This was my first home; it’s in the Valley Falls section of Cumberland, Rhode Island. My parents rented it from about 1962-1966. It looks nearly identical in old pictures. The house was built in 1937 for a couple of immigrants—James Donohue and his second wife, Margaret Crozier—who both came with their families when they were young from County Tyrone in what is now Northern Ireland. Between the two of them, they seem to have been related to everyone in Valley Falls, since so many people came from Tyrone to work for the Lonsdale Company, a huge textile manufacturer down the street. James worked for decades in the company’s bleachery and grew up in a mill house not far away.
The Donahue’s daughter Kate was my aunt as well as my godmother. Her childhood house was passed from family to family, so a number of my Lynch cousins were born into this house, too. Actually, cousins of mine still own the house and rent it out. One tenant is my late uncle’s former girlfriend. I met her the day I was drawing. When she saw me working, she thought I was tracking traffic on the street. Who else would sit there with a pad and look back and forth for so long?
Visiting the Relatives 