Thanks to Kathy Snowberger, the surname registries on the Ireland GenWeb website have been updated. You can find them here: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/ If you have entered a surname in the last month or so, please check you submission for accuracy. If you find a mistake or if your email address or information has change, just submit a new form and put 'change' in the field requiring the change. Help Wanted: There are still some counties needing adoption. If you know how to create webpages and are interested in taking over a county, write me off list. -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com

HOMEBOY Taken from his mother at birth and reared in the County Home, left with strangers on a farm at fourteen, there was no time for education. A life of slavery lay before him, working for abusive farming men and women. He grew old in his youth, suffering backache from hard work and wettings as he laboured at every job he was given. Sleeping in lofts, cattle gave heat to his tired body night after night. The farmers he had slaved for know nothing of his whereabouts. In his sixties, on a week's holiday paid for by the St. Vincent De Paul, he enjoys the company of women, and is overcome when given a present of a book, or a woman asks for his address. Never before getting as much as a Christmas card, this old man seems cared for, happy in Knock.

BAIT Lamps dawdle in the field at midnight. Three men follow their nose in the grass, The lamp's beam their prow and compass. The bucket's handle better not clatter now: Silence and curious light gather bait. Nab him, but wait For the first shrinking, tacky on the thumb. Let him resettle backwards in his tunnel. Then draw steady and he'll come. Among the millions whorling their mud coronas Under dewlapped leaf and bowed blades A few are bound to be rustled in these night raids, Innocent ventilators of the ground Making the globe a perfect fit, A few are bound to be cheated of it When lamps dawdle in the field at midnight, When fishers need a garland for the bay And have him, where he needs to come, out of the clay. -- Seamus Heaney

IN SEARCH OF DEAD RELATIVES Late afternoon... Sunlight breaks through the overcast sky and strikes the landscape, which sparkles bright and green. I walk down O'Connell Street People offer to sell me cigarettes as the rush hour crowd hustles up and down the avenue. A horse drawn cart slides down a side street. I sit by a statue and watch a city alive. A teenage panhandler hounds me for money. I give her a couple of pounds, but she harasses me for more money to feed her poor starving family or so she says. I must catch a train to Athlone. The train is crowded with folks headed to the coast for the weekend. A little, old nun talks me out of my newspaper in exchange for a stale candy bar. She asks me where I am from in America. I tell her St. Paul, Minnesota. Never heard of it, she replies. She will pray for me, and goes back to reading my paper. I take a taxi to Roscommon. and check into O'Gara's Royal Hotel. There are no washcloths in Ireland. St. Patrick must have driven them out with the snakes. I take a stroll around the town. As I walk by a local bank, a small, old man calls to me and asks if I can help. The tiny gentleman is the spitting image of my dead grandfather. Perhaps, he's a leprechaun giving me a greeting or he's just playing with my mind? I tell him, I am but a visitor in this land myself, but it's strange, I feel like I'm home. My soul is here. You see this is where it found refuge when it left me during the war. It was late one night, when my grandfather's ghost came to visit me. and took my soul for safekeeping. Now I know what drew me to Ireland I need to retrieve my soul and get on with my life. It's tea time. I order a diet Coke from Chris the bartender. I tell him about myself. The war and lost soul. He says I should see a holy woman who lives in town. She could lay the glove of St. Padre Pio on me and ease my pain. He gives me a holy medal of the Virgin Mary Oh, I don't know... The holy woman is sick. Thank God! Chris will take me to another holy woman he knows in Galway who will touch me. Great! Chris blesses himself as we pass churches and graveyards. We drive down narrow country roads as he tells me about his broken love affairs. He won't let a woman use him again. In Galway, we stop at a pub and call the holy woman. She is busy, just my luck. Strong winds blew off the bay as the Spanish Arch still stood guard. Looking off into the distance, I longed to hear Donna's voice. I miss her so much. The snow flurries remind me of home as I walk the narrow streets. A young woman sings for coins in an alley as the sun is setting, a man reads tarot cards in front of a gift shop. A claddagh ring shines bright in the window. Another sign from the ancient ancestors? I feel in my heart Donna is to be my wife. I stop into a museum The guide asks me where in Ireland I am from. I tell him Minnesota. He says my name in Gaelic is Tadg Conghaile. He says I have a connection to this country going back hundreds of generations. I found my soul. The dead relatives were holding it for safekeeping. -- Tim Connelly

