No adverse comments from the first, I attempt another; COLOURS OF COPPER On the edge of Tigrony an open wound now lies A once hidden heart exposed to the skies The veins once enclosed now opened wide Left torn and bleeding until this mountain died With a final gasp its secrets are gone Its final treasures were stolen not won What really was taken will never be known >From desperate greed desolation has grown The leaf of the Maple left the craters behind Long since gone but still in the mind Of miner's widows and others who cared A generation of thoughts that are rarely shared Bridge of white amidst the ochre stained land In a valley of green like an emblem so grand The profits have gone but riches remain Colours still with us now claiming the fame >From the depths of the valley the treasure is gone But Avoca's true beauty will ever go on Soaring falcons replace the circling vulture Birds of prey but of a far higher culture The noise and dust now so long since left The blasting and hammering within the cleft All gone but for the holes in rocks and hearts Lifetimes of toil exchanged for far easier starts A wooden symbol now guards over with care The two mountain sides laid waste and left bare Nothing to give at the cost of more lives No worn out miners and no worried wives The valley lies tranquil now fully at ease Just as its waters are mingled in peace Daz Beattie 3rd October 2002. The last mining attempts in Avoca were made under the direction of a Canadian Mining Company in the early 1960's, when the deep mining following of the copper ores failed, final attempts were made as if in desperation to blow the mountains apart in an opencast search.

Inspired by Jean Rice and her fantastic postings, as well as a love of this beautiful Vale, coupled with the fact that my father was killed in the Avoca Copper Mines and is buried there, I attempted my first ever poem. I guess a lot of the references will only make sense to the person that knows the area, it was never intended for publication. I hope that no one minds this posting, not really genealogy but it is a part of my adopted heritage now. Daz Beattie, Yorkshire, England. Towers of Two Saints. The tower of Saint Kevin built beside the two Loughs Is it more precious than some later rocks? Built skyward of industry in a more populous vale The towers of power with a different tale Built for another God of an alternate race Purely to perform at a much greater pace? Saint Kevin's to nurture and protect all mankind Those of Saint Patrick to pump and to wind To rob the riches of the valley's earth Whilst playing a part in creating its dearth Both to remain to the present day As symbols of what? Can one really say? Life and death belong to all of these towers Which of them directed by the cruellest powers? Where was the profit in Kevin's domain? Who did Avoca's metals sustain? Where was the love and true affection? Do the graves of Macadam show a true reflection? These towers all play a part in Wicklow fame The holy one to the memory, the others the same One viewed by many, Ballymurtagh's by few A sharing of feelings may be long overdue All have the beauty of ancient toilings Only Avoca is left with the tailings and spoilings The memory of miners now long since gone Their smiles and goodwill still lingers with some But many forgotten lay beneath the ground Where their living and ending was to be found God bless all the martyrs of Avoca and Crombane Ballymurtagh and Tigrony I wish you the same Daz Beattie 20th Sept 2002

CHAPLAIN Four shells on four yards Of trench in the stripped wood The Somme July 1916 "O horrible most horrible" Trapped him in a dugout With three fusiliers who cursed Their bad luck first, but prayed With him later, panting, Words a flat hiss On poison air. The next barrage tore bright strips >From their eyes: the sky opened Over the foul death-trench. In gaseous day, in the childish Whine of the unseen wounded, they joked About the priest's hair, turned white By that four hours' burial. After the hospital morphine They sent him to teach boys Mathematics and History Far behind the lines. They let him grow dahlias and banks Of rhododendron in the rich loam Of the school's Pleasure Grounds. The boys called him Thatch or Shakes Behind his back; but they liked it When he took them to help with his flowers. -- James J. McCauley (be. Dublin) This poem touched me as my own English-Irish uncle (Alfred George Ford) who loved to play the violin and tend his great garden in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, had been "injured by mustard gas in the war." In some photos at a relatively young age he is carrying a cane. Jean

