A recent trip home to the West of Ireland and a conversation with my father’s cousin’s widow revealed to me for the first time this image of my great-grandmother, Maria. She was born in 1854 and died in 1905, so I reckon this photo is over 100 years old. A teacher, who married another teacher, she had six children. Two boys and four girls. Three of them emigrated to America and lost touch with many of the family.
I checked the 1901 Census and found that the whole family were present in their home in the West of Ireland at that stage. By the 1911 Census there remained only my grandfather and his youngest daughter. The elder three had gone to America, another daughter had married and moved elsewhere, and a son, my grandfather, wasn’t there. He married my grandmother Julia a few years later, and was drowned in a swimming accident around the time my father, their first-born, was about six months old.
Maria was very skilled at needlework and lacemaking, a craft she passed on to her daughters and to many others. Her husband, my great-grandfather Michael, outlived her for over three decades.