Mayo Alive-
April '98
The Journey to Cobh
(Part two of the saga of the Kennedys of Mayo Abbey)
In early April, 1900, John Kennedy was soon outside the house in Knocknamoghlaun, looking at the fields of Mayo with the sun gone down behind the trees for the last time. He sat on a smooth well worn granite rock, where his father and his father before him sat, near the sleepy village of Balla, at half-past six in the evening. He drew in the air of the freshly turned soil, tracing the straight lines of the drill in his mind, seeing the fertile auburn earth gently parted, lying open, awaiting the life-giving seed. To his left was the high road, and to his right the low road, the low field. From that rock Kennedy saw both, bordered by stone ditches and smooth flowing shucks, just as his father did. - In the purple heather breeze he heard their words echo: "Plough high and watch the rocks, keep the plough board straight, reins tight. Son, a man's known by the line of his drill."
When my father was alive - muair a bhi m'athair ann. Come harvest time the neighbors gathered, the women fresh faced with big heaving bosoms in floral aprons, tied twice round their broad waists, flattened with bone stays and flannel petticoats. They brought tea, buttermilk and soda farls to men with yellow nicotine fingers, who stopped to eat, smoke and talk, as freckled children chased each other and collected docking leaves to cure the sting of nettles. When the mist came down from the mountain, weary workers plodded home through ditch lined lonans, up to half doors, removing dirt stained boots. The women knew the weather by the way the fire lit, and the men, bone sore, bathed callused feet in warm salted water. Children, tired from play, fell asleep by the fire. Finally, the wearied folks retired to feather ticks, where life is made and life departs. All around Kennedy was the hill of the yellow bush - Cnoc na mBuachalán - green as an emerald in summer, with the stock knee deep in the grass which clothed it like a meadow. He tried to survey every meadow and pasture, every sunlit slope and shady hollow, every homestead and hedgerow and winding country road. In his youth, Kennedy heard the stories of Irish culture and the many titles for the country: "The Lamp of the West," "The University of Europe," and "The Isle of Saints and Scholars," which were bestowed on the land in recognition of the scholastic achievements of her people. Only an ancient and venerable nation could have warranted so many diverse names in her history. And the names by which she was known still reflected that mystical past: Eire or Erin conjured up the magical Queen of the Tuatha de Danann; and Ireland reminded Kennedy of the first of the heroic Celts to give his life for the land.
But there were yet other names; not the names by which she was known, nor the names she had been called since the dawn of time, but names of the heart; names by which she was known during the dark night of persecution; names given during the Penal times, when the bards of Eire were forbidden, under penalty of dungeon and death, to write in praise of their native land. They who could not conceal their passion for their land chose to cloak her identity with such metaphoric names such as "Kathleen ni Houlihan," "The Proud Old Woman," "The Old Woman of Beare," and "Roisin Dubh," and these were perhaps Ireland's proudest names
In his youth, Kennedy also heard the folk tales of the druids and of the high kings, tales of Padraig and Brigid, tales of battles won and lost, tales of the Penal Days, and legends of the fairy folk hanging around the names of numerous townlands. He gazed once more at the roofs over which the turf-smoke rose in tiny clouds of softest blue; the tillage fields where the whistle of the ploughman was heard, and over which floated the songs of the women milking in the early morning. And over the fields and heathery boglands rose the faraway sheltering mountains, gray in the dawn, rosy in the flush of the sunrise, blue at noon, purple in the evening time, dark and grim when the twilight faded, silvery and beautiful and mystic when the moon climbed over them to light the sleeping world.
Kennedy thought of all the people he was parting from: the other Kennedys, the Adams', the Flynns, the Roches, the Higgins, the Reillys, and the Larkins; especially the 92-year-old Patrick Larkin, perhaps the oldest member of the parish. John also thought of the rich Irish mosaic he was leaving - all the countless Celtic, Saxon, Danish, Norman, Elizabethan and Cromwellian conquerors. All for America and the permanent dreams of a dozen nations in a greater merge of humanity.