VIGIL In my town the old sea-captain Whose skin was sailcloth, whose speech Was a gusty spittle, whose lies Were crimson anemones that swayed In the blue rockpools around The green edge of my town -- In my town the captain was last >From his wrecked ship in a roaring November storm -- the breeches-buoy Lifting him like a saint Assumed into heaven over The rocks and breakers, up the cliff To the room with dim prints of ships In full sail, where his pipe Wheezed while he told me great lies. In my town, at the rosary The night they coffined him, He was only another Wheyfaced pensioner Already gone straight to heaven With the reek of Murray's Plug Tobacco for a halo. This was the first I'd seen Of him with his weather eye closed. -- Vigil, from Requiem, James J. McAuley, b. Dublin 1936

SNIPPET: In 1820, Fr. Thomas HORE (24) of Wexford visited America. More than two decades later, as the Famine ravaged Ireland, Fr. Hore became deeply concerned about his followers and felt strongly that America offered them their best chance for survival.. Fr. Hore led 450 of his followers to New Orleans, LA, planning to buy land in AR. When Arkansas did not welcome them, Hore instead took his people to St. Louis, MO, and then went on ahead to IA to buy 3,000 acres of land. Upon returning for the group, however, he discovered that many had joined the CA gold rush, while others were happy in St. Louis. Still, a dozen families followed Hore to IA, where they founded the new community of Wexford. (As I recall, one of his BREEN families helped to establish Wexford, IA). There is a chapter on Fr. Hore and his flock in Edward Laxton's book, "The Famine Ships," (1996).

WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING There's a tear in your eye and I'm wondering why For it never should be there at all With such power in your smile, sure a stone you'd beguile So there's never a teardrop should fall When your sweet lilting laughter's like some fairy song And your eyes twinkle bright as can be You should laugh all the while, and all other times smile And now smile a smile for me When Irish eyes are smiling, sure it's like a morning Spring In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay And when Irish eyes are smiling, sure they steal your heart away For your smile is a part of the love in your heart And it makes even sunshine more bright Like the linnet's sweet song, crooning all the day long Comes your laughter so tender and light For the spring-time of life is the sweetest of all There is ne'er a real care or regret And while spring-time is ours, throughout all of youth's hours Let us smile each chance we get When Irish eyes are smiling, sure it's like a morning Spring In the lilt of Irish laughter, you can hear the angels sing When Irish hearts are happy, all the world seems bright and gay And when Irish eyes are smiling, sure they steal your heart away. -- Ernest Ball, Chauncey Olcott, Geo. Graff Jr. Chauncey Olcott: Chancellor John Olcott (1860-1932) began his performing career in minstrel shows in the 1880s. When he traveled to England in 1891, he acted in a light Irish opera. Returning to America, Olcott became a star of Irish comedies and dramas, often writing plays and songs himself. He played a major role in popularizing the Tin Pan Alley vision of Ireland as a quaint land of green fields, devout Catholics, jolly pubs, and heroic nationalism. His best-remembered song is "My Wild Irish Rose." Although Olcott enjoyed 20 years of success, his popularity declined after WWI. His business sense, however, had made him a small fortune over the years. In declining health, Olcott left for Monte Carlo, where he died of anemia in 1932

MY WILD IRISH ROSE If you listen I'll sing you a sweet little song Of a flower that's now dropped and dead, Yet dearer to me, yes than all of its mates, Though each holds aloft its proud head. Twas given to me by a girl that I know, Since we've met, faith I've known no repose. She is dearer by far than the world's brightest star, And I call her my wild Irish Rose. My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows. You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose. My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows, And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose. They may sing of their roses, which by other names, Would smell just as sweetly, they say. But I know that my Rose would never consent To have that sweet name taken away. Her glances are shy when e'er I pass by The bower where my true love grows, And my one wish has been that some day I may win The heart of my wild Irish Rose. My wild Irish Rose, the sweetest flower that grows. You may search everywhere, but none can compare with my wild Irish Rose. My wild Irish Rose, the dearest flower that grows, And some day for my sake, she may let me take the bloom from my wild Irish Rose. -- Chancellor John "Chauncey" Olcott, (1860-1932) born Buffalo, NY - singer, actor, composer.

