Croagh Patrick- 8 August 2006

Our Burke-Flynn family came from Co Mayo, but they fled Ireland at the time of the Famine, many of them ending up in Perth, Scotland. For a long time, we knew only that they came from Co Mayo, but now we know they came from the very rural townland of Derrycraff, in the parish of Aghagower. My cousin Maggie is the one who has done most to establish where exactly they were based: Derrycraff these days is a townland with barely even any ruins remaining to show where the inhabitants used to live and farm. 

Aghagower is well known as a village on the pilgrimage route from Ballintubber Abbey to Croagh Patrick, and it has a famous round tower near the ruins of a medieval church. Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, visited the parish a few months ago, as he had paternal descent from here, but his family were from a different townland. I wonder, did our ancestors have a regular view of Croagh Patrick from their cottages? 

Both Maggie and I have climbed Croagh Patrick. My climb was just over 20 years ago on 8 August 2006, and Maggie climbed it last year. Earlier this month, Maggie celebrated her birthday, and her cake was in the shape of the holy mountain, Croagh Patrick. 

I went to County Mayo in 2006 simply because I knew that I had ancestors from there, even though I didn’t know a specific family location at the time. My trip around Ireland was a fairly haphazard affair that involved buses and hostels, and I stayed in Westport because there was a youth hostel there. Westport was in fact a beautiful town and I soon realised I was really close to Croagh Patrick, and thought that maybe I should climb it. I’d heard about Reek Sunday, but had no real knowledge about the mountain being considered a holy place. 

 It wasn’t easy to get there. I tried to find out if I could take a bus to the starting point, but there wasn’t one until later in the day when it would be a bit late to start climbing. So I decided to hitch. I wasn’t waiting very long before a lovely older man came along, assuming I was a holy pilgrim, and took me to where you can begin. Soon I was off walking up the mountain. There were big signs about not walking if it was raining, but when I started it was just a bit cloudy and not at all windy. On the initial climb it’s quite rocky on the path, and you gradually wind uphill until you reach a flatter saddle area. That’s where the devout do various prayers and walk around in circles. I had no intention of doing that kind of holy Irish stuff. 

After that you begin the steeper part of the climb, and I was soon walking up scoria, five steps up, three back again. Someone coming down at that point gave me his stick and told me I’d need it. Definitely I needed it: it was very like climbing to the top of Taranaki Maunga, quite a steep slope covered with loose scoria. It got steadily cloudier as I climbed, until there was no view at all. Quite quickly conditions weren’t very pleasant, but suddenly, I reached the top, and stumbled to the end of a building where there were a lot of people sheltering eating lunch. I had to ask them if I was at the top yet, because I couldn’t see anything much at all. 

It turned out there’s only one building on the top and it’s an oratory and we were sheltering on the side away from the entrance. After a break I actually did try and go around to the church, fighting a wind that had become quite strong, and there was a Mass on. I’d climbed the holy mountain, but it didn’t seem right for me to walk in to the chapel. 

Coming down was a bit of an adventure on the scoria. As I got to the bottom of that top cone, I saw someone coming up without a stick, so I handed ‘mine’ over to them. In fact, I probably should’ve kept it myself because by then it been raining a lot and the rest of the descent was quite slippery. However, I managed okay, until suddenly I slipped and was rolled around on the ground by the wind. You wouldn’t think wind could have rolled me like that but it did, and I was a bit worried that I was going to be blown off an edge. It gave me a fright, and I sort of stayed on the ground briefly, and some people higher up were running down to check on me. But I was okay and knew I needed to continue. 

When I reached the car park, I was absolutely saturated, wet and cold. I couldn’t hang around in that state. I needed to hitch back to town and the hostel, but I was dubious that anyone would pick me up in my saturated state. However, it seemed like I was hardly by the roadside for more than a minute when somebody picked me up. He was a local man who worked near my hostel, and he could tell that I’d walked the holy mountain. He gave me a lift back to town, no problem at all, and wasn’t worried about me being saturated in his car. Back in town I was soon showered, warm and dry again. 

In so many ways, climbing a holy mountain was an odd thing for me to do- being someone who is catholic by upbringing, but not catholic by practice or belief. It still amazes me when I think that I’ve climbed Croagh Patrick, one of the most important pilgrim walks in Ireland. For my ancestors, it was perhaps even more important, as it was in their very back yard. 

In my pepeha, perhaps I should use Croagh Patrick for my maunga.  

