A Tipperary Family Part 4

    Shortly after Mary Ryan married Terrence Sheehan,  her brother Andrew Ryan was married to Bridget Hogan at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Palmyra.  Four months later, Anna Ryan married Irish immigrant James White at the same church.  The first generation of Ryan’s born in the United States was not long in coming.  John Sheehan was born in 1856 to Mary and Terrence.  The following fall, exactly nine months after her wedding, Anna’s first child was born. Named James White Jr., he was christened at St. Anne’s. Andrew was his godfather, and a woman named Bridget White, probably a relative of James’ was his godmother.  Andrew himself became a father that same year with the birth of Cornelius Ryan in 1857.  Mary Ryan Sheehan also had a boy named Cornelius in 1857.  In 1859, Anna’s daughter Alice was born and shortly after, a daughter was born to Andrew, again named Alice, the naming pattern at work again.

 In the summer of 1860, the ship Harvest Queen captained by Edward Young left Liverpool and started down the Mersey on its long voyage to America.  The ship’s manifest like most of that era did not clearly list who was traveling with whom.  In the column for occupation sometimes the designation “wife” was given, and son or daughter for younger passengers, but often just “child” was written or nothing at all.  In the case of older teenagers and young adults just their occupation was listed, making it hard to determine if they were indeed relatives and in what way they might be related.  Among those listed aboard the Harvest Queen that August were Cornelius and Alice Ryan along with their son John and their two youngest children Ellen and Cornelius Jr.  There was another young Ryan named Johanna and a John Dwyer listed directly below their names on the manifest that may well be related, perhaps Johanna was their son John’s wife or a cousin, there is an outside chance she might even have been Sarah, Ellen’s next older sister.

     Names were used much more casually in the 19^th century than today, and nicknames were common, probably because of their naming customs.  In a large extended family, and most of them were, there could be any number of persons with the same name, no doubt nicknames were needed.  Unfortunately the offhand way they changed names around adds to the difficulty in tracing family lines.  No  Catholic births were registered in Ireland until 1864 and with the laws against the Catholic Church; baptismal records are scarce before the 1830’s.  Since many were not educated, few letters or diaries were written; now add the destruction of all early censuses and the fact that the native Irish rarely created deeds or wills and the lineage comes to a halt.  

     I doubt we will ever know the names of Connor and Ally’s grandparents.  Records for that period just do not exist; I only knew their parent’s names from the death records of Connor and Ally in the United States.  Even US records can be hard to interpret, in more than a few US censuses older, often illiterate, persons from Ireland could not spell their names or even knew the year of their birth and guessed at their ages.  American census takers unfamiliar with Irish brogues and names came up with astounding spellings in some cases. 

     The Ryans apparently had some resources, for they did not travel in the steerage but   Second Cabin.  This cabin was under a poop deck that reached forward to the mainmast. Sometimes a few feet of the forward part of this deck was partitioned off and made a second cabin or used for light freight when not carrying passengers.  The fittings of the second cabin, not being permanent, had but little to recommend them other than that the occupants had a table to themselves, and were entirely separated from the steerage passengers.   Undoubtedly the older Ryan children already in America had sent funds or tickets to bring them over, a common practice among the Irish.  The Harvest Queen was a packet ship, built in New York for the Black Ball Line.  That fact alone guaranteed a more enjoyable journey than could be expected on a British ship where Irish immigrants were treated more or less the same as any cargo.  Unlike England, the Custom House in New York certified how many passengers a US ship was allowed to carry, regulated the quality and quantity of provisions and issued rules concerning cleanliness aboard ship. 

    

     The Ryan's arrived in New York Harbor on August 14, 1860.  What a joyful scene must have ensued after Conner and Ally and the others made their way to Wayne County, NY, and the family was finally reunited, though sad also to find their daughter Mary now widowed.  But how delighted they must have been to meet their new grandchildren, four of whom were named for them.  Five years later, the New York State census of Macedon shows Cornelius and Alice Ryan living with Mary Sheehan and her boys; Cornelius at age 66 was working as a farm laborer.  By 1870 they all still lived together, now in Palmyra, but Cornelius is listed as an invalid.  None of the older Ryan’s could read or write.  Of their eight known children, only the two youngest, Ellen and Cornelius Jr. were literate.     