If you are interested in Skibereen and effects of the Irish Famine, see the "latest program" in the new Irish Series on genealogy at www.bananatv.com Kaye

Final Excerpt: Mrs. Asenath (Hatch) Nicholson's "The Bible in Ireland," 1852 reads" "Mr. Burke told me that the Methodists now number in Ireland about 29,000 members and 100 preachers. Certainly these indefatigable labourers have done no small business to make their way through Popery, Prelacy, Presbyterianism, and Independency. They are instant in season and out of season. Went to Arklow (Wicklow) at seven, and found a plain chapel, with a plain man in the pulpit, and heard a plain sermon preached to a plain people."

ACCOUNT: "I took a car for Westport. Stopped at Newport, Sir Richard O'Donel and his lady have established schools on liberal principles. The lady herself teaches two or three days in a week, and Sir Richard has an admirably well-fitted schoolroom, where he teaches a Sabbath school himself. The effects of a fair on Monday showed that Ireland is not emancipated from the effects of whisky. Rioting and fighting lasted through the night. I walked to Westport with the peasantry, and at six in the morning was on a car for Castlebar. Called a few moments on a Baptist minister there, who presented me with a bundle of tracts, which were quite too sectarian to suit my purposes in visiting Ireland. I stayed twenty-four hours in Sligo, and talked to many of the poorer people. I find in all Ireland the labouring classes, when I first speak to them, are ever praising their master. Just as in America, although the slaves may be often under the lash or in the stocks, yet to a stranger they durst not speak out, lest some "bird of the air should tell the matter." So the peasantry of Ireland are in such suffering, that lest they should lose their sixpence or eightpence they occasionally get while employed, they will make an imperious landlord an angel to a stranger. My next day's ride on the top of a coach was eighty-one miles to Dublin, some part of it romantic. The sea-coast was rocky and wild, and presented little that was inviting for the abode of man. The road took us through a part of Leitrim, Westmeath, and Longford. At the latter place, while waiting for a change of horses, the beggars seemed to have rallied all their forces, followed by the rags and tatters of the town. I told them I had nothing but books to give. -- Asenath Nicholson, "The Bible in Ireland," 1852

Margaret wrote to me: " Hi Jean, I have Asenath's journal and in the Introduction it gives the family informationwhich was supplied by Jean Hatch Farnham, a descendant of Nicholson's brother, David Hatch. She was a teacher in Chelsea (VT) and later ran a boarding house. She moved to New York where she met Norman Nicholson. Before going to New York she was suffering from poor health. When a doctor told her to make a change she ended up moving to New York where she met Norman Nicholson, a merchant (c.1790-1841). While in her early 30s she became a reformer. "While Nicholson ran her boarding houses, she visited the poor of New York in the Five Points, the notorious slum nearby in New York's Sixth Ward where cholera had raged in 1832. During those years Nicholson met the poor Irish. 'It was in the garrets and cellars of New York that I first became acquainted with the Irish peasantry and it was there that I saw that they were a suffereing people'". "Nicholson left Ireland in 1848 when she thought that her work was finished. Her long stay in Cork in the summer of 1848 speaks to the heroic work of her great friend father Theobald Mathew, whose famine work is less well-known than his crusade for temperance, and to the work of other volunteers like the Quakers and the South Presentation nuns, but she also brings the reader on some sightseeing excursions. The somewhat lighter tone of these pages suggests Nicholson believed that the worst was over. In fact, famine condiitons were to continue until 1852, the year she finally returned to America, where she lived in obscurity until her death from typhoid fever in Jersey City, New Jersey, on May 15, 1855." Taken from "Annals of the Famine Ireland - Asenath Nicholson,: Edited by Maureen Murphy Slan go foill, Margaret Earlier Margaret wrote: Hi Jean, Asenath Nicholson was born Asenath Hatch. She was born on the NewEngland frontier in the village of Chelsea in the White River Valley of easternVermont. Her parents were Michael Hatch (c. 1747-1830) and her mother was Martha (1745-1837). Michael Hatch of Ackworth, Cheshire County, New Hampshire arrived in Chelsea, Vermont on June 7, 1788. Asenath Hatch was born Feb 24, 1792 in Chelsea. Her name was common enough in the Hatch family, the Genealogy and History of the Hatch Family lists 4 other Asenaths in her generation alone (Hatch-Hale). Her parents were probably members of Chelsea's first Congregational Church, the branch of American Protestantism that emphasized the Bible, individual freedom and local congregational autonomy."Taken from - Annals of the Famine in Ireland - Asenath Nicholason," ed. Maureen Murphy. Hatch and Hale are both English names, But Hatch is also found in Ireland from the 1700s. Hale without the Mc is English. Possibly they came from Ireland before going to America. (?) Slan go foill, Margaret Original Message: Hi Margaret, You know I saw somewhere Asenath Nicholson's maiden name, but I didn't make a note of it, do you happen to know?

