(Note: Multiple updates have occurred since
this was originally written in 2011. Refer
especially to Sue’s extraordinary and extensive
research on the Sheehan Family)
this was originally written in 2011. Refer
especially to Sue’s extraordinary and extensive
research on the Sheehan Family)
_____________________________
Noun; from the Greek: nostos (νόστος)
meaning to return home, and also from
the Greek; algos, (άλγος) and Latin;
algia, meaning pain or longing.
___________________________________
In 1908 the twenty-two year old John Joseph
Sheehan said his final goodbye to his family
in Killarney, Ireland stepped aboard the RMS
Lusitania and immigrated to America in search
of a new life.
In 1958 the seventy-two year old John Joseph
(Grandpa) Sheehan returned to Ireland to visit
the home and family that he had left behind 50
years before.
In 1965 Mary Sheehan Coleman followed her
father John back to Ireland. Her trip and her
stories of her father and mother, their families,
and life on the old family farms are lovingly
remembered in her wonderful memoir “The
Long Road From Over There To Over Here”.
In 1995, using her memoir as a guide, we in
turn followed Mary back to Ireland. We found
Seamus O’Shea who had guided Mary through
the countryside, and he again guided yet another
generation of the Sheehan clan back through the
many intervening years to the old family farm.
On the occasion of Dad’s 100thBirthday I
thought it appropriate to finally “get a move on”,
“not let any more grass grow under my feet”
and share what I think we’ve learned about the
Sheehan Family of Ireland.
I hope that this is merely another chapter of what
to come, of the Sheehan Family returning to the
place that our Great, Great Grandfather called ‘Gib’.
July, 1995
Stepping out onto the street that first morning in Dublin, Cathy and Aaron both asked if I had remembered to take along our copy of “The Long Road From Over There To Over Here”; Aunt Mary’s wonderful remembrances of her family and her trip to Ireland. I assured them that I did indeed have the document in my pocket, but I also suggested that as much as we wanted to embark on our genealogical quest, since it was such a beautiful morning perhaps we should take a little time to see at least some of Dublin before we sequestered ourselves in a government office pouring over long forgotten records. So, headed toward Trinity College to see the ancient Book of Kells, we rounded the second corner and ran right into the National Genealogical Center. We had no choice. We had to go inside.
They were very nice. For $50 the man gave us a little folder, a smile, and a list of places to go for further information. After suggesting that the fee paid was perhaps a wee greater value than a smile and a piece of paper, and after a little prompting, he put his hand on my shoulder and noted with a wink that a good first step would be the Registrars Office which was just a few blocks away. He ushered us hurriedly out the door seemingly eager for us to reconnect with our past, or perhaps simply eager to return to his tea.
At the Registrar’s Office we decided to look for Grandpa Sheehan’s birth certificate first. Knowing that he was born in 1886 and that he was from Killarney, this would be very simple and very fast.
The indexes to the birth certificate records, as it turns out, are in huge volumes about the size and weight of gravestones and the names are listed by year of birth (very simple). However the listings are not catalogued by area or county, they are just a big list of everyone in the entire country that was born that year (not so simple)! The indexes list the name of the newborn, the date of birth, the names of the parents, and the local name for the area in which the child was born (ie: Carrignafeela, or Ballybunion) with no reference to a district (Killarney) or county (Kerry). The key to these documents apparently is in knowing the local names for the areas for which you are searching and hopefully the parish name so that you are at least checking in the right end of the country. We of course knew neither. However knowing from Aunt Mary’s writings that Grandpa Sheehan’s (John’s) parents were named Jeremiah and Hannah, and that they were from Killarney, we decided that this was still a simple task, after all how many John Sheehans could possibly be born to parents with these names in 1886?