An earlier account of my climb, blogged in 2006 is here:
https://kiwinomad06.blogspot.com/2006/08/croagh-patrick.html

Margaret Jane LALOR- married William Hewlett

When I first began exploring my family history, a Lalor cousin generously sent me a lot of material, including some exquisite photos.  Included was this four generation photo, with my great-grandmother Catherine Lalor (née Rowland) seated on the right. Standing is her eldest daughter Margaret Hewlett (née Lalor), and her eldest daughter Eileen Hamilton (née Hewlett) is seated on the left. The child is said to be "Popsy" Hamilton, Eileen's daughter. Eileen had two daughters, Eileen (born 1922) and Daphne (born 1928) and at this stage I am assuming Popsy is the eldest daughter, Eileen. (Let me know if you are reading this and know that I am wrong!)

The eldest daughter and firstborn child for my Lalor-Rowland great-grandparents was Margaret Jane LALOR who was born in August 1872 while the family was residing at South Beach. She was baptised in the Greymouth Catholic parish by Fr Henry Belliard SM in early September 1872. 1.

The details on the Intentions to Marry form for her in August 1897 said that she was to marry William Hamilton HEWLETT, a sawmiller, and the marriage was to be performed by Rev D.P. Carew at her parents house at South Beach near Paroa. (1897b- page 280- District of Greymouth) 2.

Thanks to Luke Howison whose work scanning these Intentions to Marry registers has made them available to us all! https://itm.howison.co.nz/

There were six children in the Hewlett family, the first stillborn, then four more natural-born children, before the youngest was adopted. The first child, born stillborn in June 1898, was recorded in the burial register for Karoro Cemetery.  
The second child was Eileen Catherine, who was born just under a year later, in May 1899. She married William Anthony HAMILTON.
The third child, born in 1902, was James William, who became a printer, and who remained living in the area with his parents, and never married.  
The fourth child, William Thomas, was born in 1906, and had only a short life. He died as a baby, aged 5 months old, and is buried in what became his Lalor grandparents' plot. (The date of his death on the headstone has errors). He is buried along with his cousin Evelyn Schroeder who had accidentally drowned a few years earlier, as a toddler. 3.4.

The fourth child born in the family was their second daughter, Margaret Alice, who was born in 1908, and later married Bernard MYER, and they raised their family in Greymouth.

The last child in the family was David John (Jack) Hewlett, who was adopted in 1910. He married in Wellington in 1936 to Marie Eugene Denia, and they lived in Christchurch for many years, having one daughter called Marie. 5.

 

Margaret Hewlett and her husband William lived in the Paroa/ South Beach area for many years, and there is in fact a Hewlett Rd there. I haven't confirmed this is named for them, but it seems likely. 6.

 

Margaret lived to be 68 years old, and died in Grey River Hospital in March 1942. Her husband William died just under a year later, and is buried with her. Their son James died in 1955 and is also named on the same headstone at Karoro Cemetery. Their grave is in Section 3, Row 9 of Karoro Cemetery. 7.

 

If you are reading this, and are a descendant of Margaret Hewlett (Lalor) please feel free to contact me. I am a granddaughter of her younger brother James who settled in Kumara. 

1. Birth details from Historic BDMs, Ancestor Search Helper, and baptism certs from Chch Catholic Archives

2. ITM details courtesy of Luke Howison's scans of ITM registers at Archives NZ 

https://itm.howison.co.nz/

3. NZSG Cemetery Records (Kiwi Collection)

 4. Funeral notice: Greymouth Evening Star, 20 February 1907, page 2. Headstone photo held by author.

5: wedding report- Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 138, 12 June 1936, page 1 

6: Photo of Hewlett Rd & sign taken by author
7. headstone photo taken by author

8. Death notice, Margaret Hewlett- Greymouth Evening Star, 21 March 1942, page 4. 

James LALOR - parentage?

James Lalor, my great-grandfather, died in 1916 at South Beach, near Greymouth, and was said to be 78 at the time. (This puts his birth at around 1838.) His parents were named as John Lalor and Mary Lalor (with her maiden surname not filled in), and he was said to have been born in Kilkenny, Ireland. (Place of birth was not recorded on marriage documents in 1871 when he married Catherine Rowland.)

Many trees on Ancestry have details entered for his parents, sometimes with the father as James Fintan Lalor, sometimes with the mother as Mary Gorman, but nearly always the people mentioned live in Co Laois, not Kilkenny. Most of these trees appear to have copied from each other, and I have never seen a suitable source on any of them linking our James Lalor with these parents.

Our James Lalor was proudly from Kilkenny- it is even mentioned on his headstone in Karoro Cemetery. It was also mentioned in his obituary.

