The North

Friday, 26 July 2013

Do you want interesting reading or just the facts?  If you want poetic, check out Liz's blog - her poetry and prose have left us speechless (but in stitches), especially when spoken with an Irish accent.  Here, we're just going to give you the facts.

Fact number one:  Ireland is beautiful and green.  There is a reason they call it the Emerald Isle, even in a drought.  People have told us that this summer is the driest and hottest it has been in many years.  We can't tell it, though, because we've felt the humidity.  And it's rained practically every day!  Not all day, but every day.

Aunt Kathy at Dunluce Castle

Fact number two:  Dunluce Castle is still there, we are happy to report.  Nothing else has fallen off into the sea.  Aunt Kathy really enjoyed the history and the antiquity and explored every nook and cranny.  She is going to tell her grandkids that she went to a castle just like the one in the movie "Brave."  Liz, on the other hand, guarded the car because our neighbors in the car next to us had been robbed.  They were gone for about 10-15 minutes, came back, and their daughter's backpack, with her phone, passport, and credit cards, in essence, her life, had been stolen.  She is a reporter for Bloomberg News in London (they were all Americans), and so losing her phone meant that she'd lost all of her contacts.  It was really sad.  The boys climbed down into a cave underneath the castle.  Never mind the sign read "No Entry;" Rich said that that was just "a suggestion."  The cave was used millennium ago by early inhabitants of the region.

Liz at the Giant's Causeway

Fact number three:  The Giant's Causeway was created by an Irish giant named Finn McCool.  We have all bought a book that says so, and we know that books don't lie.  Fact number three.1:  We really liked the Giant's Causeway, even if it WASN'T created by Finn McCool.  The site was crawling with a million people, but we still managed to get pictures without all of them in it.  The boys went on a hike and then we headed back on the bus to Bushmills.  We talked with the bus driver, who is a Harley biker (we gave him a card for the Ride for the Fallen), and he told us about a place where the locals eat in Ballintoy.  

Rich and Reed
We feel sorry for their
mother.  Was she
ever able to get a serious
picture of them?  Then,
again, maybe she didn't
want to!  Would you?
No, really!?!

Fact number four:  Ballintoy is a quaint wee town.  We ate with all the local day trippers in a restaurant down by the harbor.  It was a beautiful place.  We'd passed a wedding at a church down the road, and lo and behold the wedding party showed up to take pictures at the harbor.  The place just felt happy.  The food was good, and we expanded their culinary knowledge by asking for ice cream on the rhubarb and apple crumbles and apple pie.  The waitress said they had never done that before.  

Fact number five:  You cannot drive very fast in Ireland.  So, if the GPS says you will arrive by 6:00pm, add 45 minutes.

Fact number six:  The McKenna Clann International Rally started off with a rousing show.  We registered and then started to mix and mingle.  The musical entertainment was provided by a McKenna family from Clogher who now live in the church where possibly Hugh and Mary were married.  Rich got all their names and contact information, and the mother, Mary McKenna, has said that she will help us in our search.  She's going to talk to their priest about the Catholic records.  We think there were about 75-80 people there, and they came from South America, 

Reed and Liz with Chieftain Maria,
the new Clann McKenna leader

Australia, the U.S., Europe, and, of course, Ireland.  A new chieftain was inaugurated, a woman, and we all had our picture taken with the new clan chieftain - or is that chieftainess?  We think we will be in the next Clann McKenna book - so now we're famous.  Oh, by the way, we were able to accomplish another of our objectives by buying Vol. 1 of the Clann McKenna books.  At the end of the night, everyone joined hands and danced around the room.  It's too bad we don't have a video of that!

Kathy as we normally see her

Fact number seven:  Liz doesn't have a blog.  Sorry.  You are missing out on her poetry and pose, but you really need "to be there" to enjoy it.  And we're not sure that Rich enjoyed it even then.

