Percolating - Joshua's story

As I work on scenes and chapters for the third generation in my story - Joshua English's life - I've been stumped because I don't know anything about Mary Holmes. I know she must be some relation of Richard Holmes, but I don't know how. He's about half a generation older than she, so not a father,  possibly an older brother but more likely a cousin. Her parents aren't mentioned in the wedding procedures, which often means that they're dead. So, not only is she a genealogical brick wall, but I have trouble filling in her character when I don't even know about siblings, background, anything. Everybody else in the novel has at least had a factual family.

As I draw a big blank with Mary, I'm having an inspirational week with Joshua. Little things, tidbits, that I read in the meeting minutes percolate in my head and sometimes boil over into revelations. For example, his marriage inquiry included Dublin, which means that he lived there at some point. Since they didn't have a schoolmaster in Moate, I was thinking he might have been sent to school there. This week, I had one of those head-on-the-pillow eureka moments: Joshua's emmigration request mentioned that he lived in some other area than Toorphelim (next to Moate). My eureka thought was that he didn't live on his father's farm; he lost his land! Which adds to the drive to come to America.

Joshua was a middle child, so inheritance may have gone to an older brother, John or Abraham. I've been wondering (and looking for) what happened to Joshua's brothers. Maybe, after his mother and John were disowned, the whole family moved to Dublin. But who lived on the family farm? Joshua's father left it in trust to the meeting, but if they gave it back to the family when one or more of the children came of age, they could have sold it.

I know that Joshua came back to live near Moate and married Mary Holmes. His little brother, Thomas, was at his wedding. Joshua had a family and survived the Great Frost. He must have been devastated when his daughter was disowned and brought disgrace to her parents. Without the family farm, there was nothing to keep him from wanting to emmigrate and start a new life.

More Irish kindness

So many people helped me out during my trip: librarians, history buffs, B&B owners. Yesterday, I came home to a package from Ireland. What could it be? I wasn't expecting anything. It was from the National Archives in Dublin. I opened it up, and inside were the copies of wills from the Holmes family. I thought I had them with me; I hadn't even missed them, yet. Some very thoughtful employee at the Archives had simply mailed them to me, internationally.

Last night I drew out the family relationships from the wills. Their Mary Holmes is too old to be my Mary - she was old enough to be an executrix in 1691, whereas my Mary was a newlywed in 1725, who had several children after that date.

I still think the family is connected. They have all the right family names. Several wills mention only "the younger children." Mary could still be a granddaughter of Peter and Bridget Holmes. Richard and Isabell Holmes are the right ages and the right county to have been at Mary's wedding. Richard could be Mary's older brother, but my guess would be a cousin.

Breaking through on the Holmes family

Spent more time than I expected today at the National Archives. I wanted to look up some wills that I had seen in the index at the National Library, but when I got there they told me that many of those had been lost in a fire. So I looked through the old-fashioned card file (half a wall of small drawers) and found that they didn't have the names I'd written down, but they had some others that I decided to look up just based on date.

Most of the research in Dublin has been a learning process; sometimes you ask for an old book, sometimes microfilms, sometimes a manuscript that's in another building. This time they brought me an envelope with two old notepads in it. The pads contained the tight scribbles of some previous genealogist who had written excerpts of the wills he had found - wills that may no longer exist.

The notes contained Peter Holmes, who had a daughter named Mary, and other family members. The hopeful clues are that her brother-in-law mentioned her as unmarried in 1717; my Mary wed about 1721. Then, her uncle had children that included Richard and Isabell; my Mary had a Richard and Isabell Holmes at her wedding!

I'll have to examine the years and relationships when I get home, but it looks like Mary, who married Joshua English and came to colonial South Carolina, may have parents named Peter and Briget! And I would never have known except for browsing the name at the Archives in Dublin.

Not to mention some unknown, kindred genealogical soul from perhaps the 1940s. Could my notebooks, my little scribbles be so useful to somebody, someday?

