Irish History and Charlestown

The Creation of Charlestown

I am not a historian, but in researching my novel, The Equal of God, which I hope to begin publishing at the end of 2014, I discovered the roots of a culture I grew up with and that I reconnected with when I made my first visit to Ireland in 1976. What I write here is my interpretation of my family’s culture and Ireland’s history, the legacy of English occupation and rule and the devastation of the famine which is part of our heritage. It is my hope that others will correct any errors.

To understand our family, or any Irish family of the 20^th century, it is important to understand the meaning of Home. When I was very young, I was always puzzled to hear my father and his brothers and sisters refer to home when they spoke of Ireland. It seemed to me that their home was in New York, as mine was. When any of them made a visit to Ireland they said they were going home. When I made my first visit and afterwards saw Uncle Johnny he greeted me with a huge smile and said, “I heard you went home.”

To anyone born in Ireland of my father’s generation, perhaps it is still true, but I can only speak of my own family’s experience, regardless of where they lived, Ireland was always home. I grew up hearing about people returning for a visit after emigrating to America and kissing the ground when they got off the boat because they were so happy to be home, however briefly. Indeed, when I stepped off the plane in Shannon in 1976, back before terminals, the man in front of me knelt down and kissed the tarmac.

I cannot say that I feel Ireland is my home. I am an American first, but I am also Irish. However, my love for Ireland is so deep it is beyond description. I have written a novel about Ireland, I have researched its history and I have created this website so that those of us who have not and may never visit Ireland, or know any of our Irish relatives, or hear any of the old stories will, nevertheless, have a connection to our roots. We are all Irish in ways we may not understand. That is true of all nationalities, but Irish is the only one I am meagerly qualified to write about. For us, the Cassidys, it all starts in Charlestown, County Mayo. But to understand Charlestown, you must understand some of Ireland’s history.

A Brief Irish History

Ireland was conquered by the English over a thousand years ago. It was seen as a stronghold against invasion by the French from the Irish sea. At that time, the English regarded the natives as savages, a view they held for many centuries. In fact they were tribal farmers and craftsmen, each tribe ruled by its own king. Ireland did not have and has never had a uniform country ruled by a single ruler. Even today we have Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland. That accounts for its being easily invaded by England way back then. There was no army to rally, no king to fight or negotiate with the invaders. And largely, though the tribes were fierce, they seemed to be peace-loving.

The Irish did have a civil code called The Brehon Laws. They governed the behavior of everyday life and all legal matters. Hospitality was pre-eminent. You could not turn away a stranger who needed a bed for the night, for example, not even if you were a king. Though these laws died out ages ago, it is my personal belief that the spirit of the Brehon Laws has survived in the culture. You will hear Ireland described as the land of a thousand welcomes. And it is true. The hospitality is deep, warm and genuine, and I believe a remnant of the ancient culture and the Brehon laws.

I say this because I saw it in our family when I was growing up and when I visited Ireland the first time and the last in 2003. I’ve traveled widely and visited many wonderful countries and cultures. However, the only other country that exhibited the warmth and hospitality of Ireland is South Africa, which boasts Ubuntu as it’s national culture. Ubuntu is the belief, codified in its constitution, and I am simplifying this, that each of us is deserving of respect and dignity.

I believe this is why all native born Irish cannot relinquish the notion of Ireland as home. There is no other place that is so welcoming, that greets you with such wide, open arms. It is the very definition of home, the place your heart clings to, does not want to leave.

The English were not kind masters. This is well documented and not my personal prejudice. They subjugated the Irish for over a thousand years until the Irish Republic achieved independence in 1921.

The name Oliver Cromwell is a hated one to the Irish. He instituted the plantations in Northern Ireland, moving the residents off the land and moving in the Scottish Protestants, much the way the US government moved Native Americans off their land to reservations. Asked where they should go he famously said “to hell or Connaught.” It was all the same to him. The Protestants got the choice land around Belfast, the Catholics got Connaught, rocky and rough, beautiful but all but inhabitable at the time. Connaught is the province where County Mayo is located. The name Cassidy comes from Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, but we ended up in Mayo.

