Mayo Alive - May '98

 

MOM'S THE WORD
BY CATHY CORCORAN
1st North American
serial rights
ROOTS to run
August 10, 1996

Right from the start, it was more than just a vacation. Long before I ever
set foot on Aer Lingus, I was obsessed with Ireland. These past few years,
I've been researching my family, looking for ancestors. They were all from
Ireland, but that's all we knew. Five generations later, I longed to find
them.
I spent hours poring over microfilm and census records. I found my great
grandmother, Anna Moran, a woman who died at the age of 28, leaving two young children behind. Her brother adopted her children and raised them as
his own. We never knew this woman even existed until I found her in the
Massachusetts Archives. Her brother's naturalization papers said he came
from County Mayo in the 1870s. Anna followed shortly after that. It
wasn't much to go on, but it was all I had.
We landed in Dublin, a fascinating city, small, friendly, yet
sophisticated, cultured. The cheerful babble in the streets was German,
French, Swedish, a few American accents, and everywhere, the musical lilt
of the Irish brogue. After a few days, we rented a small British car, and
took off to see the countryside. We saved Mayo for last.
Oh it was fabulous! Ireland is an incredibly beautiful country, and
everything they say about the friendliness of the people is true. We used
the Irish Tourist Bureau's B&B directory like a bible, stayed at a
different home every night, and were never disappointed. We followed the
coast to Wexford and Waterford, then ventured inland to Kilkenny and
Cashel. We kissed the Blarney stone, and ate with our fingers at a
medieval banquet at Bunratty Castle. We lugged suitcases, cameras, tote
bags stuffed with woolen sweaters and crystal vases, quintessential
American tourists.
We arrived in Westport, County Mayo after a breathtaking drive through the
Connemara mountains. Our B&B overlooked Croagh Patrick, a mountain where
Saint Patrick prayed for the 40 days of Lent in the fifth century.
Pilgrims walk to the top of Croagh Patrick even today. Did my great
grandmother walk that mountain? Was I close to finding her?

I barricaded myself in a phone booth and started calling Irish family
research centers. "I'm searching for information on Anna Moran," I said.
"Married to Michael Naughtin in 1872 or 1873, a daughter Mary born in 1874,
emigrated in 1875 or so."
After several days, one center said they'd found the family in the little
village of Crossmolina. They had some information on Anna Moran and her
parents Patrick and Bridgit, but it would take a month to get a full
report. Would I send a check to cover expenses? "I'll be there this
afternoon," I said, and we took off over the mountains.
Crossmolina was a sleepy little crossroads of a town - a hardware store, a
couple of pubs, a handful of drab stucco town houses. Outside town,
rolling green fields, cows, sheep. It could have been any little town in
Ireland, but suddenly, it was my town.
We wandered through the ancient graveyard, overgrown with nettles and
scrub. Colleen picked a handful of wild daisies to place on the Morans'
graves, but we didn't find a headstone. I pressed the daisies in my
Ireland guidebook, a remembrance to bring back to America, something to
keep from my family's home in Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland.

We found Saint Tiernan's, a small stucco church, built in 1860. Anna was
married in that church, a hundred and twenty years ago. My daughter
Colleen and I went inside, and she walked slowly down the aisle toward the
altar, an American kid in jeans and Reeboks, great great granddaughter of
Anna Moran, retracing her steps in the cool stained glass silence of the
little church.
We come every year to Ireland, emigrants' children, from America, from
Australia, and England and New Zealand. We're everywhere, spread out all
over the globe, inheritors of the Irish Diaspora, all of us with
unbreakable eternal ties to Ireland.
Ireland is a wonderful place for a vacation, but this wasn't really a
vacation. It was a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey I made for Patrick and
Bridgit Moran, for Owen and Cecilia McLaughlin, for James and Julia Walsh,
and Tom and Ellen Shaughnessy. It was a journey for the millions who came
before us, for those who left their wildly beautiful homes to escape hunger
and oppression. As I walked the misty green hills of Ireland, I prayed for
them all.

Whoever they were, wherever they came from, I honor them.

Towns and villages in County Mayo, Ireland