Well, apparently there were only six boy’s names in all of Ireland in the 1880’s; John, Michael, Patrick, William, Diarmuid (Jeremiah), and perhaps one other, and while this makes naming a child a relatively simple choice, the sheer volume of boys named John born in 1886 is overwhelming! Also, there were about 13 different ways to spell Sheehan, Sheahan, Sheean, Sheahan, Sheenan, Sheehen, Sheenan, Sheehin, Sheen and about every third newborn in the county was using one variation or another, most of them had a father named Jeremiah, and apparently 1886 was the designated year for all women named Hannah, Hanna, Hana, Johanna, Honora, or Hanora, to give birth to a boy named John!
Now the process by which you search these huge volumes of names and dates is that you troll through the listings until you come upon a name that you think you are looking for. You fill out a form and give it and two dollars to a clerk who disappears for twenty minutes and comes back with a photostat of the pertinent portion of the actual records which invariably indicates that the particular person you think you have found, although he has the same name, was born at least 200 miles away from the person for whom you are searching. It took us no more than twenty dollars to figure out that maybe getting a map that indicates the names of the townslands, civil parishes, and their location by county might be a worthwhile investment.
So, armed with our parish map as a cross reference to the names, we eventually discovered that noJohn Sheehan was born to a Jeremiah and Hannah Sheehan in all of the District of Killarney in 1886. So, we figured that Aunt Mary was probably off by a year. We would search 1885 and 1887.
We eventually searched ten years of records and finally came to the conclusion that all of this was just an elaborate scheme by the Irish Magistrate’s Office designed to entertain gullible American tourists and lure them into singlehandedly providing a major portion of the Irish economy, two dollars at a time!
Nonetheless we decided to make one last review of 1886, this time cross referencing only the name John Sheehan to the parishes in the District of Killarney in the County Kerry without reference to the name of either parent.
There was one name.
But there were two problems. One; the mother’s name was Mary, not Hannah, and two; the place of birth was listed as Mauly Kivane, a name not on our parish map for Killarney or the County Kerry. Having invested a small fortune in the search already, and realizing that it was now five minutes till five and the Registrar’s offices were about to close, I decided to gamble on one more search. As one clerk disappeared with my money I asked another clerk if he knew where the parish of Mauly Kivane was. He explained that the name was certainly not a parish, it was less than a parish, smaller than a town, it was not even a village, it would be much smaller, perhaps a cluster of houses, maybe not even that big. He said that “Mauly” in Irish means a small rise or hill and that “Mauly Kivane” was a small hill in the middle of a large bog. He pulled out a huge geographical volume and looked up the name. Maulykeavane was a townland about seven miles northeast of the town of Killarney.
Knowing that we could spend at least the next three weeks in this office searching volume after volume, or we could see the rest of the country, we continued on our journey south.
We stayed one night at a B&B near Cashel, (The Rock of Cashel is an ancient stone fort that legend associates with St. Patrick) and the couple that owned this converted castle suggested that we try going to the town of Mallow where they were beginning the process of consolidating and digitizing census and emigration records for all of Ireland. We drove to Mallow the next day to find that they were indeed just beginning the process of computerizing their records, but they were beginning at the other end of the country. So after a brief stop to pay homage to one of Ireland’s national treasures by hanging upside down from the top of a crumbling stone parapet of an ancient castle to kiss the Blarney Stone, we continued on to Cohb, formerly Queenstown, just across the harbor from Cork.
It was from here in 1908, according to Aunt Mary, that the 22 year old John Joseph (Grandpa) Sheehan had said his final goodbye to his family and boarded the RMS Lusitania in search of a new life. The old railway station here has been converted to a fascinating emigration museum, filled with heart rending stories of the hundreds of thousands of people who died of malnutrition and disease from 1845 to 1851 and the million plus who emigrated in those years in search of a better life. But again, there were no records. So we continued on to Killarney.