The English instituted the brutal Penal Laws in the 18th century, many of which eventually were regarded to be too cruel as to be unenforceable. They allowed, for example, a “gentleman” to shoot an Irishman if he did not allow him to pass on a public sidewalk. One of the laws that stuck was that the Irish Catholics, who made up 85% of the population, were not allowed to enter professions or to own land. So they became farmers.

They rented land from English landowners, largely absentee landlords or Irish Protestant landowners. They were not allowed to go to school for the most part and depended upon the potato, a crop that produced such high, frequent yields, that potatoes were used as currency. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many Irish never saw actual money. All transactions were in potatoes. Rent, and any goods and services they could not provide for themselves were paid for in potatoes.

During this period the Irish, though their living conditions in their small cottages, hovels, actually, were deplorable, the American slaves were considered to have a better standard of living by some writers, nevertheless the people were hardy and healthy. Their diet of potatoes and buttermilk was extremely nutritious. They had very large families, which they supported with their large crops of potatoes.

Until July of 1845. During that month a perfect storm hit. The potato plants were in flower and vulnerable to a fungus that thrived in dampness. That July proved to be one of the wettest on record. Families quite literally went to bed one night thinking their crop was healthy and woke to a terrible stench because the plants had rotted overnight. This happened within weeks all over Ireland. In fact, it happened wherever potatoes were grown. In South America, Russia, Germany, Holland and France.

Ireland was not the only peasant country dependent on the potato. However, Ireland was the only country that starved. All other governments fed their people until the crops returned, all governments but England. A sad fact of the famine is that Ireland at that time was England’s food basket. All foodstuffs except potatoes were harvested and sent to England, as her own farmers had turned to factory work during the industrial revolution. Armed English soldiers had to guard shipments of food on their way to the docks from the starving farmers.

The famine lasted five years, until 1851. At the end of the famine, when the crops returned, the population of Ireland was reduced by half, from six million to three million, either from deaths by starvation or famine diseases or people fleeing the country to America, Australia and Canada. It was not until the 21^st century that the population returned to its pre-famine numbers. The migration caused by the famine resulted in the largest migration of people in human history. It is why today the Irish are found most countries throughout the world. That brings us to Charlestown.

County Mayo was very hard hit by the famine. Large numbers of people died or fled. In all the reports I’ve read, however, I’d never been been able to find an account of the famine in Charlestown. After some digging I discovered it was because Charlestown didn’t exist during the famine.

A man named Viscount Dillon owned a very large tract of land in Mayo, I’ve read five thousand acres. In 1851, when the crops were thriving again, his agent, Charles Strickland, arranged for a contest that involved getting goods to scales to be weighed before going to market. One location was in County Sligo and the other across the border in County Mayo. Mayo won and the spot became Charlestown, which Mr. Strickland named after himself. Parts of this story may be apocryphal, though I’ve read it in several places.

Charlestown is a hub surrounded by townlands,  which are clusters of small farms. Bulcaun and Glann are two of them and our roots are in these two townlands outside of Charlestown.

In 1851 Ireland conducted its very first census called the Griffiths Valuation, which is archived on microfiche in The National Library in Dublin. I knew that Bulcaun was in Kilbeagh Parish, which, as in Lousiana, means a municipal district. In 1997 I visited Ireland for the third time. At that point I had started my novel and took the opportunity to do some research. I had been visiting the Cassidys on their farm. At the time, Una, widow of my Uncle Fran, and their son, Gerald lived there and were raising dairy cows. Una’s other children lived nearby. Una was very interested in my discoveries and helped fill in some of the blanks.