Conclusion -- Mrs Asenath Nicholson came on a lone mission to Ireland from NY in 1844, "to learn the true condition of the poor Irish at home, and ascertain why so many moneyless, half clad, illiterate emigrants are daily landed on our shores." She must have been a remarkable figure on her travels, wearing, what she referred to as her Polka coat, a velvet bonnet and shoes made of India rubber. She carried a parasol, a basket containing a change of linen and a huge black bear skin muff. Two bags that were slung from a strong cord round her waist held copies of the New Testament in English and Irish for distribution, and as she walked along she sang hymns or read the scriptures to her fellow travellers. A book that she wrote "Ireland's Welcome to a Stranger" is a unique description of the poverty in Ireland before the famine, where she had "surveyed the beautiful domains and seen walking rags that by hedge and by ditch, in bog and field, are covering the length and breadth of the land." She ended her book with the prophetic words, "I have stayed in Ireland to witness that which, though so heartrending and painful, had given me but the proof of what common observation told me in the beginning - that there must nee! ds be an explosion of some kind or other." When she returned to Dublin at the beginning of 1847 the "explosion" had taken place, the country was in the throes of famine. As practical as always, she took a room in a tall house overlooking the Liffey; her bed a short sofa surrounded by barrels of meal. She rose at four every morning and wrote or corrected proofs until eight, and then went over the river to Cook Street; there she dispensed Indian corn to about twenty destitute families "always cooking it myself in their cabins, till they could and do it prudently themselves." The turf was provided and the rent paid weekly (by her) - she lived off 23 pence a week, or less when she cut out her luxuries of cocoa, milk and sugar and only bought bread so that she could give more support to the needy. In the winter of 1847-48 she took a box of clothing and a little money to distribute in the West. There, as she wrote, she saw "misery without a mask." The appalling tales of suffering and desolation that she witnessed she recounted in her book, "Annals of the Famine in Ireland" which was published after she left Ireland. Mrs. Asenath Nicholson died in New Jersey of typhoid in 1855, a woman of "the most self-sacrificing benevolence, with great independence of mind and force of character." -- Excerpt by "Melosina Lenox-Conyngham, Kilkenny, broadcaster for RTE radio for "Ireland of the Welcomes."

