The Ceallunach

The path is easy to miss. The gate says The Ceallunach, and just inside is a sign, carved in stone, that says, Trail of the Innocents. A short shady walk leads to a small field of stones overlooking the water by the shore of Kells Bay. This is the children’s burial ground. For hundreds of

Humbling Homestead

The ancestral home of the Lynches in Roads (or Rhodes), Cahersiveen, County Kerry, sits low against a dip in the hill – allowing me to look down on the stone ruins to draw. On the horizon are Dingle Bay and the Dingle Peninsula. Where I live, it would cost a fortune for waterfront property like

Farewell

On May 26, 1884, a huge oceanic steamship, the Furnessia, having left Liverpool, made a very unusual stop at the small island of Valentia, County Kerry, Ireland. It took my family and many others away from County Kerry – to America. The Lynches’ last views of Ireland were here, by this lighthouse at Cromwell Point

Between the Mountains and the Sea

The Lynches lived between the mountains and the sea in the remote townland of Roads, in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, Ireland. It’s isolated — the end of the road. While some may follow “The Winding Way Down to Kells Bay,” few carry on still further — behind the mountains to this hidden landscape. Perhaps that’s why

Workhouse II

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”-W.B. Yeats Irish poet.  The workhouse at Bahaghs, in the southwest corner of Ireland, is even more gloomy inside than out. And that’s saying a lot. The roof is gone. There are no floors. And trash is thrown around

The Workhouse I

Like a bad memory, it has faded, but still unsettles. The workhouse at Bahaghs still stands in a muddy field three miles outside the town of Cahersiveen in County Kerry. Originally built as a lodge for the wealthy McCarthy family, it was converted to a “sanctuary to the destitute” in 1842, and served the region

Burial Ground

There are over 1200 small, nameless stone markers in the ancient burial ground at Srugrena, County Kerry, Ireland. They represent a fraction of the poor farmers and their families who died nearby, including my ancestors. Some of the newer graves of Lynches, O’Sullivans, Sheehans and more, are probably related to me as well. This has

Rock Pile

In a sloping, rocky field in southwestern Ireland, off the Ring of Kerry, lie the crumbling remains of three stone cottages. To the four sheep who currently live there, they probably hold little interest. But to me, they are everything. Finding them was like discovering Pompeii, or finding the Rosetta Stone, or perhaps the Dead

So Many Sullivans

Soon after her husband died in 1898, my great-grandmother Mary Sullivan Lynch moved into this mill house in Norwich, Connecticut, with her son Timothy. This was one of a number of identical brick houses, built by the Yantic River in 1855 for workers of the big Falls Company textile mill, a short walk away. These

Pleasing Characteristics

My immigrant great-great-grandmother Mary Sullivan Lynch lived in this house for a year in 1903 with her son Timothy. She was a widow at the time. I’m confident that she had little or nothing to do with the church next door which was built in 1890 because she was a Catholic and belonged to St.