​Over the weekend my AGI colleagues and I were busy at the annual Back To Our Past (BTOP) event at the RDS in Dublin.  We were running the AGI (Accredited Genealogists Ireland) stand, providing free 20-minute consultations, answering queries and promoting members’ publications.  Among the publications was my new book, Credentials for Genealogists: Proof of the Professional, and I was very gratified by the response from professional genealogists and aspiring professionals.
 
While we were working away voluntarily at BTOP, promoting our accrediting and representative organisation, one of my colleagues was alerted by a friend to a slur in an Irish genealogy group on Facebook.  In reply to a query about how to find a professional genealogist, the friend had posted a link to AGI’s website.  A response was posted along the lines of ‘I wouldn’t trust any of those accredited genealogists: I’ve heard they’ll just take your money’.
 
My colleague followed this up and it transpired that versions of the same rumour were doing the rounds on various groups, all emanating from a genuine complaint made by one person.  When my colleague tracked down that person they were happy to explain the real story and they asked: Is there anything you can do to stop her [the ‘genealogist’ who they engaged] from doing this to someone else?
 
The complaint was not about a genealogist accredited by AGI or any organisation.  It was about an individual in Ireland operating a research and tour service under a business name.  When told about it I recognised the name, as I had been contacted about this person a few years ago.  It was a similar story – a client from overseas had paid this person for research, the research was not fully completed and / or there were mistakes, emails received delayed responses and then none at all.
 
The individual’s research / tour service has a website on which it is claimed that the business has membership of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Irish Genealogical Research Society and the Irish Genealogical Society International.  This sounds impressive, but it is misleading as there is no actual membership of at least two of the four organisations.  Three of them are general membership organisations that anyone can join.  The other, APG, is a support or networking body for people working as professional genealogists but it provides no accreditation, and membership is open to anyone who undertakes to pay an annual fee and abide by its code of ethics.  Evidently the research / tour service person does not abide by any code of ethics and it appears that she is not currently a paid-up member of APG.
 
So what can Accredited Genealogists Ireland do about this?  The answer is simple: Nothing! AGI provides credentials for Irish genealogists whose work is approved by an independent board of assessors.  It represents the interests of those genealogists and it will investigate any complaints made about their practices.  AGI does not control the activity of practitioners outside of its membership.
 
On the other hand, AGI and its membership suffer the consequences to the profession’s reputation of the behaviour of people calling themselves professional genealogists who have neither ethics nor ability.  AGI Members and Affiliates, as well as respected practitioners outside the organisation, are victims of the fly-by-night ‘genealogists’ just as much as the people who part with their money to these characters.  And to add insult to injury, we have to deal with the utterances of third party rumour-mongers who blithely spread stories they only half understand about ‘accredited genealogists’ taking your money.
 
My advice to anyone stung by a fly-by-night is to complain to any organisation of which they claim membership, complain to any publication or social media outlet in which they promote their services, complain to any record repositories they mention in their publicity and complain to the relevant tourism and consumer affairs authorities.
 
My advice to anyone wishing to engage a genealogist is, as always, to look for someone with credentials from one of the world’s regional accrediting organisations.  They’re all in my new book!

​The recent intense and prolonged heatwave experienced by Ireland reminded me of a short newspaper article I came across a few years ago.  I included it in my contribution to the Journal of the West Wicklow Historical Society, No. 6 (2011), ‘Miscellaneous Biographical Notices Relating to Baltinglass, 1748-1904’.
 
The article recounted the tragic death of a little boy during a hot spell in August 1882.  It appeared in the Saturday 12 August edition of the Kildare Observer, under the heading ‘Death from Sunstroke’:
During the past week a child of Mr. Felix Bowes, of Baltinglass, died from the effects of the intense heat.  The deceased was a fine little boy of five years of age, and was playing with a number of other children, when he complained of having a pain in his head, and, after a short illness, succumbed.  It appears his head was uncovered, and it would be desirable children should not be allowed to expose themselves to the heat of the sun this weather.

The little boy was John Bowes.  He was indeed five years old, as he was born in Baltinglass on 7 January 1877.  On his birth record he parents were named as Phelim Bowes, a tailor, and Margaret Bowes, formerly Parker.  The names Phelim and Felix were used interchangeably, due to Felix being used as a pseudo-translation of Phelim.
 