Thursday 25 July 2013

We started the day with a visit to the Belfast City Cemetery.  Rich had pulled a list of locations of the burial sites of many family members, and it was our goal to locate each and every one.  What we thought would take an hour to an hour and a half turned into a three-hour project.  We started with a visit to the cemetery office where a really nice girl helped us locate the plots on a map.  With photos of the maps on Rich's phone and a spring in our step, we ventured forth.  Finding them wasn't as easy as we thought, though, and thankfully Rich has a VERY cheap data plan so he was able to call back and forth with the office until we located all of the plots.  It probably was annoying the girl in the office a tremendous amount, but she sounded very kind on the phone.  If we had had a box of chocolates, we'd have given it to her as a thank you.  The big find at the cemetery was that there was a headstone on one of the graves!  John and Elizabeth McKenna had placed a headstone for their son, John, who died when he was 25.  They are also buried in that plot, but no one put up a headstone for them.  Something for us to do, right?  By the way, we found no other headstones.  Rich and Reed gathered the GPS coordinates for each of the sites, and we took pictures as well.


We ate lunch in Belfast's oldest pub, White's, and then returned to PRONI for our final mad push.  We worked frantically until they closed.  Reed kept the collection desk busy buying copy cards - they couldn't believe how much we were copying.  I think they liked the business, though, and the folks were so kind.  We all love PRONI, and it was hard to leave.

We made it to Portrush about 10:30, and shortly before 11:00 several of us went to Mr. Chips for fish and chips.  It really hit the spot!  Liz said it was "too late to eat," and Rich said "it's NEVER too late to eat."  Everyone got what they wanted.  

Liz Meets Cousins in England

Liz met with the Dutsons (Phil and Sue) and Sue's sister, Dot.  Just a reminder:  they are our third cousins, twice removed, through Hugh's son, John's daughter, Elizabeth, who married Hugh Armstrong.

She says:
On Wednesday, 17 July, I met Phil, Sue and Dot for lunch in the quaint Cotswold town of Bourton-on-the-Water.  We ate fish and chips in The Village Restaurant.  We hugged all around and had an immediate rapport.  I'll be happy to give personal details on them when we meet (just not online).

They gave me a copy of two photos,  Lizzie McKenna Armstrong, her husband, Hugh, and their 10 living children.  They had 14 altogether.  I learned that several of their children had never married.  Phil gave me a detailed family group sheet.

We talked about our families, and all acknowledged that it was great to find new family.  Phil took a photo of the three cousins, and after two or so hours we parted, committing to staying in touch.  We'll share photos at the family meeting in September.

Pioneer Day

Wednesday, 24 July 2013

While many of our family remembered the pioneers on the 24th of July and celebrated with a holiday, the team here in Ireland spent another full day in PRONI.  In our own way, we celebrated our pioneer ancestors by looking for their loved ones.

The folks at PRONI are getting to know us, and they are super friendly.  Besides the helpful staff, we've met one lady who was raised in Ireland but now lives in England.  For her three-week holiday every year she comes back to Belfast and spends every day in PRONI.  We are wishing that we had that kind of time, too.  There are so many records to look at, so much to do, and so little time!

Maybe we mentioned this before, but we are documenting everything we've done so that people in the future will not repeat searches that have not proven fruitful.  We will be putting all of this information into a spreadsheet that can be searched.  The spreadsheet, in connection with the PRONI "Guide to Church Records," will be very helpful to future researchers - at least we hope it will.

Rich and Aunt Kathy spent Wednesday researching the McKennas in Fintona, and while they found a William McKenna family, there are no records that tie them to Hugh McKenna or Alice Doogan.  We were hoping that William might prove to be their brother.  Reed combed through the records of St. Anne's cathedral for the children of William McKenna and Mary Ritchie and will continue with that effort until he finishes the microfilm, or his eyes pop out of his head, whichever is first.  Liz is researching the Singletons in the Lisburn area, and a lot of effort will be concentrated there on Thursday.  Kathy finished looking through the microfilm for baptisms in the Clogher area, hoping to find Thomas McKenna's birth (no luck), reviewed the film for Newtonsaville just in case there might be anything related to McKennas there (there wasn't), and then kicked in to help Reed with finding the children of James McKenna and Catherine Doyle in the baptismal records of St. Anne's.  Thus far, Kathy has found a couple of William and Mary's children but none of James and Catherine's.