Some people claim that James Fintan Lalor is the father of our James. James Fintan Lalor is from a famous family in Co Laois, and was the father of Peter Fintan Lalor of Eureka Stockade fame in the Victorian goldfields days. Read more about this Lalor family in this Ballarat genealogy document: https://www.ballaratgenealogy.org.au/index.php/research?view=article&id=212:genealogy-of-the-lalor-family&catid=14

In an article in the Free Lance in 1901, James Lalor is interviewed as a parliamentary messenger, and it is mentioned here again that he ‘belonged to Kilkenny’. The article mentions that he “was in Bendigo when the Eureka riots took place in Ballarat”, and that the Peter Lalor who figured there so prominently was a “distant relation of Mr James Lalor”. This ‘distant’ cousin label would rule out James Fintan Lalor, Peter Lalor’s father, being the father of our James.

If you look on Griffiths Valuations for Kilkenny, there are many John Lalors listed, and possibly one of these is the father of our James Lalor. However, I have never seen any more precise location than ‘Kilkenny’ listed for him, so it is not easily possible to find his father.

Despite various parents being named on Ancestry trees for our James Lalor, I haven’t seen any credible Kilkenny sources to support any of them, and for now, I will continue to only write his parents as John and Mary Lalor, with her maiden name unknown.

 

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1. Obituary. Greymouth Evening Star, 5 October 1916. Papers Past.

2. Entre Nous, The Free Lance, Saturday November 16 1901. Papers Past.

Where was Kahikatea on the West Coast?

I'm currently going back over the family history information I have collected over the years, checking for accuracy and completeness, starting from my parents and grandparents. 
Recently I discovered that when my maternal grandfather James Joseph Lalor was called up for military service in WW1, his address was given as Kahikatea and he was described as a sawmiller. (His brother John Francis Lalor was living at Kumara Junction, and his brother Robert was living near Taihape.)

This was a new location to me, and I tried to find it on old maps or other sources without success. So I wrote a question about it for the West Coast South Island History FB group, and it wasn't long before I had an answer. It turns out that Kahikatea was also known as Gladstone, and in an earlier time as Lagoon Town. 

Pete Muir was the person who gave the most detailed answers. He told me that: "Gladstone was also known as Lagoontown in its earliest days. The post office was always known as Kahikatea." and he added: "In Phil Ross May's book "West Coast Gold Rushes" & Rona Adshead & Jillian Johnson's Book "Valley of Little Towns" (history of the Marsden Valley) there are maps showing Gladstone as Lagoon Town. This was the name given in the early gold rush days. It was then more commonly known as Kahikatea from about 1900 until the 1950's then officially known as Gladstone. The name of the Post Office remained as Kahikatea until it's closing in the 80's." 

This map is part of one on the West Coast New Zealand History Recollect site, and is named GOLDFIELDS. The Greenstone, New River and Arnold, from Philip Ross May's book, on the West Coast Gold Rushes. (Pete had suggested looking up the map in this book.) It shows the location with its earliest name, Lagoon Town.

My grandfather's electoral address at the time was South Beach, where he was living with his parents. On the electoral roll at this stage he was sometimes listed with 'jun' after his name, as his father was also called James. Kahikatea/Gladstone is in fact not far from South Beach, and it would be interesting to know if James stayed overnight during the working week, or if he returned home each night.  
We retain a family connection with the Kahikatea/ Gladstone area, as my Aunty May and Uncle Jack Lalor (brother and sister) are both buried in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Gladstone.

My grandfather in the newspaper

I have just completed a bio for my grandfather Martin Riordan. He bought a farm in Hurford Rd, Omata, Taranaki about 1910-11, and lived there for a decade or so before moving into town in 1921. He was there during a time when 'District News' from Hurford Rd commonly featured in the local New Plymouth newspaper, and this added interesting 'flavour' to his bio. There are the various committees he was on- for instance he was chairman of the School Committee- but there are also some more 'offbeat' snippets.

In 1917, his bull earned a trip to the meat works after it gored several of his horses overnight. (TDN 28 Feb 1917)

 

In 1915 he was taken to court for failing to control the ragwort and blackberry on his property, and that brought to light the sad fact that his wife had been ill and away on holiday. (TDN 6 May 1915) 

It wasn't uncommon to find that he was thanked for playing music at some community event or other. (TDN 27 Oct 1920)

Sadly, only a few months after leaving the farm, he died after contracting influenza. He had attended an event on Hurford Rd not long before his relatively sudden death, which left the rural community shocked. (TDN 5 Sept 1921).

As was typical of those times "Mrs Riordan" was mentioned less often in the papers.