The exact date of John’s death is in doubt.  Theoretically, the newspaper was published on Saturday 12 August but it may have appeared a few days before or after that date, as local newspapers often did until recent years.  John’s death record gives his official date of death as 13 August, but it was not registered until 13 October, so the date is most likely inaccurate.  The record stated that the uncertified cause of death was ‘Sunstroke two days’.
 
A little bit of digging showed that Felix Bowes married Margaret Parker in 1870 June in the Leeds area of Yorkshire.  They were not identified in the 1871 Census in England and the first reference found to them in the Baltinglass area was John’s birth record in 1877.  Presumably Felix was a Bowes of Killabeg, Co. Wicklow (between Shillelagh and Tullow), as Catherine Bowes of Killabeg was informant on John’s birth record.  John’s mother, Margaret, converted to Catholicism in Baltinglass on 17 October 1878.  She was baptised conditionally and the record stated that she ‘was married before Baptism in Protestant Church’.  The record gave her parents as Edward Parker and Sarah Watson.
 
Felix and Margaret Bowes had three younger children – Charles (1879), Felix (1881) and George (1882).  Felix died at birth.  Then, the following year, John died of sunstroke.  George died just over four months after John, aged seven months.  The cause of his death was hydrocephalus, more commonly called ‘water on the brain’.  The final tragedy came sixteen months later, when Margaret herself died on 21 April 1884 at the stated age of 36.  The certified cause of death was ‘Decline’, which she had suffered for ‘years’, possibly from the birth of her last child.
 
The loss of four members of his family in the space of three years did not entirely defeat Felix Bowes.  Four months after his wife’s death he married again.  This was not unusual and, indeed, with at least one living child it was necessary that he find a wife who would share the burden.  He married Mary Roche of Baltinglass in August 1884.  Initially they lived in Car’s Rock, just outside the town, where their son, another John, was born in 1885.  Their other children born in Car’s Rock were Michael (1886), Catherine (1888) and Walter (1890), while Felix (1892) and Edward (1894) were born in Baltinglass.  Edward died at five weeks old.  Felix Bowes, the father of the little boy John, died a widower in April 1916 in Baltinglass Workhouse, at the stated aged of 78.

​Earlier this month, on Facebook, I posted the first of two short pieces about the figures of Finn McCool and his wife on the side of Keadeen Mountain in West Wicklow.  Actually the figures are on the western face of what is two mountains in one, Keadeen having the higher, northerly summit and Carrig the slightly less talked-about southerly one.  Here is what I said:
 
FIRST POST
In the January 1905 number of the Journal of the Co. Kildare Archaeological Society (Vol. IV No. 5), Charles Drury published an article, ‘County Wicklow Archaeological Notes Around Kiltegan’. He covered folklore associated with 34 locations (many some distance from Kiltegan). No. 28 was ‘The beds of Finn M‘Cool, his wife, and dog’, with no further explanation. Evidently Finn McCool’s spot on the side of Keadeen was an old folk tale by 1905. So 113 years later it’s a very old folk tale.
When I was young my father pointed Finn McCool and his wife (and maybe his dog) out to me. I’ve been very fond of them ever since. I see them most days I go cycling. They can be viewed from a long distance, though their dog is not quite as conspicuous. Coming into Baltinglass from Castledermot at Clough Cross is a good place to see them from. At the side of Talbotstown Church is another. It’s not that easy to get a good photograph of them as they are always quite far away, no matter where you are.
Two weeks ago I shared this photograph of them on my personal Facebook page because Finn McCool and his wife were quite visible when I was out cycling. Normally they are a sort of light brown / straw colour. In the present, unprecedented heatwave the grass everywhere around turned to straw and the McCools turned green!
 
RESPONSE
In response to that post I got several comments.  One questioned which of Finn’s wives was with him, as ‘Did not Diarmuid run away with Gráinne, Finn’s wife?’  I replied:
My wonderful Googling skills have unearthed the information that Sadhbh was Fionn (Finn)’s most famous wife and that Gráinne was his wife when he was at an advanced age.  I’ll give the name of Sadhbh to Mrs. McCool of Keadeen from now on!
Another response was from Duncan, a local man much younger than me, who was told when he was a child by an old man named Paddy Kelly that the legend of Diarmuid and Gráinne was depicted on the side of the mountain.  He said ‘Hounds visible either side of Gráinne and Diarmuid, Finn and hounds visible on the left side of the mountain chasing them’.
Apparently Duncan believed that the Finn McCool and wife figures were those of Diarmuid and Gráinne.
 