We are finding the nightly conference calls with the home team to be very useful.  Their added insights and encouragement are priceless.  While coordinating the time differences is a challenge, it is well worth the effort, especially because it helps us to stand back and look at the big picture and helps guide in future steps.

Between PRONI and the conference call, we managed to squeeze in a quick meal at Nando's and a black taxi tour.  Liz and Reed knew what we were getting into, but the rest of us thought we were going on a tour to look at the sights of Belfast.  No.  We learned about "the troubles."  Belfast is a city where they paint their feelings on the sides of buildings, and we saw many of the city's famous murals.  Much of the fighting took place on Shankhill Road, which is where the McKennas resided some of the time, and the Peace Wall was built there.  While it is easy now to move between the two neighborhoods, there is still a distinct difference.  Rich added insight to our tour by pointing out where the McKennas lived.  Very cool.

It's back to PRONI on Thursday for a long day.  It doesn't close until 8:45pm, and so we are going to take advantage of the extra hours.  It's good to remember that when planning for the future.




Sent from my iPad

First Day at PRONI

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

So many things to report!

1. First of all - we are exhausted!  Yesterday, we were tired when we were in PRONI (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland) looking at records, but we were there for only 3-4 hours.  Today, we were there just after it opened and left when it closed.  They are good at kicking us out!  We looked through hundreds of records, which is a great sleep aid.  But we take breaks to shake sleep off and then we're back at it.

Amidst the disappointment of NOT finding things, we feel that we can celebrate a couple of finds:
   a.  Aunt Kathy found the baptismal record of Eleanor (Ellen) Singleton to Robert and Eleanor (Ellen) Singleton in 1830 in Tandragee.
   b.  Liz found a birth record of a Bob (Robert) Singleton in Mullabrack in 1810.  We think that this might be our Robert Singleton; the date is about right.  More checking to come.

2.  To catch you up on what happened on Monday:  Before we left Armagh, we visited St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, the Church of Ireland one.  It is the center of the Church of Ireland for all of Ireland, pretty cool, eh?  In the cathedral, we saw the name of our cousin, John Ward Armstrong, listed on the same wall as St. Patrick himself.  Patrick was the first bishop of Ireland in 432; John Ward Armstrong came along much laster.  It is the same office, although they now call the head of the church the Archbishop and Primate.

After leaving Armagh, we headed to Loughbrickland Lake, the site of the first LDS baptism in Ireland in 1840.  Beautiful swans floated across the lake but the water close to the shore was covered with lily pads.  If anyone wanted to get baptized there now, they'd want to wade out quite a ways to avoid coming up covered up with green leaves.

Our next search took us to the small town of Ballyskeagh.  It really WAS a search, but Rich's and Reed's GPS skills won out.  In Ballyskeagh, Rich showed us the bridge where two young Irish "home missionaries" around the age of 16 stood up to a mob in the rest of 1850s.  Thomas Lonsdale Allen was one of the missionaries; Brother Scott was the other.  They are two of Rich's heroes, and now ours as well.

Then, it was on our way to Belfast to check into our hotel and head to PRONI. Want to know something interesting?  Our hotel, the Ibis Hotel, is located on King Street.  John McKenna, one of Hugh's sons, had a shop on 70 King Street.  We think we know where his shop was - it now houses a bookie shop!  Liz didn't realize when she was booking our hotel how handy it is to Albert Street (where Hugh lived), Christ Church (where they attended church), Sandy Row - which leads to the last thing we did on Monday (other than have the conference call with the Home Team).

After dinner at Robinson's Restaurant (did you know bacon steaks in Ireland are the same as pork chops in the U.S.?), we took a short walk south to Hope Street, over to Sandy Row, and south on Sandy Row to the ruins of the Belfast and Ulster Brewery Company where Hugh worked as a bottler and a packer.  Right around the corner (where the graffiti says to "Stay Out of Sandy Row") was Boyne Street where Hugh lived as well.  We hiked a short distance north to Albert Street to the site of Hugh's homes, had pictures taken by an ex-con (he told us he'd spent 18 years in jail, but he'd been brought up proper), headed over to Galway and Killen Streets, and then back to the hotel.  From Christ Church to the hotel - less than 5 minutes.  John McKenna set up shop not far from his home on Albert Street.

