Grammy's Pictures: (26) Gift of the Magi

One of the earliest paintings, the Gift of the Magi is a watercolor signed M Geraghty and dated 6/11/1914.  It is 18 x 24 in frame.  This picture's last know location was with Jason Young  (1975-2008).

Grammy's Pictures: (25) Repair and Weaver

Grammy painted many of the native americans that she saw in Arizona.  They are some of my favorites.  I don't know who owns these two.

Grammy's Pictures: (24) Bronco Bucker

The Bronco Bucker was shown in Tubac and had a price of $100.  It is owned by Tom Cajacob.

Grammy's Pictures: (23)Sunflowers

This small 9 x 12 painting is   owned by Kristen Cajacob.

Grammy included the following note on the back:

SUNFLOWERS

Original painted by Claude Oscar Monet in 1881.  He was the chief painter of the impressionist movement.  His impressionist technique gives the sunflowers a living, naturalistic effect. Monet loved and painted flowers thru his life.

Grammy's Pictures: (22) The Columbia River

This painting was a wedding present to Greg and me.  It is hanging in my basement.  Some years ago we swapped out the frame for a natural wood one.  The result is striking against the dark paneled walls.

Grammy's Pictures (21) Gig Harbor

Mother painted several pictures of Gig Harbor, though she was never able to visit our home there.  Her inspiration came from our letters and from the photographs we sent. This one of fishing boats was done, I believe, for Colleen.  it hangs now in the office room Tim has dedicated to his father's memorabilia.

Grammy's Pictures (20) Desert Flora

This Painting was signed by Grammy on 7 Nov 1958.  It is in the home of Tim Madden framed it is 30 by 24, the painting itself is 27 by 21.  There are notes on the back detailing the plants.

Derrycoosh Revisited

In 1937 Patrick Walsh of Derrycoosh wrote about the district he lived in, part of the national schools project that is found on Duchas.ie.  He noted that there were thirty-five houses with a population of one hundred and sixty eight.

I've read many of the student essays on the website, this is perhaps the best description of an area that I've encountered.


Pictures of the Walsh family farm in Derrycoosh 2017.

Derrycoosh is in Islandeady Parish.  In 1841 there were 8463 (4323m, 4140f) residents in the parish.  In 1851 the number had shrunk to 4698 (2281m, 2417f).  The number of families shrank from 1532 to 901.



In 1841 68.6% lived in 4th class housing, In 1851 only 16.5% were still in 4th class housing.  Heads of households in agriculture went from 77.9% to 72.3%.  Literacy made little change 16.1% of males in 1841 only increased to 19.6%.  For females the numbers were 2.2% and 4.9%.

Islandeady was the parish of not only our Walsh family in Derrycoosh, but also the Geraghty family in Carrownaclea.  Both immediate families seem to have survived the great famine.  They emigrated with the famine of the 1880s.

Derrycoosh - Patrick Walsh 1937

Statistics from the Irish Famine Project led by Alan Fernihough of Queen's University Belfast

Grammy's Pictures (19) The Blue Vase

This small picture belongs to Jessica

Grammy's Pictures (18) Kylemore Abbey

A whole family trip to Kylemore Abbey through the hills with beauty to break the heart -- lambs, rivers, green rolling hills, rock out-croppings, waterfalls, still pools, red and blue bummed sheep strutting companionably along narrow roads, a Celtic music tape a haunting background to it all.  

 Jean English Madden, My Ireland Trip Journal 17 Jul 1999

Grammy's Pictures (17) The Catalina Mountains

While many of her paintings were copies of other artists work, the desert paintings were her own.

Gullane

East Gullane - 2017

Gullane is located in Kilconly Parish.
 In 1841 there were 2210 residents in the parish.  In 1851 there were 1521.  Of those 728 were male and 793 were female.  There were 247 families with 37 % in 4th class houses.  There had been 370 families in 1841 with 55.7% in 4th class houses. In 1841 85% of heads of household were in agriculture.





  By 1851 the number had dwindled to 66.7%.  In 1841 only 16.1% of the male population were literate and 5.2% of females.  Those numbers increased to 40.3% for males and 14.4% for females in 1851.



 

Edmund English didn't emigrate until 1880, but some of his extended family members left much earlier.  His uncle, Jeremiah Lawler was in Minnesota by 1850 and many of his family as well as many neighbors from Kilconly Parish soon joined him.  Among those Edmund would have found when he stopped in Rochester were the Scanlons, the O'Connors, the McElligots, the Mulvihills, as well as numerous Lawler and English cousins.



Statistics from the Irish Famine Project led by Alan Fernihough of Queen's University Belfast

Happy Easter

Over the years Mom made a lot of cute stuffed animals and dolls as well.  Maura sent off a picture of her bunnies sitting on the porch today.  Their litter mates have been sitting in my library window waving at the kids getting their exercise in this shelter in place world.

Denise added that Mariah also had one of the litter.

They probably predate the rest of the grandkids except Eric, and he perhaps was too old or too young or too male?

Grammy's Art (16) The Dolls

Mary's Doll

Over the years Grammy made dolls for her many granddaughters.  Each came with its unique personality and all were well loved.

 The summer I turned ten was spent in Minnesota with grandparents.  One day as all of the cousins were together a discussion began of what dolls Grammy had made for each cousin.  Maura had Raggedy Ann and Andy, and I think that Jan and Cathy might have had the same, some had Jack and Jill as did Colleen who was home in California.

Maura's Raggedy Ann (Andy fell apart years ago) and
others that found their way to her house.

As I sat silent, Grammy turned and asked what doll she had sent for me.  When I replied I didn't have one, she looked surprised then a bit sad. 

Later that fall I got a surprise box in the mail, in it was a wonderful grown up doll with a complete wardrobe.  Well worth the wait.