Mrs. Asenath Nicholson came on a lone mission from NY to Ireland to "learn the true condition the poor Irish at home" in 1844. She kept a diary and recorded her observations and daily routine in her travels across Ireland: Asenath was an intrepid walker. In October, with only 4/6d (about 25 pence) in her pocket, she set out for Galway from Roscrea (Tipperary), but when she reached the city, the money she was expecting was not there. Not at all put out, she made her way back to Roscrea. She stayed in the meanest cabins, sharing the room and sometimes the bed with her hosts, their pigs, cattle and hens. Her sustenance was three or four potatoes a day. Often she was given her night's lodging for free. When she went by coach, she complained much of the discomfort. On her first trip to Wicklow, she had with difficulty been squeezed into a seat. "We had proceeded a few miles, with nineteen upon the top, and one appended to the back, when a loud call from a car arrested us with, "Can you take a few more passengers?" "As many as you please," answered the glad driver. The clamour, the entreaties, and threats of the passengers were all unavailing; the car was emptied of four occupants, each with a box or two and baskets and lesser appendages, and all transferred to the coach. The terrified girl perched on top of the luggage, over our heads was now ordered to alight, and without ceremony was packed among us though we were already eight where five could only have a tolerable seat. A corner of a trunk rested on my shoulder, and twenty miles I rode without having the free liberty of my head or full turning of my neck." -- Excerpts from her diary

In 1844, Mrs. Asenath Nicholson had come to Ireland from New York to learn the true condition of the poor Irish at home. The redoubtable New England widow spent the next year traveling the length and breadth of Ireland, usually on foot, but sometimes by canal or steamer, and occasionally by Bianconi car. Some excerpts from her diary: She had written, "I had walked more than twenty miles, ten of which had been on round or sharp pebbles for a carpet; sometimes getting upon a cart, and carrying my boots in my hand for a little mitigation. I had eaten nothing but a deliciously sweet dry crust in the enchanted morning when I had sat singing upon a moss-hillock. I came at last to a cabin where a woman let me have some straw for a bed. Potatoes were in readiness, and while we were eating them, the husband entered, intoxicated, wild and noisy." She passed a most disagreeable night; at one moment the husband, brandishing a set of tongs, threatened to throw her into the river that passed just outside the cabin if she attempted to stir or speak. (Perhaps it was hard for Asenath to be silent!). She left next morning as soon as the cock crowed, though it was pouring with rain, to walk the four weary miles to Killarney, Co. Kerry. In Kilkenny, determined to entertain her, in spite of her demurs that it was the Sabbath, neighbours had gathered, "The eldest son of my hostess advanced, made a low bow, and invited me to lead the dance. I looked on his glossy black slippers, his blue stockings snugly fitting up to the knee, his corduroys above them, his blue coat and brass buttons, and had no reason to hope that, at my age of nearly half a century, I could ever expect another like offer. However, I was not urged to accept it. The cabin was too small to contain the three score and ten who had assembled, and with one simultaneous movement, without speaking, all rushed out, bearing me along, and placed me upon a cart, the player at my right hand. And then the dance began. Not a laugh - not a loud word was heard; but as soberly as though they were in a funeral procession, they danced for an hour, wholly for my amusement, and for my welcome. Then each approached, gave me the hand, bade me God-speed, leape! d over the stile, and in stillness walked away." At none of the big houses was she received so kindly - She took a steamer from Cappoquin down the Blackwater to Youghal, in order to consult Sir Richard Musgrave, whom she had heard had a condescending manner with a peculiarly kind heart, to ask him if he though the English Government was taking the liberty of opening and retaining her letters. Sir Richard Musgrave peered at her over his spectacles and said that he had no advice on the subject, then taking out his watch added pointedly that he was in the middle of his lunch. As he firmly ushered her out, he did ask if she would take something to eat, but Asenath, deeply offended by her reception, said she was not hungry. Even at Derrynane (Daniel O'Connell was away), though she was shown the house and given a lunch of bread and cheese, the housekeeper whose countenance she thought, "was better fitted to drive away an enemy than to invite a friend," turned her out into a storm with a walk of five miles over the mountains in the gathering darkness. Excerpts from her diary -

