantime, I was snapping pictures of McQuaid this, and McQuaid that--it really is a common name in the area!

Eventually, we decided to stop again and ask for directions so we pulled into a gas station with a small grocery attached to it. While Tom was fiddling with the diesel, I looked up and there in faded letters on the front of the grocery store were the words "Family P. McQuaid Grocers" and with that a gentleman emerged. Long story short, it was Patrick McQuaid himself, owner of the establishment and a bit of a genealogist to boot. He and Tom talked for at least an hour and a half while I studied the canned goods in the grocery. (And darned glad to do it, I might add).

This was progress! He showed us (Tom) a book, diary really, that he had been keeping for years, with McQuaids and their whereabouts going back a couple of hundred years. OF course, we couldn't begin to do anything with all that information, but in the end he told us how to get to the Donagh Graveyard and off we went.

I will post pictures of this graveyard. We love graveyards and cemeteries anyway and have walked scores of them in England and France, but for sheer picturesque beauty this one takes the prize. The stones are mostly in complete disrepair surrounding the ruins of what had to be a small stone church. Very few of the gravestones are legible, but we walked the perimeter looking and hoping.

Just as we were about to leave, I looked to my left and there, kind of stuck under a growth of foliage, I saw the letters McQua.... Wait! sez I, and I ran over and sure enough it was a more recent gravestone commemorating the deaths of Elizabeth, Patrick, James and Susan McQuaid, all of whom died after 1939. (But they could be descendants of the sainteds!) We started poking around--in a high state of excitement I might add--and it turns out we were standing on a family plot, and the first one we saw was only the most recent. To the left of the legible stone was an illegible one but I'm posting the picture and see if you don't agree it says McQuaid. Then in the middle, overgrown with thorny bramble bushes was a stone cross, again with the name McQuaid clearly spelled out. I took the pictures that you will see.

Was this the site of the graves of at least some of the sainted ancestors? Of course there is no way to know. But there is also no harm in believing that it was.

Mission accomplished.