Let's begin with my great grandmother - my mother's mother's mother. Her name was Hannah (or Johanna) Driscoll, and she was born in West Cork, Ireland in the townland of Ballymacrown (in Irish, that would be Baile Mhic Eiriúin). She was baptized in the Catholic parish of Rath and The Islands on March 1st, 1870. Well, that's what the parish record says, anyway. In later life she would say that she was born in 1872. Time seems to have been a flexible commodity in that era and that place. Her parents were Timothy Driscoll and Ellen Collins, and the baptism was witnessed by Barry Collins and Ellen Sullivan. (Barry was probably her uncle.) Today, the townland of Ballymacrown is in the parish of Skibbereen, so the extent of the parishes must have changed over the past 150 years. It turns out that there are lots of older family connections throughout West Cork. Both of the surnames Driscoll and Collins are very common in this area, and the names Timothy, Ellen, and Johanna are found everywhere (although, not so nearly common as Mary!).
As far as I've been able to determine, Hannah and her brother Jeremiah were the first of her immediate family to emigrate to the U.S. The oldest record I've found is in the 1892 census of New York State in which she is described as a domestic and living in the city of Oswego, New York. This document does not explicitly say anything about the relationships between the people listed, nor does it specify the address. That said, it is more or less organized by households since the surnames are clustered and children are generally listed in order of age. So I think we can make some tentative interpretations: the name immediately before Hannah's is "Jerrimiah," 22 years old, and that age corresponds with what I found in the Irish parish registers. The next three names above Jeremiah's are interesting, and something I hadn't noticed until writing this blog post: they are Thomas Collins, aged 54, sexton; Peter Collins, aged 18, laborer; and Nellie Collins, aged 15, domestic. This meant absolutely nothing to me when I first found this record several years ago, but on the basis of this summer's research I think that I know who these people were! That'll have to be the subject of one of the next blog posts. (I'm really excited to see this now.)
In 1895, following the death of her husband, Ellen Driscoll emigrated to the U.S., travelling with her four children Timothy, Ellen, Katie, and Michael. They entered the country in Philadelphia, came from Skibbereen, and their destination was recorded as "Sister Hannah, 152 Water St., Oswego."
My goal in this post is not to pursue the fate of all of these children in America, but rather to go in the other direction, back to Ireland. Skibbereen (An Sciobarín) is a small town, with a population of 2,778 in 2016, located about 50 miles southwest of Cork city. The town sells itself today as the "hub of West Cork," a base from which to explore the area. However, it gained international fame during the years of the Great Famine (an Gorta Mór, 1845-1852). The Illustrated London News sent an artist to the area in early 1847 to report on the conditions and provide pictures of what he found. Some of these pictures are very famous and have been reprinted many times, particularly the images of people suffering.
Mahony also sketched the town of Skibbereen. The caption says the vantage point was Clover Hill, and this is basically the northern entrance into town. The two buildings in the drawing are still there. On the left is the Courthouse, still serving that function today. On the right is the schoolhouse that had just been built. Today that building is the headquarters of a local tech company, Spearline. You may find a discrepancy between the two pictures of the schoolhouse: renovations in the 1970s converted the two-story building to three.
One of the highlights that I was looking forward to was a visit to the Skibbereen Heritage Centre. I found the story about the Courthouse and schoolhouse on their website, and you can find more details in their story about an Interesting history of two prominent buildings in Skibbereen. I had scheduled an appointment with Margaret, the genealogist at the Heritage Centre, but of course I had to cancel. That might have been a bit of a blessing: I've discovered so much about my Driscoll and Collins relatives over the summer. When I do get a chance to meet with her, I'll have a lot more background material for her.
I believe that Ellen Collins was born in the townland of Drishane. The photograph of her baptismal record is barely legible, and I don't think the townland was recorded. It is recorded, though, in the baptismal records of some of her brothers. Drishane borders the village of Castletownshend, which is only 5.5 miles (8.8 km) southeast of Skibbereen. At the end of this post is a map of West Cork with all of these places labelled. The townland is the location of Drishane House, built in 1780, the ancestral home of the Somervilles. Some of you may recall the television series produced by Ulster Television and Raidió Teilifis Éireann (Irish Radio & Television) from 1983-1985, The Irish R.M. (R.M. stands for resident magistrate.) I saw it occasionally in PBS reruns. The connection is that the TV series was based on stories authored by the cousins Edith Œnone Sommerville and her (female) cousin Martin Ross. I've added a short video with an aerial view of Drishane House.