In 1844, the year before the failure of the potato crop that caused the famine, Mrs. Asenath Nicholson had come on a lone mission to Ireland from New York "to learn the true condition of the poor Irish at home and ascertain why so many moneyless, half-clad illiterate emigrants are daily landed on our shores." In NY she had run a temperance boarding house and the servants she had employed were girls from Kilkenny. To visit their families, she took the fly boat to Athy going second class in order to learn more of the Irish character and then by car to Urlingford. News of the arrival spread fast and she was followed by men, women and children each one proffering the hand say, "Welcome, welcome to Ireland." Raspberry cordial was presented to her and a man who called himself a doctor begged the privilege of removing a wart from her face with a spell, but she deferred the miracle and accepted instead a lift in his wheel-less dray to visit the widowed mother of one of her girls! . The cabin where the widow lived with her two grown-up sons and a grandson "was cleanly, although two comely pigs fattening for the fair and a goodly number of turkeys and ducks, took their repast in the cabin on the remains of supper." Referring to their guest - "What will she ate, the crature? It's not the potato that raired her," the well-wishers asked each other, but Asenath, who was a strict vegetarian soon convinced them that a potato would be a great relish. That night she was put to sleep in her hostess's soft feather-bed in a narrow box which was impossibly hot on an August night. -- Excerpt from her diary.

AT A POTATO DIGGING I A mechanical digger wrecks the drill, Spins up a dark shower of roots and mould. Labourers swarm in behind, stoop to fill Wicker creels. Fingers go dead in the cold. Like crows attacking crow-black fields, they stretch A higgledy line from hedge to headland; Some pairs keep breaking ragged ranks to fetch A full creel to the pit and straighten, stand Tall for a moment but soon stumble back To fish a new load from the crumbled surf. Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the black Mother. Processional stooping through the turf Recurs mindlessly as autumn. Centuries Of fear and homage to the famine god Toughen the muscles behind their humbled knees, Make a seasonal altar of the sod. II Flint-white, purple. They lie scattered like inflated pebbles. Native to the black hutch of clay where the halved seed shot and clotted these knobbed and slit-eyed tubers seem the petrified hearts of drills. Split by the spade, they show white as cream. Good smells exude from crumbled earth. The rough bark of humus erupts knots of potatoes (a clean birth) whose solid feel, whose wet inside promises taste of ground and root. To be piled in pits; live skulls, blind-eyed. III Live skulls, blind-eyed, balanced on wild higgledy skeletons scoured the land in "forty-five," wolfed the blighted root and died. The new potato, sound as stone, putrefied when it had lain three days in the long clay pit. Millions rotted along with it. Mouths tightened in, eyes died hard, faces chilled to a plucked bird. In a million wicker huts beaks of famine snipped at guts. A people hungering from birth, grubbling, like plants, in the bitch earth, were grafted with a great sorrow. Hope rotted like a marrow. Stinking potatoes fouled the land, pits turned pus into filthy mounds: and where potato digger are you still smell the running sore. IV Under a gay flotilla of gulls The rhythm deadens, the workers stop. Brown bread and tea in bright canfuls Are served for lunch. Dead-beat, they flop Down in the ditch and take their fill, Thankfully breaking timeless fasts; Then, stretched on the faithless ground, spill Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts. -- Seamus Heaney