SNIPPET: A witness to the extent of Irish poverty was Asenath NICHOLSON, a widowed American temperance crusader and Protestant evangelist, who arrived from New York on the eve of the famine to distribute Bibles among the Catholic poor and stayed to become a one-woman relief expedition. Mrs. NICHOLSON told of giving a "sweet biscuit" to an obviously famished children, who held it in her hand and stared at it. "How is it," she asked the child's mother, "she cannot be hungry?" The mother replied that the child had never seen such a delicacy before and "cannot think of parting with it." Mrs. NICHOLSON marveled that "such self-denial in a child was quite beyond my comprehension, but so inured are these people to want, that their endurance and self-control are almost beyond belief." Similar anecdotes of visitors were confirmed by a commission of inquiry formed to study the extent of Irish poverty. Reporting in 1835 (a decade before the Great Famine), the commission noted that two-fifths of the population lived in "fourth-class accommodations" - one-room windowless mud cabins - and at least two and a half million people annually required some assistance in order to avoid starvation. It has been estimated that when the blight devastated the potatoes of Ireland in the late summer of 1845 that the potato crop had represented about 60 percent if Ireland's annual food supply and nearly three and a half million people had relied on it for the largest part of their diet. A generation after the famine, many families still lived hungry, shoeless, and in rags in bare, dirt-floored, unfurnished cabins in places such as Galway. Some years later, in a still-destitute Ireland, tenants are evicted from their cottages, their meager possessions thrown out into the yard. -- Excerpts, Peter QUINN, "The Tragedy Of Bridget Such-A-One," December 1997 issue of "American Heritage" magazine. Mr. QUINN is also the author of "Banished Children of Eve," a novel about the Irish in New York during the 1860s, published by Penguin in 1994