Mary had told us that Shamus O’Shea owned a pub in Killarney and she also provided a phone number for Shamus; her intrepid guide in 1965 to the Sheehan Family farm and to the O’Meara home in the McGillycuddy Mountains. Not knowing whether Shamus would still be there - after all it was now 30 years later - we decided to call anyway. An old voice with a charming Irish accent answered the phone and told me, very sympathetically but emphatically, that he had no idea who Shamus was, that there was certainly no one at this number by that name, that he had never heard of Aunt Mary, and although he agreed that there were many Sheehans and O’Sheas in the area, he had no idea what I was talking about!
I got pretty much the same response from every bar, pub, lounge, restaurant and watering hole, up and down the main street through the entire city of Killarney, to the point where toward the end of the day, as they waited for me on the sidewalk outside, Cathy and Aaron took to laughing hysterically each time I once again came out of a bar with a glazed look on my face.
Very late in the day, long after I’d become quite immune to the “What are you some kind of nut?!” look from an assortment of bartenders across the city, we saw a sign for ‘Jack C’s Public House, Spirits and Tobacco – Seamus O’Shea, proprietor’. At Aaron’s bemused urging I reluctantly went inside and went up to the woman behind the counter and said ”I don’t know if I’m in the right place, and you’ll probably think I’m nuts, but I’ve got this story to tell you, and I need to know if it makes any sense to you.” So I launched into my story about my Aunt Mary who had come to Ireland many years ago, blah, blah, blah, and had been taken on a donkey ride to the Gap of Dunloe by this guy named Shamus O’Shea, blah, blah, blah, and I’m thinking that this poor woman probably hears this same story from 800 people every year, and is thinking “Another American tourist who thinks that everyone he meets is his long lost relative,” and all of a sudden her face lights up. “Yes! That was Seamus!” she said. “I haven’t heard him tell that story for years! I’m Ellen. Seamus is my husband and this is our daughter, Brigitte.”
As it turned out Seamus had left for the day and would not be back until later that night. We had planned on being in the town of Dingle that night (about 75 km away), but we decided that we had to meet Seamus, so we left our copy of Mary’s story with Ellen and decided that we would drive to the tip of the Dingle Peninsula that night and come back again the next morning to meet with Seamus. As we were leaving the pub Ellen smiled, put her hand over mine on the top of the bar, and confided in a soft voice “I should have known you were a Sheehan when you walked in the door, you have the Sheehan hair!” I’m not exactly sure what she meant by that, and I wasn’t entirely sure it was a compliment, but then she added with a warm smile and a nod of approval, “And the eyes. You have the Sheehan eyes!”
We walked into Seamus O’Shea’s pub at 10:00 the next morning. All the locals were already on their second Guinness by then and as soon as I walked in I knew the man I was looking for. Gray haired (Sheehan haired?) with a ruddy complexion and a quick smile, Seamus must be 6’5” if he’s an inch and he must weigh 300 pounds.
We talked for a long time. He told us how he loved reading Aunt Mary’s story; he talked about his family and our family, and the Sheehans and the O’Sheas, and the brothers and the sisters. We showed them our family tree and Brigitte showed us theirs. We showed him our copy of Grandpa’s birth certificate and he smiled and said “Mauly Kivane. Yes, this is the place your great, great grandfather called “Gib”. Would you like to see it?”
We drove out of town heading north, turning off the main road to follow very old and very narrow roads through the hillside. We made one stop on the way. A sharp left turn took us up to the top of a hill to an old church. On the far side overlooking the valley was a grave yard (the Old Kilcummin Cemetery) and the family plot. The grass was very high, some of the stones had fallen over, some were half covered in lichen and overgrowth. Seamus apologized. The stone church had been closed for many years. The family that had cared for the plot were old now and could no longer keep their promise of upkeep. As we walked we came upon a stone marker, larger than most, chiseled with the Sheehan name. It was, I think, the stone that Aunt Mary describes in her story. “These are your people”, Seamus said, pointing to the tall, thin grave stone and gesturing to the gravestones beyond. “This is your family”. As I looked down the rows, stone after stone held the Sheehan name; Patrick, Ellen, John, Jeremiah, Julia, William, and on and on.