In Dublin I discovered that in 1851 Thomas and James Cassidy lived on a farm in Kilbeagh Parish. They were the only Cassidy’s listed and I assumed they were “our” Cassidys.

When I told Una, she pointed out some stones in the field across from her house. She told me it was the remnant of a foundation and that it had been the home of two brothers, the ones I’d discovered in the census. She did not know about the census but had heard that it had once been occupied by two Cassidy brothers. Some time after 1851, Thomas remained in the house as the older brother and James moved away to marry into a family named Walsh. I don’t know anything about them but recall hearing about the Walshes when I was very young and attended a wedding of Walshes when I was about ten. I assume they. were the family of James Cassidy.

I have figured out that Thomas Cassidy was my great-great grandfather. I don’t know anything about his parents, wife or children. Because primogeniture was the law at the time, meaning the oldest son inherited the farm (actually the lease), I know he was the oldest son. His parents would have lived in the house and his wife would have been obligated to care for them as they aged.

He had a son, Pat, who had a son, Thomas. I know this from the baptismal certificate I have posted. This second Thomas was my father’s father. My first cousin, Una and Fran’s son, is also named Thomas, so the name survives. I was thrilled beyond words to find Thomas Cassidy’s name in the census in Dublin. As it happens, long before I knew any of this, I had named two of the characters in my novel Tommy and Thomas. I choose to think their spirits were whispering in my ear.

Thomas Cassidy married Mary Gallagher of the next village, Glann, my grandparents. We are all descended from them. I have posted their baptismal certificates. They are buried in the same church in which they were baptized in Carracastle. Back in those days in the 1800’s, baptismal certificates were more common than birth certificates.

Thomas, nicknamed Ganger, moved Mariah into that house where they produced fourteen children. Somewhere along the line the first cottage crumbled and the second one was built and still stands. It is owned by Una’s son, and my first cousin, Gerald and his wife Pat. They’ve built a large modern house behind it for themselves but Una lived in that farmhouse until she died.

I have always wondered if anyone in our family was affected by the famine, but when I learned that these two brothers, and presumably their parents, lived in a house during the years of the famine, I had my answer.

The poorest of the poor were numerous in Ireland and they suffered the worst during those awful years. When the potato crops died they couldn’t pay their rents (which would have been in potatoes), so they were evicted. However, if you had “the grass of thirty cows,” meaning enough land to graze thirty cows, you had enough land to survive. You had other means of feeding your family and weren’t wholly dependent on potatoes. It didn’t mean that you were rich, just that you didn’t starve. Our ancestors would have seen unspeakable scenes of suffering and undoubtedly knew people who died and fled Ireland during the famine. However, the Cassidys survived.

At the end of the famine, Charlestown was founded with shops and other amenities. I grew up hearing about Charlestown, pronounced Char-less-town. Bulcaun was a series of farms with no other buildings or shops. Glann, the village next to it, where my mother’s family, the Drurys, lived, had the one room school. My cousins Ann and Mary found old attendance rolls from the 1900’s with our relatives listed as attending that school. I don’t know if it is still standing, but in 1986 I visited Ireland with my sister, Rita and we visited the school, long abandoned. We searched cupboards and also found old logs and attendance rolls. All the Cassidys attended that school, when they weren’t playing hookey!!

Thomas and Mariah Cassidy, my grandparents, lived in a typical Irish cottage on the farm, though I don’t know who built it. It had a large kitchen with an open hearth, a living room and at the time they were raising a family, one bedroom. In that house they raised fourteen children, one of whom was my father, James.

Seven of the children emigrated to America. I believe two girls died in infancy. One girl became a nun and died soon after. I believe there was a boy, Will, but I’m not sure. My aunts Bridget and Annie remained in Bulcaun until they married. I will recreate those families with photos as best I can. This website will attempt to recreate the families descended from Ganger and Mariah and their fourteen children. Perhaps I will be able to put a number on us, and perhaps create a virtual reunion.