SNIPPET: Frank O'CONNOR was the pen name of a well-known writer born in Cork in 1903, the only child in the family. Michael O'DONOVAN was very close to his mother Minnie, and took her maiden name for his literary work. He is best known for his tender short stories about life in Ireland, much of his material taken from his own experiences. Born into poverty with an abusive, alcoholic father, he was to go on to become a librarian, a member of the IRA during Ireland's Civil War, director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, translator of Gaelic poetry and self-taught in several languages, a talented writer. He lived and taught in the USA in the 1950s, dying at his Dublin home in 1966. O'CONNOR's bittersweet short story, "Christmas Morning," is about a poor Irish family with two boys - the narrator, Larry, who doesn't do well in his studies, skips school, gets into fights and other minor trouble, and his "perfect" little brother, Sonny, who likes school, is good at spelling and is never in trouble - a fact, that Sonny loves to point out to his mother, much to Larry's chagrin! Their father is a moody alcohol who spends his money at the pubs, angering his wife who now finds herself worrying how they are going to get through Christmas with so little. She manages to scrimp and save for a candle, a little cake and a present or two for the children. Meanwhile, Larry reasons that if he is going to get anything from Santa in his stocking he had better stay up all night so he can explain away his bad behavior and convince Santa to give him a model railway. He is counting on the fact that Santa is "a reasonable guy." Father hasn't come home by the time Larry and Sonny go to bed, and Larry falls asleep despite his best efforts to stay awake. At dawn he gets out of bed to see what is in his stocking and is bitterly disappointed ... "Santa had come while I was asleep, and gone away with an entirely false impression of me, because all he had left me was some sort of book, folded up, a pen and pencil, and a tuppeny bag of sweets. For a while I was too stunned even to think. A fellow who was able to drive over rooftops and climb down chimneys without getting stuck - God, wouldn't you think he'd know better? Then I began to wonder what that foxy boy, Sonny, had. I went to his side of the bed and felt his stocking.... he hadn't done so much better than me, because, apart from a bag of sweets like mine, all Santa had left him was a popgun, one that fired a cork on a piece of string and which you could get in any shop for sixpence. All the same, the fact remained that it was a gun, and a gun was better than a book any day of the week. The Dohertys had a gang, and the gang fought the Strawberry Lane kids who tried to play football on our road. That gun would be very useful to me in many ways, while it would be lost on Sonny who wouldn't be allowed to play with the gang, even if he wanted to. Then I got the inspiration, as it seemed to me, direct from heaven. Suppose I took the gun and gave Sonny the book!. .... He was fond of spelling, and a studious child like him could learn a lot of spellings from a book like mine. As he hadn't seen Santa any more than I had, what he hadn't seen wouldn't grieve him. I was doing no harm to anyone; in fact, if Sonny only knew, I was doing him a good turn which he might have cause to thank me for later ... Perhaps this was Santa's intention the whole time and he merely became confused between us. It was a mistake that might happen to anyone. So I put the book, the pencil, and the pen into Sonny's stocking and the popgun into my own, and returned to bed and slept again. As I say, in those days I had plenty of initiative. It was Sonny who woke me, shaking me to tell me that Santa had come and left me a gun. I let on to be surprised and rather disappointed in the gun, and to divert his mind from it made him show me his picture book, and told him it was much better than what Santa brought me. As I knew, that kid was prepared to believe anything, and nothing would do him then but to take the presents in to show Father and Mother. That was a bad moment for me. After the way she had behaved about my lying, I distrusted Mother, though I had the consolation of believing that the only person who could contradict me was now somewhere up by the North Pole. That gave me a certain confidence, so Sonny and I burst in with our presents, shouting: 'Look what Santa Claus brought!' Father and Mother woke, and Mother smiled, but only for an instant. As she looked at me her faced changed. I knew that look; I knew it only too well. It was the same she had worn the day I came home from playing hooky, when she said I had no word. 'Larry,' she said in a low voice, 'where did you get that gun?' 'Santa left it in my stocking, Mummy,' I said, trying to put on an injured air, though it baffled me how she guessed that he hadn't. 'He did, honest.' 'You stole it from that poor child's stocking while he was asleep,' she said, her voice quivering with indignation. 'Larry, Larry, how could you be so mean?' 'Now, now, now, ' Father said deprecatingly, ' 'tis Christmas morning. 'Ah,' she said with real passion, 'it's easy it comes to you. Do you think I want my son to grow up a lair and a thief?' 'Ah, what thief, woman?' he said testily. 'Have sense can't you?' He was as cross if you interrupted him in his benevolent moods as if they were of the other sort, and this one was probably exacerbated by a feeling of guilt for his behavior the night before. 'Here, Larry,' he said, reaching out for the money on the bedside table, 'here's sixpence for you and one for Sonny. Mind you don't lose it now!" But I looked at Mother and saw what was in her eyes. I burst out crying, threw the popgun on the floor, and ran bawling out of the house before anyone on the road was awake. I rushed up the lane behind the house and threw myself on the wet grass. I understood it all, and it was almost more than I could bear; that there was no Santa Claus, as the Dohertys said, only Mother trying to scrape together a few pence for the housekeeping; that Father was mean and common and a drunkard, and that she had been relying on me to raise her out of the misery of the life she was leading. And I knew that the look in her eyes was the fear that, like my father, I should turn out to be mean and common and a drunkard. After that morning, I think my childhood was at an end."

The County Leitrim website has been updated and the Mohill Civil Parish webpage was added along with pages (168) for all the townlands found in the civil parish. Some pictures, maps, links and records were also added. You can find the site at both Ireland Geological Projects at: http://www.igp-web.com/leitrim/index.htm And at Ireland GenWeb at: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/~irllet/ If you still access the site through Rootsweb, it would be better to change your bookmark to one of the above sites. If you would like to contribute records, pictures, surname links, maps etc., please contact me off the list. Also, if you find any mistakes, let me know also off list. -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com