We didn’t linger long. Seamus had only a few hours to spend with us, and Cathy and Aaron who had been riding in the back seat had taken copious notes of each turn in the road. We would come back.
We continued on, driving perhaps another few miles. The road rolled gently over the bogs, and lush green fields rolled gently away for miles on both sides. Seamus looked to the left and pointed across the fields. “Do you see that hill? That’s Mauley Kivane. That’s Gib.” A complex of small buildings stood on the top of a slight hill surrounded by trees, like a welcoming island rising of out of the vast sea of bogs and fields. As I stood there gazing out over the fields, for a moment I was speechless. All I could think was that I wished that Dad was here. Although I knew this was a place he had never been, a place he had never seen, I felt that somehow a part of him was here.
It’s interesting the incongruous thoughts that flood your mind in less than an instant. I suddenly remembered many conversations with Dad, arguments really about politics, the war in Vietnam, flag burning, long hair, and just as suddenly I remembered a line from a favorite poet, Rumi, a 13thcentury Persian:
“Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”
This, I thought, is that place.
Seamus was uncomfortable with my suggestion that we stop at the house and introduce ourselves. “They are very old now, and don’t receive guests well” he said “It’s been many years, I don’t know that they’d remember who I am.” So we drove on.
Back at Seamus’ Pub, we thanked Seamus, said goodbye to Ellen, Brigitte gave us a copy of her family tree, and as we prepared to walk out the door one of the men at the bar came up to me. He was maybe 70 years old with a worn cap and a weathered smile, and he said “You know you have lots of family here. The O’Sheas are not your only relatives in Killarney”. We wanted to stay. Hear his stories. Be enveloped by the warmth of this place. But knowing that we were now more than two days behind our schedule, and thinking as you do when you are young, that you will come this way again, we thanked everyone profusely and continued on our journey.
We toured the rest of Ireland; driving the Ring of Kerry, then up across the Shannon River, heading north to Galway, whispering with the sheep along the coast, dancing hand in hand around ancient stone cairns in the magnificent desolation of the Burren, lying down briefly with ghosts and banshees on millennium old stone slabs propped up against the sky in Connemara, stumbling our way through the distilleries of Northern Ireland, and eventually back to Dublin.
We found Sheehan’s Bar close to where Mary said it was, just off Grafton Street. We sat down for a beer and as I looked up at our waiter I almost fell off my chair. Maybe 25 years old, dark wavy hair, blue eyes, and a Roman nose, he was the spitting image of pictures of Dad when he was young. He introduced himself and after hearing our story he told us that this had been his Great Grandfather’s pub and that his real name was Diarmuid (Irish for Jeremiah), but that there were so many Jeremiahs in the family, everyone just called him Paul!
We ended up back where we had started; the registrar’s office in Dublin where we shuffled through the pages of peoples lives for many long hours. We had answered many of the questions that we had come here with, and now had more by a hundred fold. We hurried back to the archives in search of a few more answers and arrived just in time for closing.
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So the following is what we know, or at least what we think we know about the Sheehans of Ireland… unless of course we don’t. Some detail is more speculation than fact, some is clearly conflicting. It is a very long string tied together with many knots.
I would certainly defer to Aunt Mary in all matters, after all Mary’s visit to Ireland was guided by a lifetime of love and stories from her father and was also thirty years closer to the truth than ours.
Maulykeavane is a townland in the Poor Law Union of Kilcummin in the District of Killarney, County Kerry. It is an area of 522 acres (less than one square mile). On this land 11 houses are clustered together along the top of the small hill, the rest of the acreage is farm land or bog. On this small plot of land the 1901 census indicates there were 6 Jeremiahs, 6 Johns, 7 Michaels, 3 Patricks, 7 Julias, 5 Ellens a few Margarets and Kates and a couple of Hannahs; 11 families, 67 people in all, all of them related, and that is after many of the children had grown up, married, and moved perhaps to some other nearby farm. Generations of families lived and died here, so a reference to a Jeremiah Sheehan from Maulykeavane could reference any number of people from many different families, and multiple generations. Obviously the process of trying to sort through the names and places gets even messier as you broaden the search to a parish (Kilcummin) or a county (Kerry). So from here things begin to get a little sketchy but bear with me.