SECOND POST
I’m afraid the additional story of Diarmuid and Gráinne in relation to Keadeen is of recent origin! The folk tale of Finn McCool and his wife [possibly Sadhbh] on Keadeen is an ancient one. I only heard Diarmuid and Gráinne added this week! That aspect may have been the invention by Paddy Kelly, who told Duncan when he was a child.
A good measure of folk memory is the National Folklore Commission’s Schools’ Collection, dating from the 1930s. Of course, 1930s children didn’t always get things right, but the collection can help us know about traditions from 80 years ago. There is one mention of Finn McCool on Keadeen in the Schools’ collection. It’s from Talbotstown National School, and dated 27 May 1938 (The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0917, Page 171). I’m reproducing the image of the relevant section here, acknowledging the National Folklore Collection’s copyright.
It would appear that the information from Talbotstown was written by the teacher rather than any of the children, as no child’s name is given and the composition and penmanship are advanced and consistent. The informant about Finn on Keadeen was Mr. Richard Geoghegan of Danesfort, ‘whose father resided at Talbotstown’. Richard Geoghegan was living in Danesfort at the time of the 1911 Census, stating his age as 36. In 1901 he was living in Talbotstown Upper, stating his age as 26. So he was born about 1880.
The tale told by Mr. Geoghegan in 1938 was that Finn and his wife died on the western slope of Keadeen. It’s interesting that the writer says ‘The remarkable thing about it is that even when the rest of the mountain looks green in the distance the two brown patches stand out in contrast to the rest …’. That’s exactly the opposite of what is happening in the present heatwave, as I remarked in recent weeks.

​If you were to take a photograph to capture the essence of Baltinglass you might think of a general view of the town from the Carlow Road, or one of the Abbey from across the river.  But you’re as likely to think of the McAllister monument as your symbol of Baltinglass.  McAllister has been at the heart of the town for a lot longer than living memory.  In fact, Sam McAllister has been standing in Main Street for exactly one hundred years [first published in 2004].
 
In May 1904 a huge crowd gathered for the unveiling of the new statue to commemorate the 1798 Rebellion.  Six years had passed since the centenary, but the idea of a monument had only been mooted in Baltinglass at a meeting in March 1898.  Raising money for the statue was a long process.  Two organisations based in Dublin were the driving forces behind the commemorations throughout Wicklow.  On a local level the Dwyer and McAllister Memorial Committee did their best to raise funds.  However, much of the money came from outside Ireland, with emigrants in America subscribing substantially.
 
The first ceremony at the monument site was the laying of the foundation stone on Sunday 15 June 1902.  Special trains ran from Dublin with a return fare of two shillings.  Hundreds of people poured into the town.  Despite unrelenting rain, there was a long parade before the stone was laid by E.P. O’Kelly, the Baltinglass man who was then Chairman of Wicklow County Council.
 
It was almost another two years before the monument was put in place and unveiled.  On Sunday 8 May 1904 an estimated 10,000 people crowded into the town.  Fortunately it was a sunny day.  A parade started at the railway station, where the Lord Mayor of Dublin and other dignitaries arrived.  With flags, banners, costumes and marching bands, it was an exciting day for Baltinglass in an era when entertainment was not to be had at the press of a button.
 
So began Sam McAllister’s long vigil in Main Street.  The railings that once surrounded the base of the statue were removed decades ago to be placed at McAllister’s grave in Kilranelagh.  In more recent years the area around the statue was paved, and now Sam is floodlit at night [not anymore].  After a hundred years keeping watch over the town McAllister is recognisable to all Baltinglass people as a symbol of home.  But the irony is that the real Sam McAllister was an outsider with no real links to the town.
 
Little is known about McAllister’s life other than that he was a Presbyterian, originally from Ulster, who deserted from the Antrim Militia and joined the rebels.  The historian Ruán O’Donnell says that McAllister joined the Antrim Militia on 1 April 1798 in Co. Wicklow and that he may have been resident in the area at the time.  That being the case, there is a strong possibility that he was living in Stratford, where there was a significant number of Presbyterians among the weavers working in the textile factory.
 
What gave him his heroic reputation was the circumstance of his death in the early hours of 16 February 1799.  A group of rebels led by Michael Dwyer were sheltering for the night at Derrynamuck in the Glen of Imaal.  They were ambushed by a detachment of soldiers and McAllister was wounded in an exchange of fire.  In order that Dwyer might escape, McAllister stood in the doorway and drew the fire of the surrounding soldiers.
 