O Ireland, isn't it grand you look -- Like a bride in her rich adornin'? And with all the pent-up love of my heart I bid you the top o' the morning'! -- John LOCKE, 'The Exile's Return' For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad. For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad. -- G. K. CHESTERTON God made the grass, the air and the rain; and the grass, the air and the rain made the Irish; and the Irish turned the grass; the air and the rain back into God. -- Sean O'FAOLAIN O Ireland my first and only love Where Christ and Caesar are hand in glove. -- James JOYCE Your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distance, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. -- George Bernard SHAW, "John Bull's Other Island." The land of faery, Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue. -- W. B. YEATS, "The Land of Heart's Desire." Ah, Ireland ... that damnable, delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be. -- Benjamin DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree ... And live alone in the bee-loud glade. I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. - William Butler YEATS, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" The graceful Georgian streets and squares, a series of steel engravings under a wet sky. -- Shana ALEXANDER, "Dublin Is My Sure Thing" My one claim to originality among Irishmen is that I have never made a speech. -- George MOORE, Irish author There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting. -- John SYNGE Everywhere in Irish prose there twinkles and peers the merry eye and laugh of a people who had little to laugh about in real life. -- Diarmuid RUSSELL The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man's fate and man's follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the fallow earth. -- T. E. KALEM Oh, all the money I e'er had, I spent it in good company, And all the harm I've ever done, Alas it was to none but me. And all I've done for want of wit To mem'ry now I can't recall; So fill to me the parting glass, Good night and joy be with you all. Ireland's ruins are historic emotions surrendered to time. -- Horace SUTTON The Gael is not like other men; the spade, and the lom, and the sword are not for him. But a destiny more glorious than that of Rome, more glorious than that of Britain, await him: to become the savior of idealism in modern intellectual and social life. -- Patrick PEARSE, Irish novelist Land of Heart's Desire, Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood, But joy is wisdom, time an endless song. -- William Butler YEATS Where there are Irish there's loving and fighting And when we stop either, it's Ireland no more! -- Rudyard KIPLING Oh Danny Boy, the pipes the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountain side. The summer's gone and all the roses falling, 'tis you 'tis you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer's in the meadow, or when the valley's hushed and white with snow. 'Tis there I'll be in the sunshine and shadow. Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so. The Irish tricolor made its debut in 1848. It was based on the French tricolor; however, the colors were altogether Irish. One outside band was made green, the color that had long been used as a symbol of the Catholic majority. The other outside band, a stripe of orange, was chosen to represent the Protestant minority. And the middle band of white represented their unity. The Burren, Irish for "gray rocky place," is 50 square miles of great irregular slabs of limestone with deep cracks. Located in County Clare, this humid, eerie moonscape is a natural rock garden, where plants native to the Arctic thrive next to subtropical flora. Beneath the scarred surface are spectacular caves and streams. Folk legends associated with the burren say its holy wells can cure bad vision and its caves are home to ghostly horsemen. It is also reputed that mysterious lakes appear and disappear there, taking with them maidens who have been turned into swans. The Emerald Isle gets it name from its rolling green countryside, kept verdant by the almost daily rain. Lush landscapes are not all the rain brings; there's also the magic of a rainbow every day! Ireland is only about the size of West Virginia. Wherever you happen to stop for a pint, you'll never be farther than 70 miles from the sea, and yet this tiny island land has one of the richest histories in the Western world. Ireland is made up of four provinces. Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and Munster, which are divided into 32 counties. Six of the nine counties in the province of Ulster make up the territory of Northern Ireland. We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English. -- Winston CHURCHILL "Unwillingness easily finds an excuse." "True greatness knows gentleness" "What's got badly, goes badly." "Pity him who makes his opinion a certainty."

