Thank you Dennis, While we were in Cappoquin, County Cork, cousin David Collins introduced me to his mothers cousins; Julia Quirke, a nurse and delightful lady and her brothers Michael and Tom Quirke. Julia took us to an old graveyard near Cappoquin where some relatives are buried. It is located set back from a road across an up sloping field beside the roofless shell of a brick walled church. It was once a Roman Catholic Church, but it had been confiscated by the Church of Ireland. The tiled roof had been stripped and used on a roof of a protestant church. The caretaker who lives near by greeted his friend Julia and then us. They showed us around the property. While David and Julia were looking at gravestones I wandered off a bit. I stopped by a 12 x 12 depression in the ground near some large bushes. The caretaker told me to be careful. Some of the area was unstable because of collapsed old graves. He told us that under the depression were the remains of several hundred victims of the Famine. During the Famine it was a deep open pit into which families put the bodies of their loved ones. There were too many deaths for proper burials. He said that people, who were half dead themselves, would bring their dead and some would sit on the side of the pit waiting to die. There is no record of their names. He told us that bones regularly rise up to the surface. They are collected and placed near the wall at the entrance to the church. Once a year there is a ceremony and they are reburied. David S. Campbell Ottawa Dennis Ahern <[email protected]> wrote: David Campbell asked: >Another question in the same vein is "What were the burial practices of >the rural Irish before the Famine other than in church cemetaries?" In >tracing my ancestors there are no records of their burial sites before >the mid 19th century. Has anyone researched this question? I don't know off hand what research has been done, but in researching the townland where my Lane ancestors lived in Innishannon I found that there was an old burial ground shown on the 19th century ordnance survey maps. It is still marked on the present day OS maps but if you go there you will find that it is no more than an uncultivated patch in the middle of some sugar beet fields. There are no stones nor walls, but the farmers all know where it is and simply plow around it. -dja ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message