- We have Greater Ireland beyond the sea. Many were driven out of house and home in the Black '47. Their cottages and their scalpeens by the roadside laid low by the batteringram and the London Times rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. I suffered Gaeilge hardship throughout my life - distress, famine, adversity, ill-treatment, misery and ill-luck. I do not think that my like will ever be here again.
I've watched the trains of Balla
Behind the clouds of smoke,
Carrying the cars of people
To Queenstown and the land of hope.
Before sailing for America, Kennedy understated his age to immigration authorities by six years. Although baptized on Sunday, January 2, 1853, Kennedy was probably born some time in the fall of 1852. Yet on ship documents he reported his age as 42-years-old. Later, in America, for the 1900 Federal Census, he deducted another six years, and presented himself as 36-years-old. The reasons are known only to him, though it's easy to imagine that a farmer in his mid-30s would be given first consideration for urban employment in America, over an unskilled man in his late-40s.
To many Church leaders who held to the simple theology that being poor had a certain dignity, any talk of materialism was the antithesis of the Gaelic, nationalist, Catholic tradition. Perhaps this austere view of life differed from the outlook of Kennedy. It was from this situation that he escaped.
If Kennedy wanted to prosper, then he had to join his three sisters in St. Louis. Yet traveling to St. Louis also meant undertaking a daunting pilgrimage. Escape from Ireland still meant partings with his two young children, the extended family, friends and the familiar countryside in which he had grown up. It involved a seven-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
After surviving that journey, then what faced Kennedy at the end? At best, the arrival in a strange world where the opportunity to better his condition by his own efforts would be the reward; at worst, the discovery of an alien and hostile people who would provide him with no better a condition than that left behind in Ireland. Kennedy's emigration from Ireland was the start of a journey that was not just physically stressful. Demands were made on the spirit as well as the flesh; he sought a new location and a new identity. Kennedy had to cope with the new conditions of work, new patterns of family and kinship, and the new surroundings of St. Louis.
All this had to be done while also coping with the absence of his children. There would be no tradition to appeal for help; no sense of wisdom received from the past to aid in dealing with the demands of the present; no local elders to visit in Balla for advice and solace. In the Mayo Abbey Parish were other Kennedy family members. In the townland of Knocknamoghlaun in 1900, there also remained Mary (Reilly) Kennedy, the widow of Patrick Kennedy (1812-1887). Mary was the head of a household that included her son, Michael, and his wife Bridget. Michael and Bridget (McDonagh) Kennedy had three young daughters, Mary, Anne and Bridget, and a son: Patrick Kennedy.
James and Mary (Reilly) Kennedy, of Rathduff, also remained in the parish. The 58-year-old James Kennedy of Rathduff was John Kennedy's second cousin. James Kennedy was the son of John Kennedy and Mary Hyland of Rathduff. James and his wife, Mary, had four sons: John, Michael, James and Edward. Kennedy's brother-in-law, Pat Roche, of nearby Carrownahan townland, remained in the parish, too. The 49-year-old Pat and his wife, Mary, had six children: Pat, Sarah, Thomas, Mary, Maggy, and Michael. The Roche's were also expecting another child. Born several months after John Kennedy left for America, his niece was named, Ellen Roche.
However, for the next several years, both Martin and Ellen remained with Kennedy's older sister, Margaret Higgins. Thomas and Margaret Higgins were in their late 50s, and had four sons and three daughters. In Irish, the surname O'hUigin (Higgins) means "knowledge," "ingenuity." The Higgins family lived in a traditional, three-room stone cottage with a thatch roof in the townland of Skiddernagh, just about three miles north of Balla, in the northwest part of the parish. Skiddernagh, which in Irish is spelled Sciodarnach, means "a place of puddles." The townland is three-fourths of a mile south of Manulla.
Traveling third class from Queenstown to New York City with Kennedy were five other young people from Balla. They included John's two nieces: Maggie Adams, age 21, and Delia Adams, age 19, along with Bridget Colgan, age 16, Mary Monroe, age 19, and 21-year-old James Dea. Like many from the area, James Dea attended the Facefield National School, when he was younger.