Unlike other rebellions in Irish history, 1798 involved people from various religious backgrounds.  In Ulster it was primarily a Presbyterian phenomenon; in Leinster it was primarily Catholic, but there were Church of Ireland activists, such as Joseph Holt from east Wicklow.  However, it has to be admitted that in Wicklow the revolt had a sectarian element and the rebels were no heroes to the general Protestant population.
 
Sam McAllister was, therefore, something of an oddity.  It would be nice to think that the choice of McAllister for the Baltinglass monument was primarily inspired by a desire to be inclusive of all elements in Irish society.  However, tradition has it that he was selected in place of Michael Dwyer because Dwyer was held responsible in Baltinglass for a sectarian killing spree in Sruhaun and Tuckmill on 8 December 1798.
 
Monuments have a way of developing their own character.  In 1904 McAllister represented heroism in rebellion.  After a century on the street in Baltinglass, Sam has become a symbol of the town.  The real Sam McAllister was an outsider.  His image in the heart of our town is a reminder that today’s outsider is tomorrow’s old resident.
 
[First published in The Baltinglass Review, 2004]

​Those who died in the Great War (1914-1918) are commemorated each year on 11 November. Huge numbers of Irishmen enlisted to fight in the British Army, the Royal Navy or the forces of other countries in the British Empire. They joined and fought for a variety of reasons. Those who died in that terrible conflict deserve to be remembered in their home place, especially at this time of year.

Saturday, 1 July 1916, when the Battle of the Somme commenced, was a particularly black moment. Over 19,000 British soldiers lost their lives on that single day. Among them were five men from the Baltinglass area - Thomas Devine, Patrick Greene, Andrew Jones, Patrick Kane and Edward Tutty. Hundreds of Baltinglass lads faced the dangers of that war over its five-year course. It’s impossible to determine how many there were in all. It’s easier to count the ones who never returned.

The following were 45 lads from the Baltinglass area who lost their future by taking part in the Great War. Five of them are commemorated on a plaque in St. Mary’s church in Baltinglass: all are now commemorated on the Co. Wicklow War Dead memorial at Woodenbridge, thanks to the initiative of Billy Timmins, former TD, and the committee he formed with a view to creating a permanent memorial to this lost generation.

1914
Charles Ferris of Lathaleere (Irish Guards – Western Front)
Patrick Sullivan (Scots Guards – Western Front)
Patrick Doyle (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
James Glynn of the Sruhaun Road aged 24 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)

1915
George Herbert Morris aged 22 (Gloucestershire Regiment – Western Front)
James Dunne aged 23 (Leinster Regiment – Western Front)
Michael Brien aged 23 (Irish Guards – Western Front)
Patrick J. Kehoe of Weavers’ Square aged 35 (East Yorkshire Regiment – Western Front)
Matthew Whyte of Tuckmill (Connaught Rangers – Gallipoli)
John Abbey of Weavers’ Square aged 24 (Irish Guards – Western Front)
James Hennessy of Chapel Hill aged 24 (Irish Guards – Western Front)
John Nolan (Connaught Rangers – commemorated in Alexandria, Egypt)
Laurence Sutton of Belan Street aged 22 (Leinster Regiment – Western Front)

1916
Richard Jones of Mill Street aged 29 (Royal Horse Artillery – Mesopotamia)
Joseph Bayle of Main Street aged 27 (Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers – Western Front)
John Joseph Behan aged 27 (Royal Irish Rifles – Western Front)
Patrick Doyle of Belan Street aged 18 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Henry O’Neill aged 23 (Royal West Surrey Regiment – Western Front)
Thomas Devine from Stratford aged 45 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Patrick Greene (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Andrew Jones of Boleylug aged 35 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Patrick Kane of Holdenstown (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Edward Tutty aged 27 (Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers – Western Front)
William Byrne aged 22 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
William Lanegan shoemaker in Clarkes of the Bridge aged 24 (Irish Guards – Western Front)
Thomas William Middleton aged 28 (Royal Navy – near Dunkirk)
James Christopher Doogan of Main Street aged 19 (Royal Irish Regiment – Western Front)
Thomas Fitzgerald (Royal Garrison Artillery – Western Front)
Anthony Ovington from Woodfieldglen (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
William Conway of Deerpark aged 26 (Connaught Rangers – Western Front)