Barking up the wrong street

My primary mission on this trip is to fill in the details of my family story, including sisters and their families, of whom I didn't take much notice last time. However, like any obsessed genealogist, I'm always looking to fill in the family tree; as in finding someone's parents and going back another generation. Today I ran into the Holmes family, in Limerick or Dublin I think, because they had a daughter named Mary. Mary Holmes is my ancestor and I don't know her parents' names. But then I saw the list of deaths, and this Mary died young. As a matter of fact, several of the children died, and then their mother. There's no mention of the father's death in these records. I suspect that after so much tragedy he must have moved away.

From the Archives: The search for Thomas English

Part II — Stone walls and sheep fields

I had two goals for my trip to Ireland: to find the old Quaker cemetery and meeting house ruins in Moate, where the Thomas English family (my ancestors) had lived, and to search the meeting records for family information.
We rented a car in Dublin and hit the road — “the left side, drive on the left side!” We arrived in Moate (pronounced “mote”), a small town in the middle of Ireland, in County Westmeath. We saw stone walls, sheep fields with lush green grass, houses and old churches.
Having learned that the Quaker cemetery was on the grounds of “the Castle,” I started my search at Dún na Sí, the local heritage center. They told me where to find the Castle and its owner.
While there, I learned an important fact — that early Quakers did not believe in grave inscriptions. They would be marked with a simple stone or not at all.
The Castle is a stone manor house, once owned by the town landlord, John Clibborn, who married Thomas English’s daughter, Dinah. I found its current owner, Reggie Mitchell, working in his flower shop in town. He told me that I was welcome to look around, but I would have to climb some walls.
His directions led me down an alley between the backs of pubs and the stone wall surrounding the Castle grounds. It started to rain, but I had come so far I wasn’t going to be turned back by a little weather. I found the lowest part of the wall, stepped on a rock and clambered over the slippery stones. I thought, no hope of wearing these pants again tomorrow. I found the cemetery, just as Mitchell described, with a leaning, six-foot iron gate locked with a rusted padlock. I wasn’t sure it would even hold me.
It did. It was easier to climb than the wall, although the rain had picked up and everything was wet.
The grass and weeds were so long that I walked on top of them, not seeing the ground. I felt a stone and moved the grass with my boot to see that it was a plain one. Could Thomas English have been buried here? Near it was a newer, marked stone, one of the Clibborns.
Around the corner were more stones, all from later years (1800s). They were in sorry state. Some were readable, but many had fallen over and were buried under tall grass.
Soaked to the skin, I retreated to the inn and dried off. The next day I returned an easier way, through the sheep field, a modern gate, and over some barbed wire.
I found the remains of some rooms; apparently the meeting house was built around the cemetery. I tried to imagine what it had been like in this place where my ancestors sat and worshipped 350 years ago, but I could not quite picture it.
Dublin pulled us back to the modern world with the shock of a crowded, sprawling city. I took a taxi to Quaker House in the suburbs. They are only open two hours each Thursday; I had planned our whole week around them.
It was worth it. They graciously let me stay all afternoon.
The librarian brought me the first minute book of Moate meeting and loaned me gloves to handle the 17th century pages. It contained vital records by family, deaths and burials, including Thomas English and his children.
The marriage records were wonderfully detailed, including the vows and witnesses. One was of the marriage of Joshua English, Thomas’ great-grandson who immigrated to South Carolina, to Mary Holmes.
At a meeting in Lismoyney in 1725 or 1726, “He the said Joshua English Taking the Said Mary Holmes by the Hand, Did openly Declare...friends You Are witnesses, that I take Mary Holmes to be My wife Promising with the Lords Assistance to be Unto her a Loving And faithfull Husband till Death Sepparates us, And then And there...Mary Holmes Did In Like Manner Declare” the same vows.
I would love to have had more time, but I copied so much information that my head was spinning.
Ms. Betty was kind enough to give me a ride back to the hotel.
I happily told my finds to my sister as we packed for the trip home. I had enough research to last me a long time — at least until the next trip.

Published in the Archdale-Trinity News, August 31, 2006.

Read Part I here.