Maggie Adams was headed for New York City with $10, while Delia Adams was going to see her older sister, Mary Adams, in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, a small town just northeast of Scranton. Delia only had $10 to her name. Both Bridget Colgan and Mary Monroe intended to go to Brooklyn. Between Bridget and Mary, they only had $15. All four of the young women said they were servants. James Dea, a laborer, was also on his way to Brooklyn to see his sister, Maggie Dea. He traveled with $25. The entire party from Balla claimed they could read and write English.
Shortly after boarding the Mayo branch of the Midland & Great Western railway in Balla for the four-hour trip to the Southern Coast of Ireland, the station gradually became invisible. The railway engine screamed and friends and family, lost in the smoky glare, dwindled among the crowd and tender. Heritage, history, and family also dwindled there. Baile Ui Chinneide, croí chine. For a moment Kennedy closed his eyes. Yet as he looked to the east, he passed through the townlands of Arboley North, Rathduff, Ballintleva, Mossbrook and Cloonboy. From the opposite side of his seat, he saw for the last time Ardboley South, more of Rathduff, Monard, Barnagreggaun, Knockaunakill and Harefield.
The track swerved to a greener world: outside the railway carriage there was a deep blue spring sky in South Mayo, with patches of fleecy clouds which blotched the bare hillsides with shadows. Kennedy's face gazed out the window as grass lands rolled away in long undulating miles to the sky rim, crossed here and there by grassy ridges running from east to west. Along the horizon low ranges of mountains mingled their deep tints with the silvery whiteness of the clouds. There were no woodlands, no groves, scarcely any trees at all, stripped away by the British long ago. There was no agriculture, the fertile desert uncultivated from end to end. From the carriage window to the crest of the far-off ridges, the public road stretched in a straight line across the valley, between the stone walls, breast high, which separated it from the silent fields on either side.
This was the point at which Kennedy cut himself off from his past. During the trip there was one stop at the Limerick Junction, the halfway point between Balla and Cork. Four hours later, the train finally pulled into the Queenstown Railway Station on Westbourne Place, next to the port. Built in 1890, the railway station replaced the original station, which stood a short distance to the west of the building. From St. Patrick's Bridge to the Cove of Cork, the River Lee spreads itself out into broad lakes and narrows again into passages that leave no more than convenient room for navigation. The Cove of Cork is where so many of the coffin ships started during the Great Famine. It was the port, which the stream of emigration flowed during the long and disastrous years of the 19th century - the Irish Holocaust. Cove (the Cove of Cork) was renamed Queenstown after Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, arrived there in August 1849.
By the time of Queen Victoria's visit, the village of Cove (Cobh) had grown to a busy town. It became a hive of naval and commercial activity as Cork harbor's important strategic position in the North Atlantic was recognized. Tall ships called to transport convicts to Australia and to carry Irish emigrants to North America.
English military barracks covered the islands in the harbor. The English convict prison of Spike Island was converted into an English naval depot. Rocky Island had an English powder magazine. At Roche's Point were two dominant English forts guarding the harbor entrance. In the harbor itself were English men-of-war - battleships and cruisers; and on one of the islands were English dry docks and all the trappings of a minor naval base.
Kennedy and his charges walked east from the Queenstown Railway Station along Westbourne Place, one of the busiest streets in the port city. Westbourne Place was an airy, spacious, well-proportioned thoroughfare. The sidewalks were wide and smooth and there was plenty of light by night and day. A double electric tramcar line ran along the middle of the street, and the posts that carried the overhead wires had large arc lamps. Seven other kinds of vehicles were prominent on Westbourne Place, including the automobile, the jaunting car, the landau, the brougham, the inside car, the hansom cab, and the covered car.
Later Kennedy may have purchased one and fourpence worth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at a Queenstown dining room. Outside on Westbourne Place, Kennedy and the group walked past more Hackney carts, cabs, delivery wagons, mail-vans, private broughams. Perhaps Kennedy stopped again and bought from an old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny. Once a week, all through the year, people like John Kennedy crowded the landing stage, running away out of Ireland. Millions of the Irish race went through Queenstown into exile, between lines of English warships, between towering English forts, going, going, going, out and away, generally forever.
(To be continued)
John Kennedy: Exile In America