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SNIPPET: In the March-April 2006 issue of Dublin's "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine is a several-page article (with marvelous photos) pertaining to Newgrange by Dublin freelance writer Elizabeth HEALY, a former editor of the magazine. ... "Newgrange Passage Grave, a tomb of the ancients, stands on the bank of the Boyne River. The Boyne flows in a wide curve to reach the sea at Drogheda, north of Dublin on the east coast. About 12km upriver near the town of Slane. it forms a dramatic loop, embracing an area we know as Bru na Boinne, the Palace, or Hostel of the Boyne, usually referred to nowadays, more prosaically, as the Bend of the Boyne. This is the sacred neolithic landscape dominated by three great passage tombs, those of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. As well as its other remarkable qualities, including its immense size, Newgrange is the first known astronomical calendar in the western world. It was created more than five thousand years ago. Little as we know about the religious beliefs of our Stone Age ancestors, what is clear is that even the earliest of them believed in an afterlife and built tombs for their dead. The pattern varied with different waves of arrivals. Some of the earliest built long covered chambers with curved open forecourts. Later groups delicately balanced single great boulders on two upright stones that formed a portal or entrance, supported at the back by smaller stones to create the classic 'dolmen' shape. Those with whom we are concerned here cremated and buried their dead in tombs that took the form of round mounds with passages leading to a central chamber. You could say that the dead were better housed than the living, who lived in houses built of wooden posts and wickerwork." .... Bru na Boinne Visitor Centre (Newgrange and Knowth), Donore, Co. Meath, Ireland.

in a letter i had found described a piece of lace made by a family member for a deceased person. the spelling in the letter as below. " Avis Eunice Hooper daughter of Unice Norah Buckley made the  "Fischea"[ fascicle?] lace for Sarah Buckleys burial gown the woman who was the recipient died in 1905 Maine does anyone know what this is?? thanks for any help in discovering what was the purpose of this item. Kiova

Perhaps they meant Fichu?? A Fichu was typically made of lace and used to?fill in?the low?bodice of a gown to keep the wearer modest. -----Original Message----- From: K. IOVANNA <3crow@comcast.net> To: irelandgenweb@rootsweb.com Sent: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 2:34 am Subject: [Irish Genealogy] Irish tradition. what is the word used for a lace piece of a burial gown? in a letter i had found described a piece of lace made by a family member for a deceased person. the spelling in the letter as below. " Avis Eunice Hooper daughter of Unice Norah Buckley made the ?"Fischea"[ fascicle?] lace for Sarah Buckleys burial gown the woman who was the recipient died in 1905 Maine does anyone know what this is?? thanks for any help in discovering what was the purpose of this item. Kiova Check out the Ireland GenWeb website at: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/ It is a good place to get help with your family research. Help wanted: County Coordinators ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to IRELANDGENWEB-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

http://castlegarden.org/about.html Thanks, lister, for reminding me of this resource. Jean ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean R." <jeanrice@cet.com> To: <IrelandGenWeb-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2008 3:24 PM Subject: [Irish Genealogy] Immigration - Castle Garden (NY) 1855-1890 - "I HearAmerica Singing"/Walt WHITMAN, chronicler life in America

