Roots, the Irish Version

Sue Ellen Woodcock
Feb. 8, 2008

Roots, the Irish version

There are a good number of us living in the United States who can trace their roots back to Ireland, in fact there are over 80 million people in the U.S., Canada, England, Wales, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, a few South American countries and some folks living in continental Europe who can. That’s nearly 14 times the number of people living in Ireland today. Influenced by the movie Roots, I began my own family history search at the age of 12. It took me straight to Belfast, North Ireland, but at the time the Troubles were in full swing and I knew my chances of ever getting to Belfast were slim.
One thing I learned in my searching is that today’s Irishman fears the American tourist arriving on your doorstep and announcing you’re cousins. And being a good American that’s exactly what I did a few years ago, well, kind of. My Irish cousins, headed by an elderly one by the name of Mary Jenkins, had been communicating by letter with me for a couple of years before the visit, and subsequent visits took place. But the best thing, besides meeting people who shared our DNA was that they helped find our way to the wee town of Ballynure (a small parish where Jonathan Swift was known to preach in) and a little cottage – the family cottage - nicknamed Snowy Glen.
I arrived in Belfast all hyped-up with my sister and immediately called Mary from the hotel, which was fine except our cousin, Russell, answered the phone. That was ok but he has a speech impediment and a heavy Northern Irish accent. Once Mary took the phone from him we got directions and arrived at 256 Cliftonville Road in no time. The line of row houses ran on both sides of the street, but no one was outside, however, we did notice a couple of people looking out their sheers at us. It dawned on us later that we had parked our Republic of Ireland, i.e. Catholic rental car on a Protestant street and drew the curiosity of a handful of people. Once inside we settled down in the parlor for tea and pastries and chat of all our past relatives. We discussed how my great, great grandmother was Mary’s aunt. It was a relief to learn we were closer on the family tree than I had first thought.
We went outside to see Mary’s greenhouse and her geraniums and other summer flowers. The whole time we stood in the yard talking a helicopter hovered over the neighborhood on its regular Saturday patrol. The tension of the Troubles still existed but fit right in to everyday life. Talk soon turned to this little town of Ballynure, located just outside of Belfast near the seaside town of Carrickfergus. Ballynure was the town where my great, great grandmother and great, great grandfather had lived at least around the time of their marriage in 1880. Mary distinctly remembered visiting their house as a child and how it was called Snowy Glen, or Snowy Glin as she pronounced it. She spun us a tale of playing in the fields on her visit to the “country”. The more we heard about this house the more we wanted to leave and go find it. My sister and I said our goodbyes, not thinking we would ever be back someday for another visit, which we where some years later.
We ventured off in our rental car and followed the map to Ballynure. The excitement took over. We were on a great detective story and we were hyper-focused on our mission, and not having a clue what to expect. First we found the Ballynure Presbyterian Church, the church my great, great grandparents were married in. Like all good tourists we jumped out and took photographs, posing by the front door and looking more interested at the church as if we had never seen one before. As luck would have it one of the church ladies walked around the corner to the front door and let us in once she knew what we were up to. After a good look inside we inquired about the rest of Ballynure. The woman smiled and said what we saw was about what we’d get. There were three good sized roads in town, one was called Dairyland Road, and a few houses scattered on each. She had never heard of Snowy Glen. We had a photograph of what it looked like in the 1960s, but the woman didn’t recognize it. After looking at the local cemetery and finding a headstone or two that could be relatives we decided to head back to Belfast but we would take the alternative route back, taking us through the town of Carrickfergus. We explored two of the roads in Ballynure and had pretty much given up on finding Snowy Glen. Maybe our elderly cousin didn’t remember her childhood place as well as we thought. The third road in town pointed us in the direction of Carrickfergus and as we left the borders of Ballynure I looked in the rear view mirror of my car and there it was. Heaped over with vines, tall grass, bushes and small trees was the house. I screamed with excitement, shocked my sister a bit and did a U-turn in the road. “That’s it. That’s it.” I kept saying. We stopped the car to look at the photograph and then at the partially buried house in front of us. The old street sign said, “Dairyland Road”. The doorways to the cottage were the same. The windows were the same space apart, but most importantly, some decorative woodwork around the windows matched. We had found Snowy Glen, just not in the shape we had hoped it would be in.
We debated about poking around the property but decided it was worth getting dirty and wet over, we hadn’t come all this way not to. We didn’t give much thought to the strength of the structure until afterward, but as far as we could tell it was pretty sound. We waded through the grass and into the right side door (the left side door went to a newer barn type of addition.) The ceilings and most of the walls were whitewashed and musty with years of life inside. There were two little rooms, one with a fireplace, but it looked like some local youths had also found the house. There were spray painted remarks about the Pope and Tags (Slang for Catholic.) There was an old ladies shoe on the floor, some linoleum, and a few pages of a Bible, an admittedly strange assortment of things. I looked out the window from the room that must have been the kitchen (it had the fireplace) and wondered if I was looking out over the same fields Mary had played in as a kid. I also thought how neat it was that I was looking out the window my great, great grandparents did.
There was also a small ladder-type set of stairs going up to what I imagine was a bedroom, more like a crawlspace. I didn’t continue on for lack of a light and for fear of something jumping out at me. We had decided we had seen enough and decided to leave, but not before I pulled several layers of wallpaper off the wall as a souvenir and a couple pages of the Bible. The first Bible page I picked up was from Exodus. How appropriate since my family’s exodus had been made from here. We drove back to Belfast as fast as we could to call our mother in the U.S. and tell her of our great find.