According to his headstone Michael was born in 1874 but baptismal records show he was baptised on October 26th 1867. In the 1901 Cenus he gives his age as 25, knocking a whopping nine years off his age. By the 1911 Census, a guilty conscience has led him to "admit" to being 42, only two years out! Michael inherited the family farm and married Mary Banks from Adare in Co. Limerick. They had six children, John, Ned (my Dad), Mary, Pat, Mick and Willie.
A local poem recalls that he hurled with the local parish of Kilfinny in the 1890s:
"Tim Day in play, sure I must say, was a hurler keen and grand.
Mick Burke today lies in sacred clay, they hailed down from the Strand"
The Strand referred to the road that ran alongside the family farm.
Michael died on Christmas Day, 1928 having suffered a stroke 9 days earlier. According to my Dad, the last job he did before he fell ill was to fix a clip on a bin of flour in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, no pictures of Michael survive. There was a tradition in rural Ireland of naming the first-born son after his paternal grandfather and it is interesting to note that there is a "Michael" or a "Micheal" (Gaelic form) in each family of grand-children.
