I found this metaphor for my research project sitting in an empty field on the far southwest coast of the Beara Peninsula, in County Cork, Ireland. This is the Kealogue Copper Mine in Allihies, a small village that sits between the mountains and the sea. The structure is an engine house which held a steam engine that pumped water from below, allowing miners to tunnel 18 shafts between the years 1842 and 1882. There were once four engine houses here, and many more mines. Now they’re all empty. All that’s left are these tall structures scattered about the treeless landscape. To me, this is a monument to all who search in the dark, who follow leads, dig deep, and eventually hit dead ends.
One of the tools I use in my ancestral research is DNA. It can be remarkably helpful in finding leads as to where a family is from. Unfortunately, women do not pass on the same number of DNA markers as men, so some mysteries remain in my mother’s family’s past. To look at my mother’s profile is to be deceived. Her father’s family, the O’Connors, are from Cork City. Her mother’s family, the O’Keeffes, are from East Cork. Believe me, I know. But her DNA doesn’t list those places. Instead, it points to here —the Western Beara Peninsula. She is also connected by blood to many of the families who left these empty mines long ago —having moved on to do the same dirty work in the States — starting in Butte, Montana. How I’m connected—and through whom—remains a mystery. This may be the end of the line, this empty mine.
Visiting the Relatives 