I am doing my cultural project on the Irish. It was my first choice because I wanted to learn a lot about the Irish and the building of the railroad in New York. I thought the research would help me put together stories for New York’s Maritime Festival. Soon after my decision, I wasn’t so keen on my choice and wanted to change my topic, but after some dilly-dallying, I came back to the Irish culture.
I grew up on stories about the Good People, the Blarney Stone, the gift of gab, the leprechauns, and the sorrow of the Irish being under British rule. My mother cooked a lot of Irish food. In honor of St. Patrick, she always fixed corn beef and cabbage, Irish soda bread, and white potatoes, which I loved. However, I did not love or embrace my Irish heritage as my brothers and sisters did. Many times, in family conversations about our Irish background, etc., I only half listened. I had an extremely contentious relationship with my father, the carrier of the Irish gene, so I intentionally gravitated towards my mother’s culture—German.
I am back working on the Irish culture. Both of my father’s parents were Irish, but today I pulled out the papers on my father’s mother to see if they could give me any insights into the culture that I may not find in books. I had this information on her for many years, but never read it. She died a long time before I was born, and the only two things I can remember said about her were that she hated the English and because of them, she had to learn to read in secret. It was time to read and learn more about her!
Margaret Kimmins Costello was born in 1869 in the Lishenry Denn, District of Old Castle, Cavan County. She was baptized in Matthew’s Catholic Church Crosskeys. In a letter from Cana House, a genealogical research centre in Cavan, Concepta McGovern the researcher, states regarding birth records, “You will note that the spelling of the mother’s name varies; the variants are due to the lack of interest in women by the clergy in Ireland in the 1800s.” That comment piqued my interest! In another letter written to the Consulate General of Ireland, it was suggested that the discrepancy in my grandmother’s age was also due “to to the lack of respect for women.” When she immigrated to America is not known. Records couldn’t be found, and again, noting such details about women weren’t important, because women weren’t deemed important.
I will go through these papers again and then dig into a big book that I found hidden in the rafters of my family’s house. It is full of old Irish “stuff.”
The image at the top is of St. Matthews Catholic Church, Crosskeys.
http://sullivanleddy.blogspot.com/2012/11/roman-catholic-parish-of-denn-county.html
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