Sunday, October 23, 2011

The early beginnings - Patrick & Mary Bourke

The earliest ancestors I've found are Patrick & Mary Bourke. Patrick married Mary Clancy form Rosbrien near Limerick City around 1830. They lived on a farm at a place called the Four Gates in the townland of Dullas in the parish of Croom in Co. Limerick. This farm is very close to the Kilmacow farm. They had five children that I know off - John (1833), my great-grandfather, Margaret (c. 1838), Patsy, Bill and another daughter whose name I don't know.

Patrick and Mary are buried in Boherard graveyard in the parish of Dromin-Athlacca. I don't know why they are buried in a different parish to where they lived but Patrick may have originated from there. I visited this graveyard again last year to take some photos.It's a beautiful, peaceful location located down a lane off the main road. This graveyard was used during the famine and, as a result, there are a large number of marker stones in the graveyard. These mark the graves of people whose families were either wiped out in the famine (and so no-one remained to put up a gravestone) or whose families couldn't afford a headstone given the circumstances a the time.



The inscription reads "In memory of Patrick Bourke who died May 1867 and his wife Mary Burke who died April 1868. Erected by their son Patrick and his wife Margaret".

Saturday, October 15, 2011

A journey into my past

Back in the late 1980s I became interested in my family history, in particular that of my father's family, the Burkes of Kilmacow. After nearly thirty years I can't remember what sparked my interest.It may have been an interest in history as it was fascinating to find relatives who had been involved in all the events I studied in school, everything from the Great Famine to World War 1. It may have been the appeal of the exotic in that 9 my grandfather's family emigrated to the US and the thought that I had all these relatives living over there that I had never met. The visit every now and then of some of these distant cousins (always referred to as "Yanks") may also have been a factor. In any case I researched the family and wrote a handwritten (pre-laptop days!) account of the family. I was helped by many people on both sides of the Atlantic but was hindered by my age (no car!) and the difficulty in accessing many of the records (no online access in those days). One happy outcome of the project was that I spent a summer in Chicago in 1992 on a student work visa and was guest of honour at the Burke Family Picnic!

In recent years there has been a huge upsurge in interest in family history in Ireland which has coincided with online access to the Irish census records of 1901 and 1911. With my curiosity aroused again I began to read all my old notes and decided to kickstart the project again. The plan now is to pull all the material together over the next two years and then publish a booklet. Maybe even launch it in Chicago! There are many grandchildren of the 13 Burkes still alive so I want to collect all the stories, photos and memories before it's too late. I'd also love to hear the stories of relatives in the US who visited Ireland. What was it like to visit the land of your ancestors?

Over the coming months I'll be posting on this blog updates on my research. If anyone has any material of interest I'd love to hear from you. My email is mike@viva.ie