1917
James Kearney of the Green Lane (Irish Guards – Western Front)
Michael O’Neill (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
George S. Brereton of Weavers’ Square aged 42 (Royal Irish Regiment – East Mediterranean)
Joseph Doody of Stratfordlodge aged 23 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Henry Hawkins from Newtownsaunders aged 41 (Royal Navy – Orkney, Scotland)
William Kelly (Irish Guards – Western Front)
William J. Mallen of Grangecon aged 18½ (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – Western Front)
Michael Kane (Royal Field Artillery – Western Front)

1918
Thomas Malone of Main Street aged 39 (Machine Gun Corps – Western Front)
Ambrose A. Shearman cashier in the National Bank aged 26 (London Regiment – Western Front)
Hubert L. Grogan of Slaney Park aged 21 (Worcestershire Regiment – Western Front)
Michael J. Harbourne of the Bridge Hotel aged 21 (Australian Infantry – Western Front)
Joseph Brean (Army Service Corps – Southern Front)
Henry Pollard (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – in Germany)

1919 (from wounds)
James Moore of Ballyhook aged 24 (Royal Dublin Fusiliers – in Germany)

​Time for my annual appeal for Baltinglass to embrace its heritage and bring back the juggies to the streets at Halloween. Banish the dreadful “trick-or-treat” expression and tell Baltinglass children to do what Baltinglass children did from at least the early years of the twentieth century – tell them to go out juggying, knocking on doors saying “HELP THE JUGGIES”.
Halloween isn’t something we got from America. It’s an old Irish custom and different parts of Ireland have different words to describe the activity of children dressing up in old rags to disguise themselves and going door to door asking for nuts, fruit or sweets. In Baltinglass it's called juggying. No one seems to know where that word came from or what exactly it represents. It’s been discussed a lot in recent years. What can be said is that it’s a word almost unique to Baltinglass. Other towns have other words for juggying, or none at all.
Don’t let the juggies be replaced by a bland international copy of the real Baltinglass thing. Banish the pumpkin and bring back the turnip! Leave the fireworks till night-time and give the kids time to go juggying. Don’t destroy a living tradition. Tell your kids that when they dress up at Halloween they’re dressing up as JUGGIES. Tell them when they go door to door they’re going JUGGYING. And tell they when the door is opened to say “HELP THE JUGGIES!”.

​It’s well known that the family of Walt Disney, creator of Mickey Mouse and all that sparkles, came from north Co. Kilkenny. But Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, had a very close connection with the Disney family. One of them lived in Baltinglass for many years. Mary Disney (Walt’s great-great-grandaunt) married John Jones in 1810. They lived in Newtownsaunders and were part of the Methodist congregation in Baltinglass. John Jones was a farmer and a land agent. In 1833 he was one of the trustees for the Methodist congregation when they leased a plot in Mill Street where they built their meetinghouse.

In the early 1850s John Jones moved into Weavers Square to the house now owned by the O’Shea family. I cannot honestly say whether Mary was still alive by the 1850s. I have not looked into this in enough detail, as I have not looked closely at John and Mary’s gravestone in Hacketstown. Mary was one of several children of Robert Disney and his wife Mary Capel / Kepple, who married in Carlow Church of Ireland parish in 1775. Another of their daughters was Elizabeth who married William Cooke in 1809. The Cookes lived in Griffinstown in Ballynure parish, just north of Baltinglass.

Theoretically, Elizabeth Disney and William Cooke could have descendants in the area. Certainly Mary Disney and John Jones have quite a number of descendants around Baltinglass. Walt Disney’s distant cousins live in the area and his great-great-grandaunt once lived here, so there is a little touch of Disney sparkle to the town.

​What’s the oldest gravestone in St. Joseph’s graveyard in Baltinglass? I really don’t know. But I do know that it’s not the one with the earliest date on it. Am I confusing you? Well, there is a gravestone that includes ‘Michael Brophy who gave his life in Ireland’s cause at Baltinglass in 1798 aged 55 years’. The headstone and that inscription were put in place in the oldest part of the cemetery in about 1920 by Michael’s great-grandson, William Henry Brophy of Bisbee, Arizona, USA.

Michael Brophy was a prosperous farmer who lived in Rathmoon House (now Burke’s) but he was originally from north Kilkenny. He had twelve sons and one daughter. In the 1790s he was known to be involved in the United Irishmen. Family tradition suggested that he was at the Battle of Vinegar Hill in June 1798, after which he was captured and executed. Over a century later E.P. O’Kelly wrote that Brophy was hanged from a beam at the entrance to Tan Lane (on one side of Mill Street).