We unfortunately did not visit the Gap of Dunloe and so have nothing to add to Aunt Mary’s remembrance of her mother’s home.
- The birth certificate that we obtained in Dublin states that John Sheehan was born May 19, 1886 at Mauley Kivane, to Jeremiah Sheehan and Mary Sheehan (nee Donoghue) in the District (Civil Parish) of Coom, (Catholic parish of Rathmore), District of Killarney, County Kerry. This confirms the date (at least the year) given by Aunt Mary. Everything that follows is predicated on this document. If this date or documentation is incorrect, everything that follows falls apart.
- The location of Mauley Kivane was dangled tantalizingly by the clerk in the registrar’s office in Dublin and later confirmed by Seamus in Killarney.
- However the name of our great grandmother on John’s birth certificate is indicated as ‘Mary’ on the document and, although confirmed by Seamus and by Brigitte’s Family Tree, it is in direct conflict with Aunt Mary’s remembrance that John’s mother was named Hannah. One would think that Mary would have remembered the name well if she, her Mother, and her Grandmother shared the same name. We however found no birth registration records for a child named John born to a Jeremiah and Hannah Sheehan in any parish in all of Killarney in 1886. The 1901 and 1911 Irish Census records would also seem to confirm the name of Mary as Jeremiah’s wife. (see notes regarding Jeremiah and Hannah)
- Seamus confirmed that the children of Jeremiah and Mary were born 20 years apart, and remembers that his mother Ellen, who was grandpa’s sister (Aunt Mary called her by her nick-name “Nellie”), who was born in 1899 and was the youngest child, never knew some of her brothers and sisters.
- We searched 15 years of records (1865 - 1880) and finally found reference to what may (or may not) be the marriage certificate for John’s parents. The marriage certificate notation indicates that on February 8, 1876 Jeremiah Sheahan (note spelling) a 28 year old farmer from Mawley Kivane (note spelling) and Mary Donoghue a 17 year old farmer’s daughter from Barnadune, were married in the Roman Catholic Chapel of Killaha, in the District of Coom, Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland. The reference to the ‘District of Coom’ here seems to make sense; the majority of the records we have found for the Sheehan family are from Coom or Kilcummin (these are two parishes to the east and west respectively of Maulykeavane), Killaha is just a few miles southeast of Maulykevane. (We have no idea where Barnadune is.) The ages and the dates on these documents would seem to be in alignment with what we know.
- What is not in alignment with what we know is this: Aunt Mary states that the first born son was John Joseph who died at an early (unspecified) age and that John’s oldest (presumably living) brother was Patrick. We have found birth records that indicate that Patrick was born in December 1876. If these records refer to the correct Patrick, the date on the marriage certificate for Jeremiah and Mary (Feb. 1876) would leave no room for John Joseph to have been the first born son. So either we’ve got the wrong parents, the wrong Patrick or Joseph was not the first born son. Isn’t this fun!? Are we all thoroughly confused yet? Just wait.
- The marriage certificate indicates that Jeremiah’s father, Patrick - this would be Aunt Mary’s Great Grandfather who divided his farm among his four sons, and Mary Donoghue’s father were also farmers and that Daniel and Patrick Donoghue (presumably Mary’s brothers or uncles) witnessed the wedding ceremony. Indications are that Patrick’s wife was Ellen Rahilly. Brigitte O’Shea’s (Seamus’ daughter) family tree seems to agree with this theory but some names are different. (no surprise).