The townland of Ballymacrown, where Tim and Ellen Driscoll farmed, is southwest of Skibbereen, near the port town of Baltimore (Baile an Tighe Mór). No, not that Baltimore: although the U.S. city of Baltimore was named for the second Baron Baltimore, his Baltimore Manor was in north-central Ireland, in County Longford. Confusingly, there were two Timothy Driscolls living and farming in Ballymacrown. It's very tempting to conclude that they were somehow related, but I haven't been able to figure that out yet. My Tim Driscoll died fairly young, at the age of 47 in 1883 of some kind of fever. One of my genealogical loose ends is that the informant in the civil registration of his death was his niece, Anne Driscoll. Frustratingly, I still don't know who she was.
Ellen Driscoll passed away in 1919 in Oswego, and her obituary states that "She is survived by four sons, Jeremiah, Timothy, Daniel, and Michael of this city, and two daughters, Mrs. Patrick Cotter, Ireland and Mrs. Frederick Bough; also a brother, Peter Collins of this city" (published in the Oswego Daily Times, 01 Jul 1919). For the longest time I had been able to account for everyone on that list except for the mysterious Mrs. Patrick Cotter. To solve that problem required a bit of speculation initially.
The first step was to work my way through all of the baptismal records in the area of West Cork around Skibbereen, looking for children with the parents Timothy Driscoll and Ellen Collins from the townland of Ballymacrown. At the end of this there was a grand total of ten children! Seven of these I've already named. In addition there was John, the firstborn, who died at the age of 5 in 1867. There were two Timothys, the one in the immigration record from Philadelphia, but also an earlier one baptized in 1872 (another reason to not believe that Hannah was born in 1872). I presume that this child also died young, but I haven't found a death record. And the third one, new to my list at the time, was a girl: Mary. Since this was the only daughter that was unaccounted for, I concluded that she must be the missing Mrs. Cotter. And if Mrs. Cotter was living in Ireland at the time of her mother's death in 1919, then likely she would appear in one or both of the surviving censuses of Ireland which were made in 1901 and 1911. Luckily enough, I was able to find her in both of them. Her husband Patrick is not included in either census, but he was a fisherman and likely was out at sea when the census taker came round. Mary Anne Cotter (for her middle name turned out to be Anne) had seven children, all of whom survived childhood. She worked, probably in her home, as a dressmaker in a place that the census recorded as Middle Glen, Skibbereen.
At this point it would be appropriate to challenge me: how do you know that this is the right Patrick Cotter and Mary Driscoll? These are very common names, and this may be nothing more than coincidence. In my defense, the civil record of their marriage in 1885 stated that Mary was from Ballymacrown and that her father was named Timothy (already deceased by this time). Further research has revealed several DNA matches with descendants of Patrick and Mary. Therefore, I'm reasonably confident that I was lucky enough to find the right couple.
A couple of things to note about the census record. First, Mary spoke both Irish and English. West Cork is one of the few places left in Ireland, the Gaeltacht, where Irish is a first language and is used as an everyday means of communication. Second, the "address" where they lived: Middle Glen, Skibbereen. You'd be forgiven if you thought that Middle Glen was a neighborhood in that town. Instead, Middle Glen is on Cape Clear (Cléire or Oileán Chléire), and despite its name, this is an island off the far southwestern coast of Ireland. The population of the island, as of 2011, was only 124 people on a total of 2.6 square miles (6.7 km²). Cape Clear is the southernmost populated area of Ireland.
Once I'd discovered Mary Anne Cotter (1865-1941) it felt like a door had opened, and I entered a house with dozens of new rooms to explore. Mary and Patrick had eight children: John Patrick (1887-1974), Mary Anne (1891-1961), Patrick (1893-1963), Catherine (1895-1978), James (1898-????), Hannah (1900-????), Timothy (1903-1916), and Elizabeth (1906-1980). The question marks with some of those names are a clue that there's still a lot for me to learn about the family. But from what I know so far, I've found descendants of them in Ireland (of course), England, Scotland, Connecticut, California, Australia, and even a third cousin living here in Columbus, Ohio!