So, there you are - all caught up!  Well, mostly.  Tomorrow, Liz will share her experience meeting the Dutsons and Dot in England.  They are our third cousins, twice removed, and Liz reports they are wonderful!

Landing Day

Monday, 21 July 2013

Our trip thus far has been filled with small miracles.  We know that prayers are being said and answered, and we appreciate all of our family - we can feel your support.

On Saturday, we left Salt Lake a little over an hour late because of mechanical problems.  With just 90 minutes scheduled between flights at JFK, we were very worried about making the connection.  What are the odds, though, that we would land at Gate 67 and depart from Gate 68?  We got off the plane, and immediately boarded the next one.  Small miracle.

Sunday was exhausting but absolutely amazing.  Rich said that if we wrote everything we did, you wouldn't believe us.  It was incredible.  Here are a few highlights:

1.  We went to church - twice.  The first meeting was at a Catholic service in Newry where John Taylor preached the gospel in 1840.  The second meeting was in Mullabrack at a Church of Ireland low church meeting, a lot less pomp.  Mullabrack was where Robert Singleton lived, and we talked to someone at church who was a Singleton.  Lewis, that's his name, is going to talk to his aunt, and we will be going back to talk to her.  We also talked to the rector ( who gave an excellent sermon, by the way), and he showed us their records.  We can go back anytime, and he will let such spend as much time as we need to look at the tecords.  We did take some pictures of some Singleton entries in a book from the late 1700s.  Small miracles.

Interior of St. John's Parish Church in Mullaghbrack

2.  We met Colin and Rosaleen Kerr at church as well, and Colin invited us to look at a map he had of the area at his home, named Mullabrack House because it was built in the 1820s as the rectory church.  There us only one word to describe it- wow!  The map was cool.  But what was so incredible was that they took us on a tour of their home.  There is a basement, into which we just peeked; a main floor with a drawing room, a living room, a dining room, a HUGE kitchen, and various other rooms; a second floor with four large bedrooms, all with dressing rooms attached; and a third floor with six bedrooms - where the servants lived and where the nursery was located, back in the day.  New friends.  Another small miracle.

Mullaghbrack House - the Rectory House built in 1820

View from Robert Singleton home in Mullurg

3.  Robert Singleton's property on Mullurg Road is now owned by William Hale, whom we met after he noticed us taking pictures of his property.  We did ring the bell first!  But when he didn't answer, we figured they were "on holiday."  When all was said and done, William was another friend, and said we could come back anytime.  Small miracle that he wasn't an angry landowner kicking us off his property!  What we've had reinforced is the great value we get from being here and putting everything into perspective. This is an aerial photo of the land taken in 1968. The Hale family has owned the original Singleton's 6-acre piece since 1970 and has added the surrounding acreage into their farm.

Aerial view from 1968

Our third research trip to Ireland is about to begin. The team of five will set out July 20th and return the 30th. Members of the team going to Ireland are Liz Allred, Kathy Chipman McKenna, Rich McKenna, Reed McKenna, and Kathy McConkie. Preparations have been in the works since the last team returned in June 2011. Records from the previous trip have been scanned. Names and vital information have been extracted. We stepped up with more intensive and specific preparation and training during the early months of this year. Our understanding of Hugh McKenna's life in County Tyrone, before moving to Belfast, has been expanded. Our most important goal for the trip is to identify his direct-line ancestors (parents, grand-parents, etc.). We believe that this is the trip to make the breakthrough. Secondarily, we will also identify as many of his family members as possible, including siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. We will join in the Clann McKenna Twelfth International Rally in County Monaghan and make contacts with extended family. We hope to share our web site with them. This Rally is part of The Gathering happening all over Ireland. We will also investigate getting headstone(s) on some of our family's unmarked graves in Belfast cemeteries. We will post to this blog daily on our trip. We are excited to be on our way.