Part 5, and end, tomorrow 

A Tipperary Family Part 3

     In the fall of 1845, an almost incomprehensible tragedy befell Ireland.  The potato crop, their staple food, failed.  In 1846, it failed again.  The results were catastrophic.  As England looked on; maintaining nothing must interfere with the natural ebb and flow of the marketplace, people began to starve.  The crop of 1847 was a success, but too few potatoes had been planted and the hunger continued.  In 1848 the blight returned with a vengeance.  Although Tipperary was badly affected, some counties to the west were much worse off and the dispossessed from those places flowed into the district, straining the meager resources of Tipperary and spreading epidemic disease.

     That same year, William Smith O’Brien and Thomas Francis Meagher, leaders of a nationalist group called Young Ireland journeyed to Paris to congratulate the French on their newly formed Republic.  Inspired by the success of the French revolution, upon their return they traveled through Counties Wexford and Kilkenny to Tipperary, fomenting rebellion as they went.  This new generation of revolutionaries fared no better than their grandfathers did in 1798.  The only real battle was fought in Ballingarry, South Tipperary, and became known as the battle of Widow McCormack’s cabbage patch.  It was here that the Irish tricolor first flew over a battle.  O’Brien and Smith seemed not to take into account the physical state of the Irish people, weakened as they were by famine and disease.  Victory would have been doubtful in the best of circumstances, but revolution waged by sick, half starved, poorly armed scarecrows was doomed to failure.  The leaders were quickly captured and sentenced to death, though later commuted to transportation to the British penal colony on the distant island of VanDieman’s Land (Tasmania).

Mud Cabin

     The year 1849 saw the return of the blight, but on a much lesser scale.  By that time the workhouses of Ireland were full to bursting, millions had died, and another million had been forced to leave their country.  In County Tipperary between the years 1845 and 1850, almost 70,000 people died, the death rate had quadrupled!  Although Tipperary had one of the highest rates of emigration, the Ryans rode out the famine in Ireland.  But a much changed Ireland it was.  The countryside was emptied; those who poverty and disease did not sweep away, the landlords did as they cleared their estates of unwanted tenants.  Fifteen thousand mud cabins in Tipperary disappeared between 1841 and 51.  In a letter to Irish expatriates in Australia one resident of South Tipperary wrote:

“You could not think how lonely everyplace is here; everyone who can go is going. I rode by your little cottage a few days ago, and thistles were growing in the middle of the road.”

     After being counted in Griffith's Valuation in 1850, Cornelius Ryan made one final appearance in official Irish records, being those of the Tipperary District Petty Court.  In them we find Cornelius Ryan of Goldengarden convicted of being drunk in Greenane on the fourth of November, 1852.   According to Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, November fourth happens to be market day in Tipperary Town.  Since Cornelius would have passed through Greenane on his way home from Tipperary Town, it could be speculated that he had a good time at the market.

    At this point the Ryan family disappeared from known Irish records, not to reappear until 1855 in New York State.  We don’t know whether they were victims of landlord clearances, but it’s possible; Lord Hawarden was notorious for ejecting his tenants.  And so the Ryans too eventually began to leave Ireland.  Cornelius and Alice’s oldest daughters Anna and Mary, along with their brother Andrew left Ireland, coming to the United States in approximately 1854.  The 1855 New York State Census shows Andrew Ryan and Terrence Sheen (Sheehan), both laborers, living with the Smith family of Palmyra.  Later that year Terrence married Andrew’s sister Mary Ryan.  The oldest Ryan son, Michael, may or may not have come to the United States.  With such a common name it is impossible to tell from census records unless the family was living together, which they weren’t when they arrived.  Instead they resided with their individual employers.