OLD SKIBBEREEN Oh, father dear, I often hear you speak of Erin's Isle, Her lofty scenes and valleys green, her mountains rude and wild, They say it is a lovely land wherein a prince might dwell, Oh, why did you abandon it? The reason to me tell. Oh, son! I loved my native land with energy and pride, Till a blight came o'er my crops -- my sheep, my cattle died; My rent and taxes were too high, I could not them redeem, And that's the cruel reason that I left old Skibbereen. Oh, well do I remember the bleak December day, The landlord and the sheriff came to drive us all away; They set my roof on fire with their cursed English spleen, And that's another reason that I left old Skibbereen. Your mother, too, God rest her soul, fell on the snowy ground, She fainted in her anguish, seeing the desolation round, She never rose, but passed away from life to mortal dream, And found a quiet grave, my boy, in dear old Skibbereen. And you were only two years old and feeble was your frame, I could not leave you with my friends, you bore your father's name -- I wrapt you in my cotamore at the dead of night unseen, I heaved a sigh and bade good-bye, to dear old Skibbereen. -- Anonymous, "The Irish in America," Coffey & Golway Eyewitness, Elihu BURRITT, in a famine-era letter from Skibbereen, Co. Cork, to America described seeing "entirely naked" children, "breathing skeletons" living in the outskirts of Skibbereen, one of Ireland's most devasted areas during the Great Potato Famine. He wrote: "We entered with some difficulty (the cabin) and found a single child about three years old lying on a kind of shelf, with its little face resting upon the edge of the board and looking steadfastly out at the door, as if for its mother. It never moved its eyes as we entered, but kept them fixed toward the entrance...No words can describe the peculiar appearance of the famished children. Never have I seen such bright, blue, clear eyes looking so steadfastingly at nothing....I could almost fancy that the angels of God had been sent to unseal the vision of these little patient, perishing creatures, to the beatitudes of another world; and they were listening to the whispers of unseen spirits bidding them t! o "wait a little longer." Another visitor to Ireland said that there were thousands of starving children, everywhere, inside and outside hovels, in the towns, and along the roads, in the winter of 1846-47. They no longer spoke, much less cried; they just stared with a gaunt, unmeaning vacancy, a kind of insanity, a stupid, despairing look that asked for nothing, expected nothing, received nothing. -- Paddy's Lament," Thomas Gallagher

IF I MIGHT CHOOSE If I might choose where my tired limbs shall lie When my task here is done, the oak's green crest Shall rise above my grave -- a little mound, Raised in some cheerful village cemetery. And I could wish, that, with unceasing sound, A lonely mountain rill was murmuring by -- In music -- through the long soft twilight hours. Plant round the bright green grave those fragrant flowers In whose deep bells the wild-bee loves to rest; And should the robin from some neighboring tree Pour his enchanted song -- oh! softly tread, For sure, if aught of earth can soothe the dead, He still must love that pensive melody! -- John Anster (1789-1867)

BIO: Film Director John Ford (1894/5-1963), nee Sean O'Fienne. John Feeney was born into a family of immigrants from the Galway coast and grew up in a fiercely Irish enclave in Portland, Maine, the son of a saloonkeeper and a mother who never learned to read or write English. As the director John Ford, he was the recipient of six Academy Awards, none of which he accepted in person, and is recognized as one of the finest artists ever to have worked in films. For someone who was in many ways coarse and sentimental, and given to fabricating stories about his own life, he could create works that were luminous, enchanting, and profound. He became famous for staging outdoor motion pictures with a keen sense of background and deep feeling for people. An Irishman who knew him said that the great tragedy of his life was that he had not been born in Ireland. He was a dramatist of myths whose truest subject was America itself and the West as it exists in the American imagination. He was a mass of contradictions, some of which derived from his! double sense of himself as at once American and Irish. He grew up in American film, following his brother Francis (who changed the family name) to Hollywood as a teenager. In 1924, he created one of the masterpieces of the silent screen, "The Iron Horse" (1924). Ford made many films of which some of the most notable include "The Informer" (1930s), "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940), "The Hurricane" (1937), "Stagecoach" (1939), "How Green Was My Valley" (1941), "Fort Apache" (1948), "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949), "Rio Grande" (1950), "Wagonmaster" (1951), "Mogambo" (1952) "The Quiet Man" (1952), "The Last Hurrah" (1958), "The Horse Soldiers" (1959) and "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964). Ford directed more than 200 motion pictures since entering the industry in 1917. In 1953, the Screen Directors Guild awarded him the first D. W. Griffith Memorial Award, for "inspirational service to the film industry." It is reminded that Jack Feeney who crossed the continent on the railroad that an uncle may or may not have helped to build, with stories of four uncles who may or may not have fought in the Civil War - among the orange groves of Hollywood and the stark grandeur of Monument Valley -became John Ford, the director. After he had struck it rich, the master of a medium which he had helped to create, he bought a two-masted, hundred-foot ketch, painted her green and white and called her the "Araner." -- Excepts, "The Irish In America" and "World Book Encyclopedia."