SNIPPET: NY's Castle Garden welcomed some eight million immigrants between 1855-1890, six million of whom were German or Irish. If you believe your ancestors came through Ellis Island before 1892, chances are they actually came through Castle Garden. During the 1880s, almost 70% of all immigrants to America were received at Castle Garden. Passenger arrival indexes do not exist for these years. To find the ship manifests, you will need to know the approximate date of arrival, per article in "Family Chronicle" magazine Jan-Feb 2000. Microfilms of the manifests (Customs Passengers Lists) are available through the National Archives and the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) Family History Library. Walt WHITMAN, born on Long Island in 1819, considered one of the most important chroniclers of life in America (and NY, in particular) penned these famous lines: "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear/Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong/The carpenter singing his as he measures his lank or beam/The mason singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck/The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands/The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown/The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing/Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else/The day what belongs to the day - at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly/Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs." The story of Castle Garden is the story of a site's constant transformation to serve NY's needs. At the lower tip of Manhattan there was once an island that was eventually joined to the mainland by landfill Between 1807 and 1811 a circular fort was built there by the federal government in preparation for the coming war with England. This became known as the Southwest Battery. It was renamed Castle Clinton in 1815 after DeWitt CLINTON, the first governor of NY, whose grandfather, Charles CLINTON, an immigrant from Co. Longford, had emerged as a prosperous merchant. (It is noted that not all Irish in colonial America arrived as penniless servants and stayed that way - some became notable merchants and entrepreneurs, and in one particular area where Irishmen achieved prominence was in journalism, establishing leading newspapers). Dubbed Castle Garden because of the new flower and shrubs that graced the grounds, the fort was repurposed into a place for entertainment, including concerts and fireworks. In 1839, entrepreneurs, Philip FRENCH and Christopher HEISER, leased the site to make Castle Garden into a grand, large-scale entertainment center. They installed a stage and new floor in a room that would now hold 6,000 seats arranged in a huge semi-circle. Under their management, Castle Garden became a renowned amusement hall and opera house. It was here that Swedish songstress Jenny LIND made her American debut in 1850. But when the lease expired in 1854, it opened the door for Castle Garden to take on yet another purpose. While New Yorkers were coming to Castle Garden to see light operas and ballets, etc., the Commissioners of Emigration were faced with the growing challenge of handling thousands of immigrants each week at NY Harbor. With no time to erect a new building, they leased Castle Garden - much to the horror of the local residents. On 1 August 1855, it opened its doors as America's first receiving station for immigrants. Refreshment rooms were replaced by bathrooms, the seats replaced by long wooden benches so immigrants could find the desks marked Registry, General Information, Exchange Office and Railroad Department. The stage was gone; now an iron staircase led to the Office of Commissioners of Emigration, General Agent and Superintendent. Compared to earlier immigrants arriving in NY, those who were received at Castle Garden had a more pleasant experience. Due to an enclosure, immigrants now had some protective from unsavory characters laying in wait. Said a "New York Times" article in 1874, "Castle Garden is so well known in Europe that few emigrants can be induced to sail for any other destination. Their friends in this country write to those who are intending to emigrate to come to Castle Garden where they will be safe, and, if out of money, they can remain until it is sent to them. Complaints are frequently received by the commissioners from emigrants who have been landing at Halifax or Boston though they were promised to be brought to New York." New federal legislation passed in 1855 helped immigrants on board ships. There were now new rules governing how much space a passenger was allowed, the proportion of passengers to tonnage, degree of cleanliness, ventilation, and food and cooking provisions. Each ship was now required to supply a complete manifest of passengers to the local customs officials, eventually making its way to the federal government. Coming to America was still difficult, however. Old sailing ships were still in use which made it virtually impossible to calculate the number of weeks it would take to make a crossing. Passengers complained of conditions and deaths were not unheard of. As well, the Commissioners of Emigration had fallen deeply into debt as a result of an 1875 Supreme Court decision, declaring a NY law that required ships to post a bond or else pay a tax on each immigrant unconstitutional. Disaster struck in 1876 when fire broke out in Castle Garden. Only the old fort walls and a few outer buildings remained. Reconstruction began two months later, despite critics who wanted the site to revert back to its former elegance as a park. In a few months, ships were welcomed again. A massive wave of immigration began in the 1880s. In 1881, more that 455,000 people passed through Castle Garden. From 1880 through 1890, nearly four million immigrants came to NY. Castle Garden was functioning well beyond its capacity and complaints were numerous. Combined with similar difficulties encountered at other ports of entry, the Secretary of Treasury recommended that the federal government take over all immigration. The government's contract with NY's Commissioners of Emigration was terminated on 18 April 1890. On that day, the last immigrants from the steamers "Bohemia" and "State of Indiana" were processed at Castle Garden. The center closed its doors. The immigration center moved to Ellis Island, already owned by the government, which began its new role in 1892. From 1896 to 1941 Castle Garden served the public by housing the New York City aquarium, which later moved to Coney Island. After the Second World War the park was remodeled; and Castle Clinton became a national monument in 1950. The park is also home to a statue of Giovanni da VERRAZANO, the first European to enter New York Harbour.

