Roots

After bidding goodbye to Bridie and her lovely home, we headed to St John’s Church in Tralee. What another amazing old structure. It was humbling to think that my grandma received the Sacrament of Baptism in this church in 1890. Off to the office where we got contact information for the archivist of the church. I’ll email him details and any pictures of documents we have. The parish cemetery is a few miles away, so we headed off to Rathass Cemetery. The caretaker of the cemetery was so helpful. He took both my great grandparents names and did a search, but found nothing. He said the data base is very incomplete before the 1920’s. We took a few pictures of headstones with Reidy names and will try and do more research through Ancestry. It’s amazing how easy it is to spend 2 hours in a cemetery.
We had at least another hour to get to Kilcolgan in Galway county just south of Kilorglin, where we stayed many years back with Jen and Kelly. Our hosts for the next two days are Kate and Michael at Rafterys Way. So we hit our first Motorway of the trip. M18, with a speed limit of 120km/hr. We think it’s around 75miles/hr but the 120 is much more impressive! Kate offered us tea and biscuits when we arrived, had a chance to explore her garden and talk flowers with her and politics with Michael. As in the US, there are varied opinions about how each government handled the Covid lockdown. Tourism is such a huge component here that many businesses never could reopen. One owner we spoke with in Dingle said they learned some very important lessons from the lockdown. He said it rekindled their family time which had been lacking due to the business. He has chosen to close on Sundays for family time. Many businesses don’t have that luxury.
Had an early dinner and bedtime. Heading to Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands by ferry tomorrow.Read more