Michael’s son George, who was born in Kilkenny, attended Carlow College before training for the priesthood in Paris and Madrid. He returned to Paris and was ordained in 1798, the year of his father’s death. George spent decades in France before moving to the USA in 1843. He died in Davenport, Iowa, in 1880, reportedly at the age of 105. Rev. George Brophy moved in exalted circles and in his time met Napoleon Bonaparte and six American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln.

Another of Michael’s sons, William, was intended for the church but he decided it was not for him and emigrated to Canada where he practised law. His grandson Truman William Brophy, born in Illinois in 1848, became a dentist and then a medical doctor. In the late nineteenth century, based in Chicago, he pioneered surgical procedures to repair the cleft lip and palate. Truman Brophy travelled internationally performing operations and lecturing, and he published two books on the subject. His work alleviated the suffering of countless people born with the condition.

Another of Michael’s sons was James Brophy, who succeeded him in Rathmoon. In 1815 James married Catherine (‘Kitty’) Cullen of Prospect, Narraghmore, Co. Kildare. Kitty’s younger brother, Paul Cullen, became Ireland’s first cardinal in 1866. James and Kitty’s eldest son, Michael Brophy, succeeded to the Rathmoon property. He had married Matilda Lalor, from the Goresbridge area of Kilkenny. Michael and Matilda’s son William Henry (‘Billy’) Brophy was baptised in Baltinglass on 18 October 1863. He went to America when he was aged 17, arriving in New York with his cousin Hugh on 11 April 1881.

Billy Brophy gravitated to the mining settlement of Bisbee, Arizona, where his older brothers had already begun to work. A mercantile, mining and banking career ultimately made him a millionaire. When the USA entered the First World War in 1917, Brophy became a ‘Dollar-a-Year’ man. He was one of a number of high powered businessmen who gave their expertise for a token salary of $1 plus expenses. He was based in Paris for the duration.

It was shortly afterwards that he had the gravestone erected in Baltinglass to his grandparents, James and Kitty, and to his great-grandfather Michael Brophy, the 1798 rebel. In the early 1920s he moved to Los Angeles. In November 1922, while on a fishing trip in the Gulf of California, Billy Brophy was swept overboard in a storm and drowned. He was aged 59. Mass was celebrated for him in Baltinglass a few months later. In 1928 in his honour his widow, Ellen Amelia, founded Brophy College Preparatory, a Jesuit boys’ school, in Phoenix, Arizona. The stained glass windows of its Brophy Chapel were designed and executed by artists from Dublin’s An Túr Gloine.

2013 (when this post was first aired on Facebook) was the 150th anniversary of the birth in Baltinglass of William Henry Brophy, who erected the gravestone with the earliest date in the oldest part of St. Joseph’s graveyard. But it’s not the oldest gravestone.

​I'm feeling quite happy today because my new book Seven Signatories: Tracing the Family Histories of the Men Who Signed the Proclamation is hot off the press. It concerns the ancestry of the leaders of the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916.
 
Originally it was an Irish Family History Foundation / Rootsireland project, which I was given while editing online material for them. It was first published as a special issue of Clann, the online Rootsireland magazine, at Easter 2016. In more recent months Kildare County Council and Merrion Press / Irish Academic Press took the project further to publish it in book form.
 
I've yet to see a copy but I'm reliably informed that it is now in print and ready for the Christmas market. It's on the Merrion Press / Irish Academic Press website.

​Oliver and Margaret Walsh may never have been internationally recognised figures, but they had a significant impact on the world.  Were it not for them the Abbey Theatre might never have been founded, the word ‘Disneyland’ would mean nothing to anyone, and the course of the Second World War might well have been different.
 
When Margaret Borrowes married Oliver Walsh she was probably looking forward to a happy life, to having children, and to the relative comfort she was used to.  The Abbey Theatre, Disneyland and the Second World War were far from her thoughts, as they were then unimagined developments of the distant future.  Oliver and Margaret lived in Ireland in the seventeenth century.  The happenings of the twentieth century were for their famous descendants to influence.
 
