Katony

Tea and cake

Kathleen and Paddy sat in her sitting room overlooking Corkagh Park drinking tea and enjoying Thunder’s fruit cake. As sister and brother they were reminiscing the events of their youth.  They were saddened that the early deaths of their father and grandfather at the young age of 38 and 37 meant that they did not have that familiarity with their father’s family and knew little of their grandfather’s family.  They regretted that while they knew some details of their grandfather they did not know if he was an only child or if he had brothers or sisters or other details of his life and family. At the time Kathleen was 92 years old.

When I visited Kathleen later that day, she recounted the conversation and prompted me to return to researching her family, something I had started some years before and had followed occasionally over a few years.  The research had started with the release of census records by the National Archive of Ireland in 2007 and continued through a variety of other sources over the following decade. The archival material was supported by Kathleen’s detailed memories of her childhood and youth.

A Decade of Centenaries

Ireland is marking a ‘decade of centenaries’ at present. The centenaries being commemorated include the “…Ulster Covenant, the foundation of the Irish Volunteers, the Home Rule and Land Bills, the 1913 Lockout, the 1916 Rising and many anniversaries relating to World War One, including the Gallipoli landings, the Somme offensive and the battle of Messines Ridge, the suffrage movement, the first sitting of the Dáil and the Struggle for Independence. There are themes around the Literary Revival, the role of women, the struggle for workers’ rights along with many other key events and themes of the period…” (Decade Of Centenaries)

In the midst of that original decade Kathleen Cleary and her husband Tony O’Neill were born in 1921. Kathleen on 4 September in Dublin city and Tony on 13 March in Blackrock, Co Dublin. In this year 2021, we are marking the centenary of the birth of both Kathleen and Tony.

Whose story?

Following a recent dispute in the British Royal family, with respect to differing versions of events, Queen Elizabeth is reported to have said “…recollections may vary…”. She was perhaps pointing to the difficulty of any version of events being ‘true’. The accounts on these pages are written based on memory and stories told over the years and on research in public records. These events may be remembered differently by others, including my siblings, cousins and friends. I offer this as a versions of events, it is likely that there are many other versions; other peoples memories; other people’s stories.

Family Trees

While publishing these blogs I will build the family tree on ancestry.co.uk which is a pay service and on familysearch.org which is a free service but you need to register.