     It’s possible Michael had married and chose not to leave Ireland with the rest of his family.  This intriguing article appeared in Reynolds’s Newspaper on April 22, 1894:

    News wanted of Michael Ryan, son of Michael and Johanna (Dwyer) Ryan of Goldengarden, Anacarty, Tipperary who left Ballychoohy, near Tipperary in 1888.  Last heard from about five or six years ago, was then a city policeman in St. Louis. Heard lately he was found dead outside the city.  Any information will be thankfully received by his sister Mary Ryan, care of the Editor of Reynolds’s Newspaper.  American papers please copy.  

     Could this Michael Ryan and Johanna Dwyer Ryan be the son and daughter in law of Connor and Ally?  The time frame is right, and Goldengarden was a very small place, by 1861 only 43 men and 45 women lived there.

Part 4 Tomorrow 

---

Lá na Máithreacha Shona Duit / Happy Mother's Day

Mother Machree

 There's a spot in my heart, Which no colleen may own. 

There's a depth in my soul, Never sounded or known; 

There's a place in my mem'ry, My life, that you fill, 

No other can take it, No one ever will.

 Sure, I love the dear silver That shines in your hair, 

 And the brow that's all furrowed, And wrinkled with care. 

 I kiss the dear fingers, So toil-worn for me, 

 Oh, God bless you and keep you, Mother Machree.

 

Ev'ry sorrow or care In the dear days gone by, 

Was made bright by the light Of the smile in your eye, 

Like a candle that's set In the window at night, 

Your fond love has cheered me and guided me right.

A Tipperary Family Part 2

     Still, amidst the chaos, life went on.  The Irish word for matchmaker is babhdóir.  While not all Irish marriages were arranged, many in the 19^th century were.  Matchmakers were busiest right before Lent, and true to form, on Friday February 13^th, in 1824, Alice O’Dwyer and Cornelius Ryan, were married in the Catholic chapel in the parish of Anacarty.  They were both living at Churchfield in the civil parish of Donohill, South Tipperary at the time of their marriage, and their first child was born there in 1825.  He was named Michael for his Ryan grandfather.  

Andrew Ryan

      Two years later came the birth of Andrew, named for his O’Dwyer grandfather, followed by Mary in 1829, most likely named for her Ryan grandmother who is at present unknown.   Andrew and Mary were born at Goldengarden, Tipperary, a townland on the estate of the Hawarden family located about a mile from Churchfield.

  In 1831 another daughter, named Anna for her maternal grandmother, was born to the couple; followed in 1834 by a son named John who was born at nearby Alleen.   From those baptismal records, we learn Cornelius and Alice were known locally as Conner and Ally.  After John's birth, the family returned to Goldengarden where another daughter,

Sarah, was born in 1838, Ellen in 1840 and Cornelius Jr. in the spring of 1844. That year statistics were compiled of reported outrages (crimes) in the province of Munster.  Counties Cork and Limerick to the west of Tipperary had 501 and 365 respectively, Tipperary reported 907!  Tipperary was still earning its reputation as a turbulent place.

  

     The number of times the family moved makes it readily apparent Cornelius did not own a farm nor even a long term lease on one.  Like many of his neighbors he was quite likely a tenant-at-will, meaning he could be evicted for missing a rent payment, or any reason the landlord saw fit.  Indeed, in 1844 the Rev. John Mackey, parish priest of Clonoulty in South Tipperary, testified before a panel investigating land occupation in Ireland that Lord Hawarden had not given a lease since he took over the estate [in 1807] confirming Connor and Ally could not have possessed one. This lack of security and fierce competition for land in a country where the population was exploding as it was in pre-famine Ireland, in no small part contributed to the continuing violence. 

     Connor and Ally probably lived in a thatched cabin made of mud, along with most of the residents of Kilnamanagh.  A survey of the barony in 1841 reported that of the 1,991 houses, 1,684 were of that material, but harder times were coming.  When their youngest son Cornelius Jr. was just a year old, ominous news reached Tipperary, the potato crop in North America had been attacked by a mysterious disease.