By the standards of the time Oliver and Margaret were prosperous people.  He was what was termed a ‘gentleman’ and he had the means in 1639 to purchase lands at Ballykilcavan in what was then Queen’s Co. (now Laois).  Margaret was from Gilltown, Co. Kildare, some twenty miles away.  They both witnessed the 1641 Rebellion, in which her father lost heavily for his support of King Charles.  They were again bystanders when in 1649 the wrath of Cromwell descended on Ireland.
 
Cromwell died in 1658, and so too did Oliver Walsh, bequeathing his DNA to posterity.  Three years later his and Margaret’s son, another Oliver, married Editha Hunt of Dublin.  About the same time their daughter Mary married a young man from Warwickshire named Robert Stratford.  With the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Charles II was trying to perform a miracle of loaves and fishes in confirming Irish land to Cromwellian soldiers while restoring the same land to dispossessed royalists.  It was a chaotic time ‘when land was cheap and money dear’, and Robert Stratford snapped up some bargains, buying or leasing various properties.  One of these was the town of Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, and he settled there with Mary.
 
Oliver and Editha Walsh remained at Ballykilcavan, which is still today in the possession of descendants.  Their daughter Rebecca married Toby Caulfeild of Clone, Co. Kilkenny.  A century later, in 1795, Rebecca’s great-great-granddaughter, Frances Best, married a farmer called Kepple Disney.  In the 1830s Frances and Kepple’s son Arundel left Ireland with his wife and their infant son, sailing for New York.  They later settled in Ontario in Canada, but the son moved to Kansas.  His son Elias settled in Chicago, where he worked as a carpenter, and it was there that his son, Walt Disney, was born in 1901.  So if Oliver and Margaret Walsh had never married the man who turned his surname into a byword for fantasy and entertainment would never have existed.
 
Returning to the Stratfords, Robert must have done well out of his property speculation in the 1660s, as he was able to marry off his seven daughters quite respectably and leave his son Edward in a comfortable position.  Despite heavy losses incurred in his support for William of Orange in the civil war fought out in Ireland against James II, Edward Stratford prospered.  His son John was eventually elevated to the peerage, first as Baron Baltinglass in 1763 and ultimately as Earl of Aldborough in 1777, the year of his death.  John’s son Edward was the 2nd Earl.  As well as developing the town of Baltinglass, constructing Aldborough House in Dublin and Stratford Place in London, he dreamt up a new industrial town in Co. Wicklow which he called Stratford-on-Slaney.  For decades it was a prosperous textile manufacturing centre but after the industry failed it dwindled to the quiet, pleasant village it is today.  There were four more earls of Aldborough, the last being an eccentric recluse who died in 1875 at Alicante in Spain.
 
In 1697 Abigail Stratford, one of the seven daughters of Robert Stratford and Mary Walsh, married George Canning of Garvagh in Derry.  Their only surviving child was Stratford Canning.  Stratford’s eldest son, George, was a great disappointment to him.  Having got himself into serious debt in London, he was bailed out by his father but in return had to renounce his inheritance.  Then, in his early thirties and still in London, he married a young lady with no fortune, fathered three children and died after less than three years of marriage.  His impoverished widow was forced to take to the stage and she drifted into an even more socially unacceptable position as the mistress of a disreputable actor.
 
At the time of George’s death his second child was a year old.  He was another George.  He spent his early childhood in near penury before being rescued by the Cannings, who paid for his education at Eton and Oxford, where he gained a reputation for academic brilliance.  Entering politics, he rose to the position of Foreign Secretary during the Napoleonic Wars, but lost it after being wounded in a duel with a political rival, Lord Castlereagh.  However, he returned to that office in 1822 following the suicide of the erstwhile Lord Castlereagh, then Marquess of Londonderry.  After a successful five years as Foreign Secretary, in April 1827 he became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  However, he became ill in July and died on 8 August at the age of 57 after serving one of the shortest terms of any British Prime Minister.  In his day George Canning was regarded as a man who rose from humble origins to the highest political office on his own merit, a unique achievement in nineteenth century Britain.  Though he visited Ireland only once, both his parents were born in the country and he referred to himself as ‘an Irishman born in London’.  He was also a strong advocate of Catholic emancipation, a position that would have horrified his great-granduncle, Edward Stratford, the staunch supporter of King Billy.
 