Hello listers, Desperately looking for any information regarding the above ancestors. Mary Ann FITZGERALDb.1836 somewhere in Ireland m. Thomas Hooley 1857 Swansea d. Cardiff 1908 Her father, Timothy FITZGERALD b.1784 and his 1st marriage Ireland His first wife's name b.& d. and where. in Ireland His father, Redmond FITZGERALD bmd Ireland What relationship to Redmond FITZGERALD d.1766 and buried in the St. James Cemetery, Mallow. Can any kind persons on the above lists do a look up for me please as I am desperately trying to find the above family to finalize my Family Tree and I cannot get past this brick wall. Thanking you in advance Kind regards, Mary

The County Tipperary site on the Ireland GenWeb Project has been updated. There are now individual webpages for 75 civil parishes and 1,370 townlands. Many have pictures and maps. All have available Family History Library film numbers and links. Many have surname links. If there is a townland or civil parish page you would like added with the next update, you can send me an email with your request. The following civil parish pages have either been added or updated: Holycross, Templebeg, Ballycahill, Rahelty and Templemore in the North Riding. Lattin, Tipperary, Templeroe, Rathkennan, Clonoulty, Clogher and Gaile in the South Riding. Each page has a map of the civil parish with the townlands indicated. Some new records have been contributed to the site plus some nice pictures plus surname links. If you have records and/or pictures or links you would like to contribute to the site, please contact me off the list. Also, if you find any mistake, also contact me off list. You can find the site at: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/~irltip/ -- Pat Connors, Sacramento CA http://www.connorsgenealogy.com

SNIPPET: Ciaran CARSON, Irish musician, poet and novelist, was born in Belfast (Antrim) No. Ireland in 1948 and has won awards in England and America. In the latter case, his books of poetry are published by the Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. Here are some excerpt from one of his books - "Last Night's Fun ..." pub. 1996 -- including a marvelous poem "Rubber Legs" by John LOUGHRAN. "We are in Garrison on the Fermanagh-Leitrim border. It is a late summer's evening. A gang of us -- flute-players Mick Hoy, Andy Dickson, Seamus Quinn and Deirdre Shannon; the concertina-player and singer Gabie McArdle and others - have been recruited from the pub. The Festival committee has switched on the fairy lights that drape the back of the lorry parked in the carpark; the lough beside reflects a still-enduring streak of sky, and the whole dusk seems to glow. Precarious on the makeshift mobile stage, we play a few tunes to the crowd that's scattered round in knots and dots and couples. Then Gabie sings 'Edmund on Lough Erne Shore'" - 'Each step I take by the winding river/Makes me reminded of days of yore.' The song ends; there is a little ripple of applause. Someone comes up and hand us cigarettes, and asks for 'The Harvest Home.' We sit and talk and smoke a while, then nick our cigarettes and start to play. Almost instantly, one knot of the crowd unravels and this old man in a topcoat and a hat and big boots tied with yellow laces steps out. From another dark annex of the carpark, his counterpart appears. By the time we hit the last part of the first part first time round, they're poised and ready - arms not stiff and rigid like the modern over-educated dancer, but relaxed, palms held outwards in a gesture some way between a welcome and a challenge. They face each other, one foot pointing outwards, while the crowd has shifted and coagulated round them in a focus of attention. But they have space, the dancers. As we hit the first part of the repeat, their feet begin to move. Their hands accompany the dance in little wristy arcane movements, thumbs alternating with their digits. Their feet are hardly off the ground as they heel and toe and tap, till it seems there is a skim of twilight shimmering between their boot-soles and the black wet tarmac. Loose change jingles in their pockets as they waver gravely in the pre-determined figures, facing, backing off and circling, making pirouettes and formal quarter-bows, catching one another's little fingers on occasions, sometimes going for a full hand-clasp, instantly and rhythmically released. They doppelganger one another. Nods and winks are witnessed as they undergo the subtle drama of the ceili house. They reinvent the past and all their past encounters; then the pattern comes to its conclusion. Four feet stand on terra firma for one instant, then they break apart and take the gait of normal human beings. Everyone's relaxed now. Cigarettes are passed around and lit. There is a surreptitious bottle full of who knows what. A buzz of conversation. Laughter shimmers out across Lough Melvin; the fairly lights are swaying, chinking gently in the desultory breeze..." RUBBER LEGS But then I mind Keenan and this man Brian McAleer, there was a big barn dance in it one night and the thing got going that good and Brian came out of the kitchen. Och, he was going on maybe seventy years of age at the time. But a light, thin man, you know, and always with good spirit. Great singer too. And him and Keenan hit the floor for a reel. Well, if you seen them two men dancing, boy, they were dancing from when they were young fellows, you know, in their youth, and still this was a great meeting for them to meet again two old men, you know, they'd been dancing whenever they were young fellows. I'll tell you what they done too and they sung together and they herded, when there was no ditches and no fences about and you went out and herded your cattle the whole day and him and Brian was raised together. That was Keenan's farm there and McAleer's farm was here and the two men herding on the one mountain together and they sung together the whole day and exchanged songs. And Brian and him going out that night on the floor and if you seen them boys, you would just think their legs was rubber. I could mind Brian McAleer, you want to see that man and him over eighty, and the thin light legs of him, and I can see him yet. And Keenan was down below, and Keenan was a small man, a small tight wee man, sort of wee pernickety man, you know, and he was down there dancing. And Keenan and McAleer was up and then they would change places. Well, you want to see McAleer; you'd think the legs was rubber, for a man like that, no pains nor arthritis nor rheumatism nor damn what else. He was quivering and carrying on with his feet and Keenan was down below and Keenan was putting in nice fancy steps, you know. Ah Jesus, you want to see them two men dancing, you could have played for them for a week. -- John Loughran