BIO: Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), commanded the victorious Union armies at the close of the Civil War. Grant was the first West Point graduate to become president. A quiet, unassuming man, he had an almost shy manner, was short and stocky and did not look like a leader of men. Ulysses was born on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, OH, a village on the Ohio River about 20 miles SE of Cincinnatti. He was the first child of Jesse and Hannah Simpson Grant. His greatgrandfather, John Simpson was born in 1738 near Dungannon, Co. Tyrone and emigrated to Bucks Co., PA, in 1763. Grant's name at birth was actually Hiram Ulysses Grant, but he was always called Ulysses or "Lyss. The year after he was born the family moved to nearby Georgetown, OH, where his father owned a tannery and a farm. Grant's two brothers and three sisters were born in Georgetown. His father prospered in the tannery. Although Ulysses disliked working in the tannery, he enjoyed farm work and managing horses and became an excellent horseman. Ulysses was honest and trustworthy, and his father often sent him on business trips. He graduated from West Point in 1843, married Julia Dent in 1848. She was a devoted wife, and gave Grant constant encouragement. The Grants had four children: Frederick Dent, Ulysses Simpson, Ellen (Nellie) Wrenshall, and Jesse Root. Grant resigned from the army in 1854, after complaints regarding his excessive drinking. The family lived on a farm near St. Louis named Hardscrabble. Grant liked farming but the land was poor. In 1859, he sold the f! arm and moved to St. Louis and a relative gave him a job in a real estate office. Grant also worked in a leather goods store with his brothers in Galena, IL in 1860 as a storekeeper. In 1861, he was appointed a colonel of Illinois volunteers, in 1863 lead Union troops to victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi. He was named supreme commander of Union forces in 1864. In 1865, he accepted the surrender of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee. (See Civil War era letter below). In 1868, Grant was elected President of the United States. Two months later, the nation's first transcontinental railroad was completed when the tracks of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met at Promontory, Utah. In 1871, the great Chicago fire killed about 300 persons and left more than 90,000 homeless. In 1872, Grant was reelected to his second term and Congress established Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the U. S. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876. That same year, in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors massacred about 225 men under General George A. Custer. In 1879, two years post-presidency a tired Grant visited Ireland. "Whatever may have been my political opinons before," wrote Grant to his father in 1861, "I have but one sentiment now. That is we have a Government, and laws and a flag and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now, Traitors & Patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter." Four years later, and on the verge of winning the nation's most consequential war since the American Revolution, Grant neither boasted about his victory nor condemned the South. The tone of his correspondence, in fact, was one of sympathy. In a short letter to his wife, Julia Dent Grant, he wrote the following: "In the Field, Raleigh, Apl. 25th 1865. Dear Julia, We arrived here yesterday and as I expected to return to-day did not intend to write until I returned. Now however matters have taken such a turn I suppose Sherman will finish up matters by tomorrow night and I shall wait to see the result. Raleigh is a very beautiful place. The grounds are large and filled with the most beautiful spreading oaks I ever saw. Nothing has been destroyed and the people are anxious to see peace restored so that further devastation need not take place in the country. The suffering that must exist in the South the next year, even with the war ending now, will be beyond conception. People who talk now of further retalliation and punishment, except of the political leaders, either do not conceive of the suffering endured already or they are heartless and unfeeling and wish to stay at home, out of danger, whilst the punishment is being inflicted. Love and Kisses for you and the children, ULY! S." -- Excerpts, "World Book" encyclopedia, and "Letters of a Nation," A. Carroll.