- There is some uncertainty however about the names of the 11 children of Jeremiah and Mary Sheehan. Aunt Mary lists her father’s brothers and sisters as; John Joseph, Patrick, Michael, Jerry, Danny, Joseph, John Joseph (Grandpa), Julia, Nellie, Kate and Mary. We found documentation that would confirm most of this, with a few notable exceptions.
- Aunt Mary states that the eldest son (John Joseph) died at an (unspecified) early age. His name does not appear in any records that we have yet found.
- Seamus confirms Mary’s story about Jerry and Michael, adding that they moved to Dublin and became police officers and it was after having won quite a bit of money in the Irish Derby (Sweepstakes) that Jerry purchased the Pub, now known as Sheehan’s Pub (which incidentally is on Chatham Street, which runs off of Grafton Street, but still very close to Aunt Mary’s remembrance.) We did find baptism records and census records for both Jerry (born 1891) and Michael (born 1893).
- Aunt Mary indicates that Kate (Caitlin? Catherine? Kathleen?) and Mary were two of John’s sisters who moved to Dublin. Seamus does not recall that Mary and Kate were the names of any of the sisters but he does point out that these were the names of the wives of Jerry and Michael, John’s brothers who moved to Dublin and opened a pub. We have found no birth or baptismal records for either Kate or Mary. (see notes that follow regarding Mary)
- We did however find baptism records for a Bridget Sheehan born to Jeremiah Sheehan and Mary Donoghue in 1895. The 1901 Census seems to confirm this since it indicates a daughter Bridget Sheehan (6 years old at that time) living with Jeremiah and Mary Sheehan.
- The 1901 census does not indicate Patrick living at Maulykeavane. He would have been 24 y/o by then and probably living elsewhere, or perhaps he had by then already immigrated to America.
- Danny and Joseph, according to Seamus and Mary, stayed on the farm and although neither is listed in the 1901 census for Maulykeavane, Danny does reappear on the 1911 census. Also the 1911 Census no longer lists Jeremiah (the father), but instead now lists Mary as the “Head of Family”. Perhaps this was the reason for Danny’s return. We have found no records at all for Joseph.
- The 1901 census indicates that there were indeed four homes with the Sheehan name as Head of Household at Maulykeavane which seems to substantiate Aunt Mary’s remembrance of the farm being divided among the four sons.
- Griffiths Valuation of Ireland, the recorder of property ownership for the country contains records from 1853 that indicate parcels of land at Maulykeavane in the names of John, Daniel, Jeremiah, Michael and Patrick Sheehan. (see attached)
- The 1901 census also shows Ellen, now a widow and 80 y/o, listed as Head of Family in house #7 in Maulykeavane. The date and age may indicate that this may be the former Ellen Rahilly, wife of Patrick Sheehan who divided their farm (Gib) among the four boys.
- The RMS Lusitania sailed mostly from Liverpool with a stop at Cohb (Queenstown) and then on to Ellis Island in New York, but also sailed a route through Halifax to Boston. Apparently emigration records available from NARA (The National Archives in Washington DC) are on microfilm, and the Archives in Boston would document specific dates and a passenger manifest for these arrivals.
Perhaps our own father, Jeremiah Joseph Sheehan, inherited his wonderful and wry sense of humor from his Great Grandfather Patrick. The baptismal records from the Roman Catholic Parish of Rathmore indicate the following: Of Patrick’s four sons to whom he divided his land, the place of birth for two of his sons is listed as Maulykevane (the official townland name), for the other two the place of birth in the National Register is listed as ‘Gibraltar’... Gib.
Was ‘Gib’ a remembrance of a place now long forgotten? Perhaps. A wish or a prayer for his family and for their future? Almost certainly. Gib, true to its name through many generations is a place that has endured in our family lore now for more than 150 years. A rock. A place of remembrance. And nostalgia.
With the documentation included here, if certification can be found in Boston for Grandpa’s immigration to America we could all claim Irish Citizenship through the Irish Consulate (and claim an EU passport). We could then, in the Grand Sheehan Family Tradition, all move to “Gib” and open another Irish Pub!
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