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CEILI "The wind is wicked over McCabe's today" - an old neighbour calling to see my grandmother. They feel a greater chill set in - the oldest now for miles around - sensing their past slowly ebb away. Settling around the hearth for the ritual of words, drink is offered and taken. Stories, hesitant at first, catch the music of memory and dance the slow dance of remembering. Old friends sing in the snatches of laughter: a laughter that cloaks a half-understood regret for times now stranded on the islands of ageing minds, naming names of once familiar places (Knockacullion, Mullinasillagh, Derrynawana) townlands of spruce and pine, and stone mounds that once were homes. To sit in this room of ghosts is to know the power of the past, people, places, great events in a small world: knowing them when they were more than inscriptions on the headstone of a dying community. Now a litany - the only words to name such absence. The heady balm of talk, The warmth of fire and whiskey, the calming glow of nostalgia: I remember, as he rose to go, his big, tanned, awkward hands lifted in some vague salute like great dark sea-birds blown miles from shore flirting with the wild and restless waves below. -- Jim King, Knockacullion, Aghacashel, Co. Leitrim

DROMAHAIRE TURKEY MARKET OF YESTERYEAR Oh, Christmas must be drawing near, Narrow winding busy roads, Lead into Dromahaire. Distant rolling rattling wheels Of turkey carts. I hear, 'Tis the big turkey market, I declare. Strike a tough bargain folk, For our hard earned pay, Today our selling price shall be Two and sixpence a pound for hens, And two shillings for cocks, not a penny less, Cash tightly grasped in our fists, Can buy our chosen Christmas gifts. Sure its time to join in celebration, Enter Tom O'Brien's friendly old pub, Strong unshaven menfolk Leisurely sit on polished high stools, Drink black porter by the pint, Comely womenfolk tiptoe into darkened snug, Fresh turf fire kindles slowly, A glimmer of heat not so cosy, Sip glasses of port wine, their own little treat. Its getting late now, I see the falling dusk Descend on grey castle walls, Patient donkeys tied on 'back-line' Now are restless and cold. Soon they will remind us As their rebellious roars unfold. Hastily I enter gaily lit Gillmor's shop, To buy some currants and raisins For my Christmas cake to bake, Bulls-eye sweets for the children at home, I take. Homeward I stroll now, Behind my ass-cart weary and cold, Grey winters frost stiffens canvas Draped over my empty cart. Dim street light on 'castle hill,' Guides me slowly out of town, Happy I am, as I reach my little home, My once noisy turkey shed, Now stands vacant and still. -- Michael Hamilton, 2005 issue "Leitrim Guardian" yearly magazine.