That doll not only spent many a day with me, but has provided hours of entertainment to grand kids.  They loved to change her clothes, or direct their Grammy to change her clothes as they found it hard to work the tiny buttons and ties.

She has withstood the more than fifty ensuing years well and now waits for the first great-granddaughter to give her a new home.

Mom's Garden

It is day four of "shelter in place".... a day used to listen to Bach (it might be his birthday), cap my week with a step average of 15,000 a day and finish a quilt I have been envisioning for a few years, just in time for National Quilt Day!

It started as a hanging for mom a lot of years ago.  Finding its way back to me, it hung in the basement sewing room for a number of years....until recently I looked at it and decided it needed a quilt around it!

For those of you who knew my Mom in her last ten or so years, you will know that she always wore rather shapeless longish dresses that she would dress up with great vests and other embellishments.  When I made this hanging, however, that was not the case.  I liked to flatter myself that she liked the hanging so much she dressed like it!  I know, that wasn't the case...but!

Many of my favorite memories of Mom involve a garden.  I still see her in an orange sun dress (also shapeless) barefooted, weeding in the garden as I arrived home from school in the sixties.  Later, after she moved from Fair Oaks to Gig Harbor, WA her garden became a work of art, and she spent most of her days out tickling the earth, this time in rather shapeless overalls.  It became her comfort and respite as Dad fell further into the depths of Alzheimers.

I could try to describe her gardens, but then Mom could do it better.  The Garden is her tribute to her own garden, Mom's Garden includes the newspaper's tribute and her application to become a Backyard Wildlife Habitat complete with maps and plant listings.

Gardening continued after leaving Gig Harbor, her summer home in Roy and her winter home in Sacramento both benefited by her time in the outdoors.  So this quilt is a tribute to her

Mom's Garden
The Finished Quilt - 21 Mar 2020

And a treat....after I first posted this Maura sent me pictures of a couple of her paintings of Mom's Garden.

Be sure to check out Maura Madden Donovan Watercolors  for other paintings by my mega talented sister.

The Big Wind (Oiche na Gaoithe Moire)

A few years ago I read Beatrice Coogan's, The Big Wind: A Novel of Great Famine . Since then I have seen many references to the Big Wind of 1839, which was considered the worst storm in Ireland for at least 300 years.  So many of our ancestral families were in Ireland at that time. Did they huddle in the corners of their dwellings?  Did those dwellings survive?' I don't know that we can ever find the answers, but I would imagine that they never forgot the day for as long as they lived.....

The wind came on 6 Jan 1839. The day before snow had fallen throughout the country.
The morning brought a dense grey cloud cover, and with the stillness of the air the
weather became unseasonably warm. By three in the afternoon the unnatural stillness
was noted. By nine the temperature had dropped and the winds had grown to near gale
force........ The story is best told by the papers of the day.....

Freedman's Journal 8 Jan 1839 pg 2

Connaght Telegraph 9 Jan 1839 pg 3

The article goes on to note that it was the streets where the "humbler" class lived that were the hardest hit. "Some houses are wholly unroofed -- others mere shells-- and the greater number of those not rendered completely uninhabitable are propped up by temporary expedients. We have spoken with some of the sufferers, and they tell a melancholy tale, attributing to the mercy of Providence alone, that they and their families still live -- and declaring that while they live they never can forget the terrors of that night."

Less than 10 km away in Derrycoosh was the home of the Walsh family. John (our great great grandfather) probably had little memory of the event as he was still a baby, but his parents Patrick and Mary must have felt some of that terror. 

And some 20 km closer to the ocean, in Carrownaclea Judy Ludden was over eight month's pregnant with her first child.  Did their home survive the hurricane?

Patrick and Mary Burke in Teevnish East, nearby were most likely newly wed, or perhaps still planning their marriage.  There oldest known child Bridget was born the next year.   

Ruins of Ballybunion Castle - July 1999 (GCT)

The Kerry Evening Post (9 Jan 1839) reported " A Listowel Correspondent who writes at  considerable length informs us that the effects of the storm in that town were very disastrous. The first house visited by the storm was that of Mr McEniry's, the roof was blown in and the inmates were only saved from instant death by the rafters, which formed themselves into an arch over Mr McEniry's bed, where he and two children were sleeping... In the country around Listowel, the corn and have have been scattered to the winds. That monument of antiquity, Ballybunion Castle is a heap of Ruins..."

Listowel is about 19 kilometers and Ballybunion just 10 km from East Gullane where Edmund English was in his teens and Mary Lawler just over twenty.  Did they talk about the Big Wind as they aged? 

The Taum Herald on 19 Jan pg 4, described damages throughout the country, including

Askeaton, near the home of 10 year old Anna Fitzsimmons and Limerick where we believe James Madden just twenty was living in 1839.

It mentioned the winds whipping through Roscommon Town near the homes of Luke Delmore and Margaret Somers both in their early twenties.  Did they bring their stories of the Big Wind to their new home in Wisconsin nine years later?

Accounts in Tipperary told of fires in Thurles as thatched roofs blew off.  Just thirty miles away in Mocklershill, was three year old Bridget Dunn terrified?  Was there much damage to the Dunn household where Bridget (Lonergan) already the mother of six was once again pregnant.  John and Bridget left Ireland with their growing family just a few years later. Reports in the years following  the Big Wind, suggest that the area struggled with famine for some time.

So often I wish I could travel back in time and talk to our ancestors about so many things! 

• The Big Wind - Atlas Obscura
• The Big Wind - Irish Culture and Customs .com
• The Big Wind - Dropbox 
• Carr, Peter (1993). The Night of the Big Wind. Belfast: White Row Press. ISBN 1-870132-50-5.
• Vol. VIII of the South Mayo Family Research Journal, published in 1995