The eldest son, John Patrick, has an interesting history. Like many in the family, he was a man of the sea. He only completed one year of high school education, but by 1940 his occupation is cited in the census as Ship Captain. I'm not sure exactly when he emigrated to the U.S., but in 1917 when he registered for the World War I draft he was a naturalized citizen and living, or at least based, in San Francisco. At that time he was Mate on the S.S. Ecuador, a ship then owned by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
During the Second World War Cotter served in a number of roles in the Navy, including captain of several different ships transporting troops around the Pacific theater of operations. Here is an excerpt from a letter the he wrote to his brother Patrick and published in the newspaper Southern Star:
We all made Brisbane safe on December 22 [1942], stayed there three weeks, then sailed for Port Moresby in New Guinea. Again I was attacked by submarines, three of them, and I had no cruiser or plane. I had to run for New Zealand, got to the port of Auckland, and had to wait there twenty-three days for a convoy. Then started out again and made Port Moresby safe. From Port Moresby we returned to Sydney Australia and loaded cargo and troops for Port Darwin in North Australia. We had a convoy of ten ships and an American destroyer
[the USS Peary, I believe]. The Meigs [a troop transport] was with us.At 10 o'clock on the morning of February 19, 1942, while getting ready to anchor in Darwin Harbour forty Jap bombing planes appeared overhead and started bombing.
Our Destroyer was the first to get hit, she went to pieces. Then the Meigs sank. I ran out under a smoke screen and made twenty-two knots an hour until dark, when I was told to return to Brisbane.
There were seven ships sunk in Darwin that morning in about forty-five minutes. I sure was lucky I had a fast ship and a good one. There was one man killed on the Meigs and several wounded including the Captain. He was chief officer with me when I was in charge of the Meigs. Everyone on the Destroyer was lost.
I want to wrap up this post by returning to Cape Clear and West Cork. On the northwest side of the island, facing the Atlantic, are the ruins of O'Driscoll's castle (Dún an Óir, Gold Castle). There is also another O Driscoll castle, Dún na Séad, in the port village of Baltimore. These are just two fortified buildings - castles or ports - associated with the Driscoll family in West Cork. The family traces its history back into the mists of mythical times, and the name is derived from Ó hEidirsceoil. They were Kings of Munster in the 7th century and remained one of the dominant groups up until the reign of Henry VIII in England. At that point the ruling class were dispossessed, but the name remains one of the dominant ones in this part of Ireland. As I've started learning a bit more of this part of Irish history, I can tell that there is a tremendous amount of information of which I am totally ignorant. This will be an interesting area to continue to dig into.
I've found two resources to help me to learn more about the O Driscoll family. The first is a website devoted to the O Driscolls at odriscolls.me.uk The second is a book that I saw for sale on the web: O Driscolls Past and Present by Éamon Lankford. Lankford, among his many pursuits, is the founder and director of the Cape Clear Island Museum and Archive. In addition to its exhibits, the small museum "houses the O Driscoll Memorial Archive and exhibition panels relating to the history and heritage of the Worldwide O Driscoll family" (capeclearmuseum.ie). This is certainly a place I would love to visit. After I ordered the book, I was surprised to receive a personal email from the author, inviting me to contribute my own family story to their collection of stories from the O Driscoll diaspora. He also pointed out that annually (well, in non-COVID years) there is an annual O Driscoll Clan Gathering on the last weekend in June. That's definitely something to factor in when we can feel safe in travelling again!
If you look closely at the Clan Gathering picture, you can see on the flag one rendition of the O Driscoll coat of arms. The version that I have at the top of this post, and that inspired the title of the post, comes from Lankford's book. Here is his explanation of its significance: The O Driscoll crest has a black (sable) galley on a white (argent) background. The galley represents the Clan's maritime power, while the furled sails represent constancy. The cormorant overhead is the emblem of Charity, while the white background significies Peace and Security."
To close, here is the promised map of the places that I've mentioned in the post.
Reference
Lankford, E. 2019. Ó Drisceoil. O Driscolls Past and Present. Celum Publishing, Cork. 193 pp.
