The Time We Went Grave Hunting in Ireland (June 2015)

"I think it's fun to trace it back to where it all began." Orla Garland - "Bloodline"

Have you ever gone gravestone hunting in a foreign country? Have you ever done that only to find the gravestones online after you got home? Just me?

I helped plan my family's trip to Ireland back in June 2015, right after graduating from college. A lot of the family trip was planned during Resident Assistant (RA) office hours, either between 1-2 am on the weekends or 11:30-12:30 am on the weeknights. (Looking back, it's strange thinking about being up that late AND doing work.)

Old Family Letters

Using old family letters, I planned one day dedicated to canvasing the countryside in southern Co. Laois (formerly Queens County) where my Phelan and Broderick ancestors lived, specifically the family of my second great grandmother, Ellen Broderick (nee Phelan).

1900 Letter from Julia Bergin to her sister, Ellen (my ancestor)

The letters were dated between 1900 and 1924. The early letters were between Ellen and her sister, Julia Bergin and later her niece, Mary Phelan.

One of my relatives had kindly already transcribed the handwritten letters to text.

Seeing the handwriting of a relative is especially cool when there are no photos of this generation that exist to my knowledge. If they do, someone in Ireland probably has them! I also can't help but wonder if a descent in Ireland still has the original letters in my second great grandma's handwriting.

This is an interesting period in Irish history: you had WWI and the Irish Civil War, which occurred between 1922 and 1923. Later letters reference the tensions in the country.

Finding Potential Graveyards

It took me a while locate the exact township because the spelling was slightly off. This is where family history research is often like a puzzle - I eventually was able to use a tool that provided a variety of spellings of the word, and the exact township was located!

I was able to confirm the township with census results for Ellen's siblings who still all resided in the same area.

Browse Census Option to Drill to Specific Township on Irish National Archives Website

After locating the township, I checked the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses to see if I could locate Ellen's siblings. I was able to find the census results for one of her brothers, William Phelan and his family. One of William's daughters, Mary was corresponding with Ellen in the 1920s.

1901 Census Information for William Phelan, Ellen's Brother in Srahleagh

To search the 1901 and 1911 Irish census yourself for free, check-out: http://census.nationalarchives.ie/

(For prior years, from 1821 to 1851, there are only a handful of records available for some counties. What happened to these records? A lot were burned during the civil war. Try your luck, though! I have not been able to locate any of my family in the prior census records.)

With the location of my ancestors confirmed, I searched nearby cemeteries for potential matching names. There were not as many photos uploaded and transcribed back in 2015, so I never could exactly find a match. However, I thought we could visit a few potential contenders in the area and hope for the best.

In mid-June 2015, my dad drove all 5 of us in our rented Land Rover through "green roads", stopping at a now abandoned cemetery and one in the town of Kilkenny.

Aughmacart Church

I had one more cemetery on my list that I wanted to check, but sensing the weariness of the group I thought, in the words of Amy from Pitch Perfect, "Better not" (again, 2015).

Two weeks later, I arrived back in the U.S. and happened to look at the cemetery I had planned to next stop. And there were my 3rd great grandparents!

Phelan Gravestone Erected by my Third Great Grandparents, Edward and Margaret Phelan; Knockaroo Church Cemetary, Borris in Ossory, Co. Laois, Ireland

Next time we go to Ireland, now I know.

The Back Story of the Brodericks/Phelans

The story goes that Ellen Phelan left Ireland shortly after marrying John Broderick, who was allegedly her family’s coachmen. (Sounds like the Irish version of the Sybil/Tom story line from Downton Abbey.) They had one child born in Ireland before they left from the port city of Cobh (formerly known as Queenstown, the same port where the Titanic left from) and came to NY.

Cobh (June 2015)

We had a chance to visit Cobh ourselves, spending the night at a B&B in a yellow Victorian home. There we visited a variety of monuments meant to mark the leaving of the more than 1 million Irish people.

Cobh Immigration Statue (June 2015)

The Brodericks arrived in the US in 1879, when Ellen was 26 years old and moved to Troy, NY. Within two years, the family moved to Iowa.

To try to picture what a trip to Iowa from upstate NY would have been like in the 1880s, I started to watch the show, 1883 while on a previous flight. I lasted 10 minutes before I had to turn it off because of the violence. Hopefully my ancestors didn’t experience that rough of a journey.

John and Ellen did stay in Iowa long enough to have their second child before they moved back to Troy. The story goes that they left Iowa after a tornado. I don't blame them!

Upon coming back to NY in 1883, John Broderick worked at Burden Iron Works, which you can visit in south Troy. I have only ever been on the outside, but there is a small museum you can visit when it is open.

Burden Iron Works in south Troy, NY (June 2021)

John continued to work here until 1898. As you can tell from the 1900 census below, John Broderick was no longer alive and Ellen was a widow at 48 years old.

US Federal Census, 1900

Like my other second great grandfather, William Tormey who died from a work accident on the railroad (see Hell’s Kitchen post), John suffered a work injury and succumbed to his wounds on March 15, 1898. The 1900 letter above acknowledges the death.

Ellen lived nearly 30 more years, never leaving the city of Troy. She passed away in 1927, only one year after her granddaughter, my grandmother Dorothy Broderick was born.