Is Meets Was

Bradley Lake in Andover, New Hampshire     2002 by Cathy H Paris Little Mary may have been the price the Fitzgeralds paid for coming to America.  By the fall of 1852, James, Betsey (Graney) Fitzgerald, and their 3 sons had joined James.  What happened to little Mary?  Was she with her sister, Joanna, on the other side of the pearly gates?   In June of 1853, James and Betsey welcomed a new Mary into the world, the first of five children to be born in Andover, New Hampshire.  Mary was followed by Lizzie (1854), Annie (1856), James E. (1857), and Nellie (1861).   Meanwhile, back in Ireland, the family of Henry Webster and Agnes (Low) was growing too.  Like James and Betsey, they had 10 children.  Their first four children were born in Scotland:  Jessie (1845), John (1847), Henry (1848), and James (1850).  I don’t know where their fifth child, Margaret (1852), was born.  Their last five children were all born in Ir...

Sometime in the 19 th  century, the landlord forced the families living in Killelton to leave. James Fitzgerald’s wife, Elizabeth Graney, may have been one of the people who were evicted. The ruins of the abandoned village  are a reminder of the people who once lived there.   On our incredible journey to Ireland in 2008, we stopped in Dingle and found a living Graney, who spelled his name a bit differently. He said more Graneys lived over the hills on the northern shore, reinforcing our belief that our Graneys came from Killelton.  Killelton is across the peninsula from Dingle, the mountainous terrain separating these two coastal communities.   We returned to the car and continued along the road, heading around and across the peninsula. We stopped at a delightful pub in Camp, the John Ashe, for a bite to eat and an opportunity to chat. The proprietor didn’t seem to know any Graneys, but he reassured us that we were not far from Killelton.  We g...