A Tipperary Family Part 1

Slievenamon Photo:Trounce/Wikimedia Commons

     In the southeast corner of  Tipperary, the mountain known as Slievenamon rises over the surrounding plain.  Since ancient times it has been a place of worship, mystery and legend, the haunt of spirits, fairies and witches, its very name, Sliabh Na MBan, means, “mountain of the women”.  Visible for many miles, the dome shaped summit is crowned by a huge burial cairn, said to be the entrance to the Celtic underworld.  Charles Kickham, author of the novel Knocknagow, and one of Tipperary’s most beloved sons, wrote an ode known as “Slievenamon”, considered by Tipperary people everywhere to be their anthem.  There was however, an earlier song of the same name, it recalled a group of Irishmen killed by English soldiers near the slopes of the mountain during the doomed Rising of 1798.

     At that time, about 25 miles to the northwest of the mountain, lived two young men named Andrew O’Dwyer and Michael Ryan, both born in the mid 1770s.  From records of arrests that were made in the area where Andrew and Michael lived we know the United Irishmen were active there, though we will probably never know whether they themselves actually took part in the rising.

     Both the O’Dwyers and Ryans were important, powerful clans in the southern Tipperary baronies of Clanwilliam and Kilnamanagh until their overthrow by Oliver Cromwell in 1654.  Kevin Whelan, a history professor in Dublin, conducted a study of Irish families and discovered that the descendants of those who were large estate owners before Cromwell’s confiscations could often be found still living within ten miles of their ancestral homes.  This is borne out by the Ryans and O’Dwyers, who to the present day remain the most prevalent names in the area, and the landscape is dotted with ruins of O’Dwyer castles; one, Ballysheedy Castle, stands near Annacarty.  But the confiscations did come; the vast O’Dwyer and Ryan holdings were lost.

     According to John O’Hart, in his noted book, Irish Pedigrees, the O’Dwyer and O’Ryan families both descended from Milesius, the King who ruled Spain in 1600 B.C., and it would appear Mr. O’Hart may be correct.  Recent DNA tests were done on men with old Gaelic surnames, and their DNA was found to be virtually indistinguishable from that of the Basques of Northern Spain.

     Andrew and Michael were probably tenant farmers, or farm laborers who had known each other since boyhood.  We do know they had families.  Andrew and Anna O’Dwyer’s daughter, Alice would later marry Michael Ryan’s son Cornelius, raise a family of their own and in the decades to come, most of that family would make their way across the Atlantic to build a new life in America.  In the meantime, life was a constant struggle for the laboring classes in Ireland.  Early in Alice and Cornelius’ life they were acquainted with hunger and disease.  1816 has come to be known as the year without a summer.  That year, when they were teenagers, the entire world was hit by devastating climate change.  In Ireland cold rain fell for 142 of the 153 summer days.  The potato crop failed, and typhoid and food shortages swept Ireland and Europe.  

 

     Violence was part of their everyday lives too.  One official maintained,”Tipperary and Limerick are the two counties in Ireland where the peasantry are the worst disposed and most difficult to manage”.  From yet another,”With a stone of two and a half pounds weight, a Tipperary peasant will strike an object with as much precision at ten yards, as the generality of persons would at that distance with a pistol ball.” That fact inspired the nickname, “Tipperary Stone Throwers”. 

    

     Another form of violence sprang up in Tipperary, (naturally), this one seemingly for sheer enjoyment.  First reported there in 1805, faction fighting soon spread to other counties.  In 1836 over 100 faction fights were reported in a single county--Tipperary.  Factions were small armies of country people, hundreds or sometimes even thousands strong, armed with blackthorn sticks and stones.  They fought at fairs, markets or any public gathering.  “To be sure, skulls and bones are broken, and lives lost; but they are lost in pleasant fighting - they are the consequences of the sport, the beauty of which consists in breaking as many heads as you can." (Views of Irish Peasantry, pg. 137).  

   While this seems like a highly romanticized view of a violent, deadly pastime, even when death did result, the authorities were not inclined to take it very seriously, as the inquest into the death of one Pat Phelan in 1857 demonstrates.  The coroner’s verdict-- “died from disease of the chest, accelerated by a fracture of the skull”.

Part 2 tomorrow