That Edward Stratford’s daughter Elizabeth married Charles Plunkett of Dillonstown, Co. Louth.  Their daughter Anne married the 5th Earl of Antrim in 1739.  Anne’s only son, Randal, became the 6th Earl on his father’s death.  He eventually married but had no son to inherit the title.  He obtained a new patent in 1785 allowing for his three daughters and their male issue to succeed.  On his death in 1791 his sixteen year old eldest daughter, Anne Catherine, became Countess of Antrim in her own right.  She married Sir Henry Vane-Tempest but their only child was a girl named Frances Anne.  She could not inherit her mother’s title as it was limited to her male heirs, so the earldom passed to Frances Anne’s aunt.  However, on his death in 1813 Sir Henry left his daughter a very rich heiress, with an estimated £60,000 a year.  Lady Frances Anne might have attracted all the gold diggers in London.  However, her mother encouraged the attention of Charles, Lord Stewart, a forty year old widower.  Though he was twice her age, he had a sizeable income of his own and very good connections.  They married in 1819.  Three years later Charles’s half-brother, the Foreign Secretary popularly known as Lord Castlereagh, committed suicide.  Frances Anne’s distant cousin, George Canning, became the new Foreign Secretary and she herself became the Marchioness of Londonderry.
 
Lady Londonderry’s eldest daughter, Frances, took a further step up the aristocratic pyramid by marrying the Marquess of Blandford, as he later succeeded his father as Duke of Marlborough.  While her husband served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the 1870s there was a threatened return of famine, and Frances, Duchess of Marlborough set up a relief fund that raised £135,000.  While in Dublin the Marlboroughs resided at the Viceregal Lodge (now Áras an Uachtaráin).  That was how it came about that their grandson Winston Churchill’s earliest memories were of being in a pram in the Phoenix Park.  Though he was a Nobel Prize winning writer, it was through his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II that his memory became immortalised.
 
Producing two British prime ministers was not the only legacy to the world from the Stratford branch of Oliver and Margaret Walsh’s family.  Many descendants were prominent in politics and the arts.  Included in their number was Charles Stewart Parnell, who led the constitutional Irish nationalist movement from the 1870s.  On the other hand, so was Sir Basil Brooke (Lord Brookeborough), leader of the unionist movement in the mid-twentieth century and Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
 
Another descendant was Augusta, Lady Gregory, one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre which influenced Ireland’s cultural identity at the beginning of the twentieth century.  The artist Sir William Orpen was hardly aware of Oliver and Margaret Walsh, or his distant relationship to Churchill when he painted the future legend’s portrait in 1915.  There were other artistic individuals hidden in the branches of the extensive family tree grown by Oliver and Margaret.  The architect Sir Thomas Newenham Deane was one of them.  Among his works were the National Library and National Museum in Kildare Street, Dublin.  The popular twentieth century author Elizabeth Bowen was another.  The Canadian-born Hume Cronyn who died in 2003 was a Broadway star and a Hollywood character actor whose films ranged from Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt in the 1940s to television movies made in the 2000s.  Along the way he starred with his wife Jessica Tandy in such films as The World According to Garp and Cocoon.
 
In the world of the arts today the most prominent offspring are the Irish singer-songwriter Chris De Burgh, and the highly successful English acting brothers Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, who spent part of their childhood in Ireland.  Their kinsman, the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, is another Stratford descendant.  Another celebrity descendant is the 2003 Miss World, Rosanna Davison, who is the daughter of Chris De Burgh.  Jemima Goldsmith, wife of the Pakistani cricketer and politician Imran Khan, inherits her Walsh blood from the Londonderrys.  Oliver and Margaret have royal descendants in Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie of York, whose mother, Sarah Ferguson, traces her ancestry from the Stratfords through the Wingfields of Powerscourt.
 
Oliver and Margaret are thirteen generations back from Rosanna Davison and the princesses.  Beatrice and Eugenie are Rosanna’s eleventh cousins.  They are ninth cousins three times removed of Walt Disney.  Most people have no contact with relatives as remote as third cousins, and few have traced their ancestry back any more than about five or six generations.  So most people have no idea of who else might be sharing their bloodlines.
 
Today there are thousands of Oliver and Margaret Walsh’s progeny all over the planet.  They are by no means all wealthy, famous, or successful people.  They are in all walks of life, and most are unaware of the seventeenth century Irish couple whose DNA contributed to making them the individuals they are.  Oliver and Margaret may not have done remarkable things during their lifetime, but without them the world’s history would have taken a slightly different shape.  That should be a sobering thought for any parent.
 
[First published in Ireland of the Welcomes, Vol. 55, No. 1 (January-February 2006)]